Tractor Trailer Accidents

Get treated, and get the carrier’s information. From the crash report or the door of the tractor you want the carrier’s name, its USDOT number, and the trailer number. That is enough to identify the company, its insurer, and its safety record, and it is enough to start preservation.

Then get a preservation letter out. Federal retention floors are short: driver vehicle inspection reports for three months, a back-up of the electronic logging device records for six, and engine control module data that can be overwritten by continued driving or lost when the tractor is repaired or sold. Routine destruction on schedule is not misconduct — destruction after notice to preserve is a very different matter, and it can carry consequences of its own at trial.

Photograph what you can, including the tractor and trailer markings and the USDOT number, the scene, and your vehicle before it is repaired or hauled off. If the vehicles are still available, say so immediately — inspection of the actual equipment is often possible early and almost never possible later.

And do not give a recorded statement to the carrier’s insurer or sign a blanket medical authorization. Both requests arrive quickly and both sound routine.

Because you are suing a federally regulated business rather than a driver. Interstate motor carriers operate under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, which set enforceable standards for hours of service, driver qualification, vehicle inspection and maintenance, drug and alcohol testing, and recordkeeping. A violation of those rules is frequently the most direct proof of negligence available — and it comes out of the defendant’s own files rather than from a witness.

The evidence is different in kind. Most of what decides a truck case was generated by equipment: electronic logs, the engine control module, telematics, GPS, forward-facing and driver-facing cameras, and dispatch messaging. That evidence does not misremember and does not get impeached — but it has to be preserved before it can be used.

The response is different too. Serious carriers have rapid-response programs that put adjusters, defense lawyers and reconstruction experts at the scene within hours. By the time an injured person is discharged, the other side may have documented the scene, downloaded the module, and taken statements.

The practical consequence: in a car case, waiting a few weeks to call a lawyer usually costs nothing. In a truck case, it can cost the evidence that would have proved it.

Federal rules cap how long a property-carrying driver may work. Under 49 C.F.R. § 395.3, a driver may not drive more than 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, may not drive at all beyond the 14th consecutive hour after coming on duty, must take a 30-minute break after 8 hours of driving time, and is limited to 60 hours in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 days depending on the carrier’s operation. A 34-hour off-duty period restarts the weekly count.

Fatigue is a leading cause of serious truck crashes, so a driver over hours is often the entire liability case. Because logs are electronic rather than handwritten, the record is far harder to reconstruct after the fact than it was in the paper-logbook era — which is good for claimants, provided the data is preserved inside the six-month window.

The more consequential question is usually the carrier’s rather than the driver’s. If dispatch records show a delivery schedule that could not legally be run, or if the carrier had a pattern of violations it tolerated, the case moves from one tired driver to how the company operates. That is where the larger exposure sits, and it is why hours data is read against dispatch records rather than in isolation.

Far more than a private driver. Under 49 C.F.R. § 387.9, a for-hire interstate carrier hauling non-hazardous property in a vehicle over 10,000 pounds must maintain at least $750,000. Oil and certain hazardous substances require $1,000,000, and high-risk hazardous materials require $5,000,000.

Those are floors, not typical limits. Many carriers, particularly those hauling for large shippers who impose their own insurance requirements, carry primary coverage well above the minimum plus excess layers above that. Where a broker or shipper shares responsibility, their policies may also respond.

There is also the MCS-90 endorsement, required by 49 C.F.R. § 387.15. It is a public-protection device: it obligates the insurer to pay a final judgment for public liability up to the required minimum even where the policy itself would not have covered the loss, with the insurer entitled to reimbursement from the carrier afterward. It is a safety net rather than a first resort, but in cases involving thin or disputed coverage it can be the difference between a judgment and a collection.

Compare all of that with Missouri’s minimum for an ordinary driver — $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident under RSMo § 303.190. It is the single largest practical difference between a truck case and a car accident claim.

Often several parties, and they are not obvious from the crash itself.

The motor carrier is generally responsible for its driver acting within the scope of employment, and can also be directly liable for its own conduct — negligent hiring, training, supervision, retention, or entrustment. Those claims reach the company’s decisions rather than the driver’s momentary error, and they are why the driver qualification file and the carrier’s safety history matter so much.

Others depend on the facts. The trailer owner frequently differs from the tractor owner. A shipper or loading facility may be responsible where cargo was improperly loaded or secured and the driver had no practical ability to inspect it. A maintenance contractor may be responsible where a brake or tire failure traces to its work. A parts or vehicle manufacturer may be responsible where a component failed.

