A lorry does not hit you the way a car does, and the company behind it does not respond the way a private driver does. Its investigators can be at the scene the same day. Jose Robles Jr is an Air Force combat veteran who takes on haulage and delivery companies for injured people across Richardson and Dallas County.
A Richardson truck accident lawyer goes after the trucking company, not just the driver, and moves quickly because federal rules let a company erase its driver logs after about six months. Commercial trucks carry far more insurance than cars, which is why these claims are defended hard from day one. Free consultation, and no fee unless we win.
The company is bound by federal safety rules, there is far more insurance behind the claim, and the evidence that proves what happened belongs to the people who hit you.
A crash between two private cars is settled almost entirely by state law and by what the two drivers say. A crash with a commercial truck brings in a whole body of federal rules about how long a driver may work, how the vehicle must be maintained, how cargo must be secured, and what records must be kept. Every one of those is a place a company can be shown to have cut a corner.
The insurance picture is different too, and the difference is not small.
The required minimum, not what any claim is worth. Texas sets the car figure; federal rules set the truck figures.
The bar for a private car is not a rendering fault. Texas asks 25 times less of the driver beside you than federal rules ask of the freight truck behind you.
That gap is why the same broken leg can be a small claim after a car crash and a serious one after a truck crash. It is also why the company's insurer takes it seriously from the first day, usually before you have decided what to do.
Much faster than the two year filing deadline suggests. The driver logs only have to be kept for about six months, and the truck's own data can be overwritten within days.
This is the most important thing on this page. A written demand to preserve the evidence, sent early, is what turns routine deletion into destruction of evidence that a court can do something about. Sent late, it is just a letter.
HOURS
The company can have investigators at the scene before you have left hospital, measuring and photographing while everything is fresh.
DAYS
The truck goes back to work. The electronic data recorded by the engine can be overwritten as new miles pile up.
WEEKS
Camera footage from nearby businesses is recycled. A written demand to preserve evidence has to arrive before this, not after.
ABOUT 6 MONTHS
The period federal rules require a trucking company to keep its driver logs runs out. Those logs are what prove a driver was over their hours.
2 YEARS
The Texas deadline to file. By now the proof may be long gone.
Reading that list backwards is the argument for calling someone in the first week rather than the sixth month. Nothing about having two years to file protects the records that prove your case.
Usually more than one party. The driver is the obvious one, but the company, the loader, the maintenance shop, a parts maker and sometimes the broker can each carry a share.
This matters for a practical reason. Every additional responsible party can bring its own insurance policy, and finding all of them early is the difference between a claim capped by one policy and a claim that reflects what actually happened to you.
The driver
Speeding, distraction, or driving past the hours the law allows.
The company that employs them
Hiring a driver with a bad record, skipping training, running a delivery schedule that cannot be met legally, or letting maintenance slide.
Whoever loaded it
A trailer packed too heavy, unevenly, or badly secured handles differently and stops differently.
The maintenance shop
Brakes, tyres and couplings signed off as serviced when they were not.
The parts maker
A tyre, brake part or coupling that failed in normal use.
The broker or shipper
Hiring a haulier with a known safety record, or setting a delivery window that forces the driver to break the rules.
Sorting this out means getting hold of the company's own paperwork: the driver's file, the maintenance records, the delivery paperwork and the dispatch instructions. None of it arrives voluntarily, which is why these claims are made in writing rather than requested politely.
Fewer long-haul lorries than you might expect, and far more delivery vans, box trucks and service vehicles working the Telecom Corridor.
Richardson is not a border freight town. What it has is density of business: office parks, distribution to hundreds of employers, and a growing volume of home deliveries into residential streets. The vehicles that cause the injuries here are often mid-sized rather than 18-wheelers, and their drivers are frequently working to a route with a fixed number of stops in a fixed number of hours.
That last detail is where these cases are often won. When the delivery schedule could not realistically be met inside the legal driving hours, responsibility moves up from the person behind the wheel to the company that set the route.