Carriers frequently characterize drivers as independent contractors to create distance. That label is not decisive. Federal law and the operating reality — who controlled the schedule, the route, the equipment, and the load — often place responsibility with the carrier regardless of what the paperwork says.

Yes, and this changed recently. For years brokers argued that negligent-selection claims — the claim that a broker chose an unsafe carrier to haul a load — were preempted by federal law, and the federal circuits split on it.

The Supreme Court resolved that in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, No. 24-1238, decided May 14, 2026. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Barrett, the Court held that negligent-hiring claims against transportation brokers are not preempted by the FAAAA, because requiring a broker to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier falls within the statute’s safety exception for state authority over motor vehicles. See the opinion.

Practically, that opens a defendant — and a policy — that was often unavailable before, particularly where the carrier that actually hauled the load is thinly insured or has gone out of business. The question becomes what the broker knew or should have known about that carrier’s safety record when it handed over the load, and much of that record is public.

It also means the broker contract is worth obtaining early, along with whatever vetting the broker documented.

An underride collision is one where a passenger vehicle travels beneath the trailer. They are disproportionately fatal because the trailer bed strikes at roughly the height of the occupants’ heads, bypassing the crumple zones and restraint systems the car was designed around.

Rear underride is federally regulated. Trailers must carry rear impact guards meeting FMVSS 223 and 224, and NHTSA upgraded those standards in a final rule published July 15, 2022, requiring guards to protect occupants of compact and subcompact cars striking the rear of a trailer at 35 mph across 50 to 100 percent of the vehicle’s width. NHTSA denied a petition seeking a more demanding 30 percent overlap requirement in June 2024.

Side underride is not federally required. There is no equivalent standard mandating side guards, which is precisely why side underride crashes remain so severe and why the question in such a case often becomes what the carrier or trailer owner knew and chose not to do.

These cases warrant a physical inspection of the trailer and its guard, promptly. Whether a guard was present, compliant, damaged, corroded, or improperly repaired is a question that gets much harder to answer once the equipment is back in service.

Much of it is public, and it is worth looking at early. FMCSA publishes carrier information through its SAFER system, including the carrier’s operating authority, insurance filing status, fleet and driver counts, and inspection and crash history. That record shows whether the crash was an anomaly or a pattern.

The internal record is more revealing and is obtained in discovery. Roadside inspection reports and out-of-service violations, the carrier’s own internal safety audits, prior similar incidents, driver disciplinary records, and the training and qualification files together answer the question that matters: did this carrier know it had a problem?

That distinction drives value. A single driver error is one case. A carrier that had documented notice of a driver’s history, or of a maintenance failure, or of a dispatch practice that pushed drivers past their hours, is a materially different case — and it is the fact pattern in which a punitive claim becomes worth evaluating under RSMo § 510.261, which requires clear and convincing evidence of deliberate or flagrant disregard for the safety of others.

Potentially a great deal, and the timing is regulated. Under 49 C.F.R. § 382.303, post-accident testing is required after a fatality, and after a crash involving bodily injury requiring immediate treatment away from the scene or disabling vehicle damage requiring a tow, where the driver receives a citation.

The windows are tight. Alcohol testing must be attempted within two hours, and if it is not, the employer must prepare and keep a written record stating why; attempts cease at eight hours. Controlled-substance testing ends at thirty-two hours, with the same documentation requirement for delay.

The absence of a test is therefore itself evidence. If testing was required and did not happen, there should be a written explanation in the carrier’s file, and the adequacy of that explanation is fair game. The same is true of the carrier’s broader testing program — pre-employment, random, and reasonable-suspicion testing all leave records, and gaps in them speak to how the company was run.

The maintenance file usually tells you, and it has its own retention clock. Under 49 C.F.R. Part 396, a carrier must systematically inspect, repair and maintain its vehicles, keep maintenance records for one year plus six months after the vehicle leaves its control (§ 396.3), retain each annual inspection report for fourteen months (§ 396.17), and keep driver vehicle inspection reports for three months (§ 396.11).

Driver vehicle inspection reports are often the most useful document in the file. A driver is required to report defects affecting safety, and the carrier must certify the repair before the vehicle goes back out. A DVIR reporting a brake problem, followed by no repair record and a brake-related crash, is about as direct a proof of negligence as these cases produce.

Brakes and tires are the recurring failures. Out-of-adjustment brakes, worn linings, and under-inflated or mismatched tires appear constantly in roadside inspection data, and they are exactly the conditions the inspection regime exists to catch. Preserving those records early matters — the three-month DVIR window is second only to the ELD clock.