Truck accidents cause a different kind of harm from ordinary collisions, and the medical picture reflects it. The common injuries involved are spinal, head and crush injuries, the sort that change a life rather than interrupt it. That is why experienced accident lawyers seek a full care plan before discussing any number, to be sure the claim includes future treatment and not just the bills so far.
Loss of income is usually the other half. Where someone cannot go back to the work they did, the claim should always cover what they can no longer earn, not merely what they have already missed. Victims of these crashes deserve that calculation done properly, and it is best done with medical evidence rather than guesswork. Avoid settling before you know it.
The geography concentrates it. US-75 runs through the middle of the city, the President George Bush Turnpike crosses the north, and Belt Line, Campbell and Plano Road carry the commercial traffic between them. Our office is on Coit Road, minutes from all of it.
You talk to the lawyer handling your case, not a rotating queue of case managers. In a claim where the first fortnight decides what evidence still exists, that matters.
Jose Robles Jr is a decorated Air Force combat veteran with a 95% success rate, $5M+ recovered, 1,000+ cases handled, and a 4.9 star Google rating.
Before becoming a personal injury lawyer, Jose "Joe" Robles Jr served nearly 15 years as an Air Force Military Police officer, including four combat tours in the Middle East, and earned his law degree from Texas A&M University School of Law. He then spent four years at Bailey & Galyen, rising to Managing Attorney of the Pre-Litigation Personal Injury Department, before founding this firm.
That experience means he has watched from the inside how a haulier's insurer handles a claim in the first two weeks, and what it takes to get a preservation demand out before the truck is back on the road.
We also handle Richardson car accident claims and wrongful death claims. For everything the firm does here, see our Richardson personal injury page.
Three reasons. A trucking company answers to federal safety rules that private drivers do not, so there are far more ways to show it fell short. There is much more insurance behind the claim, so there is real money at stake and the defence is serious from day one. And the evidence that proves what happened, the driver logs and the data recorded by the engine, belongs to the company whose truck hit you rather than to you.
Far more than a car. Texas requires a private driver to carry $30,000 of injury cover per person. A freight truck crossing state lines has to carry at least $750,000, rising to $1,000,000 for fuel and $5,000,000 for hazardous cargo. That gap is why a serious injury caused by a car can run out of money in a single hospital stay while the same injury caused by a truck usually does not, and it is also why the company's insurer fights hard from the beginning.
Faster than almost anyone expects. Federal rules only make a trucking company keep its driver logs for about six months. The data recorded by the truck's engine can be overwritten within days once the vehicle goes back into service, and camera footage from nearby businesses is usually recycled within weeks. None of it has to be kept just because you were hurt, unless the company has been told in writing to preserve it. That letter is the step that cannot be done later.
Often several parties at once. The haulage company for how it hired, trained, scheduled or maintained. Whoever loaded the trailer, if the weight was wrong or the load shifted. The maintenance shop, if brakes or tyres were signed off and not fixed. The manufacturer, if a part failed. Sometimes the broker or shipper, if they hired a company with a known safety record. Each one can bring its own insurance, which is why identifying all of them early matters so much.
Nothing upfront. These cases run on a contingency fee, which means a share of what is recovered and nothing at all if the case does not succeed. The agreement has to be in writing and has to spell out how the fee is calculated. Ask separately how case costs are handled, because truck cases carry higher costs than an ordinary crash claim, mostly for the experts needed to read the vehicle data and reconstruct the collision.
Not before you have advice. You are not required to give them a recorded statement, and the person calling you works for the company whose driver hit you. Anything you say about speed, distance or how you are feeling today can be used to move responsibility onto you. Report the crash to your own insurer as your policy requires, and let your lawyer deal with theirs.
You can still recover as long as you were not more than half to blame, and below that line your compensation is reduced by your share rather than wiped out. Haulage companies and their insurers know exactly where that line sits, which is why fault gets pushed onto the injured driver early and why an unadvised recorded statement can be expensive.
No fee unless we win. Call us now or schedule your free consultation online.