Expect to hear it, and do not treat it as the end of the inquiry. Carriers use owner-operator and lease arrangements widely, and the paperwork is frequently drafted with exactly this argument in mind.

It usually does not work as intended. Federal leasing regulations require a carrier operating under its own authority to have exclusive possession and control of the equipment and to assume responsibility for its operation during the lease. Courts look at operating reality — who set the schedule and route, whose placards and authority the truck ran under, who controlled the load, who could discipline the driver — rather than at the label in the contract.

And the direct-liability claims are unaffected by the label in any event. Negligent hiring, entrustment, training and supervision are claims about the carrier’s own conduct in putting that driver on the road, and an independent-contractor designation does not answer them.

The lease agreement, the settlement statements, and the dispatch records are the documents that resolve this, which is another reason to get preservation done early.

In Missouri, most personal injury claims must be filed within five years under RSMo § 516.120. A wrongful death claim is shorter — three years under RSMo § 537.100, and Missouri’s wrongful death statute also limits who may bring it.

Those deadlines are almost never the real constraint in a truck case. The evidence deadlines run in months, not years, and they run whether or not you have hired anyone. A case filed comfortably inside the statute but built after the electronic logs were destroyed and the tractor was sold is a much weaker case than the same facts worked in the first month.

Shorter deadlines can also apply where a public entity is involved — a municipal truck, a road-condition claim — and those notice requirements can be measured in days.

Yes. Missouri applies pure comparative fault. Under RSMo § 537.765, a claimant’s fault “shall diminish proportionately the amount awarded as compensatory damages but shall not bar recovery.” There is no threshold above which recovery is barred.

Carriers and their insurers press this hard in truck cases, and there is a recurring theme: the argument that the passenger vehicle cut in front of the truck, or was in the blind spot, or stopped short. Electronic data is what answers it. Speed, braking, following distance and steering input in the seconds before impact are recorded, and the reconstruction built on that data frequently looks nothing like the roadside account.

That is one more reason the preservation letter is the first step rather than a later one. Comparative fault arguments are defeated with data, and the data is on a clock.

Nobody who has not seen the medical records can tell you, and the honest answer early is a range with its assumptions stated. What is different from a car case is the ceiling: with $750,000 as a federal floor and excess layers commonly above it, available coverage is far less often the limiting factor.

That shifts the work to proving the damages properly. Truck collisions produce catastrophic injuries more frequently than car crashes do, which means future medical care, life-care planning, and lost earning capacity are frequently the largest elements of the claim — and each requires expert support rather than a stack of bills.

Missouri’s medical-expense statute applies here as it does in any injury case: under RSMo § 490.715 the recoverable value of medical care is framed around “actual cost” — amounts paid plus any remaining obligation after contractual discounts and write-offs — rather than billed charges.

Punitive damages remain rare and demanding, but a carrier with documented notice of the problem that caused the crash is the fact pattern where they become worth evaluating.

These cases are handled on contingency — a percentage of the recovery, with no fee if there is no recovery. The initial consultation is free.

Missouri requires the arrangement to be in writing. Under Rule 4-1.5(c), a contingent fee agreement must be in a writing signed by the client stating the method by which the fee is determined, including the percentage that accrues to the lawyer, and the litigation and other expenses to be deducted — and whether expenses come out before or after the fee is calculated. That last detail changes what you actually receive, and it is worth reading carefully in any firm’s agreement.

Truck cases carry real expense, more than an ordinary collision claim: accident reconstruction, an engine control module download, expert review of the regulatory file, and in a serious injury case a life-care planner and an economist. Those are advanced and repaid from the recovery, and we will tell you what the case is likely to require before it is incurred.

You will also get an honest answer about whether the case is worth bringing. Some are not, and saying so at the consultation is more useful than an engagement letter.

Throughout Missouri. Principal office at 401 Pine Street, Suite 950, St. Louis, MO 63102, with offices in Wildwood and St. Louis by appointment. Most of the work is done by phone, video and secure document exchange, which is genuinely better when you are injured; where a case requires meeting in person we arrange it, and where someone cannot travel we come to them.

Venue deserves more thought in a truck case than in a car case. A national carrier may be suable in more than one county and sometimes more than one state, and these cases are frequently removed to federal court on diversity grounds. Where a case is filed can matter to its value, and it is a decision made deliberately rather than by default.

For collisions not involving a commercial truck, see Car Accidents. For other injury claims — premises liability, dog bites, product defects — see Personal Injury.