Truck Accident Lawyer in West Texas and the Permian Basin
A loaded 18 wheeler weighs around twenty times what your pickup weighs. That is why these wrecks look the way they do, and it is also why the company behind the truck has people at the scene the same day you are still in the emergency room.
Alex Horton is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, a distinction held by a small fraction of Texas attorneys. A commercial truck case runs on federal safety rules, on data stored inside the truck, and against a corporate defendant that has done this many times before. If you were hit by a rig anywhere in West Texas, call and tell us what happened.
Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Named a Texas Super Lawyer for more than ten years. Former briefing attorney at the Supreme Court of Texas. More about Alex Horton
Six things decide a commercial truck case in Texas, and most of them are settled in the first few weeks, usually before anybody has hired a lawyer.
Go straight to the one you need: why a truck wreck is not a car wreck, what counts as a commercial truck, who can actually be held responsible, the evidence that disappears on its own, what West Texas roads produce, or what Texas law does with your claim.
Why a Truck Wreck Is Not a Car Wreck
The vehicle is bigger. That is the least important difference. A commercial truck crash is governed by a separate body of federal safety law, defended by a company rather than a driver, and fought over records that a private motorist never has to keep.
When two cars collide there are two drivers and two insurers. When a rig runs into you there is a driver, a motor carrier, a truck owner that may be a different company again, a trailer owner, whoever loaded the trailer, whoever maintained it, and a freight broker who chose the carrier in the first place. Each one has its own insurance and its own reason to point at the others.
The carrier knows this on day one. Larger carriers run a rapid response programme, which means an adjuster, a defence investigator and sometimes a reconstruction engineer are standing on the shoulder while the wreckage is still there. They photograph the scene, take measurements and interview witnesses before anybody is representing you.
None of that is illegal and none of it is unusual. It is how the industry handles a serious wreck, and it is the reason the injured side needs somebody moving at the same speed. The first call a trucking company makes is to a lawyer. There is no good reason the first call you make should be to an adjuster.
Federal law also puts real money behind these cases. Most interstate for hire carriers hauling general freight must carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage, and many carry a million or more. Certain hazardous cargo carries a $5 million requirement. That matters because a serious injury in a semi truck crash often exceeds anything a private auto policy would ever have paid.
- Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, 49 CFR Parts 350 to 399
- Hours of service limits on driving and on duty time
- Electronic logging device records of every hour driven
- Driver qualification file and medical certification
- Drug and alcohol testing before hire and after a crash
- Systematic inspection, repair and maintenance duties
- Cargo securement standards by load type
- Texas Commercial Motor Vehicle rules for intrastate hauls
A violation of any one of these is evidence a jury gets to hear. It is also why these cases are won in the records rather than at the scene.
18 Wheeler, Semi, Tractor Trailer or Big Rig
All four words describe the same vehicle and people use them interchangeably out here. Legally it makes no difference at all. What does make a difference is the kind of work the truck was doing and who it was doing it for.
18 Wheelers and Tractor Trailers
The long haul freight that runs I-20 end to end. Rear end impacts, underride, jackknife, wide turn and lane departure collisions. These are almost always interstate carriers operating under full federal regulation.
Oilfield and Lease Traffic
Water haulers, sand trucks, vacuum trucks, crude transports and winch trucks. These run as a road claim and a work claim at the same time, and they are handled separately for that reason.
Tankers and Hazardous Loads
Liquid surge changes how a tanker behaves under braking and in a turn. Hazardous cargo also carries far higher insurance requirements and a separate set of federal rules on the load itself.
Dump, Gravel and Flatbed
Construction and aggregate hauling, often local and often intrastate. Load securement and overweight operation are the recurring liability questions on these.
Box, Delivery and Service Trucks
Smaller commercial vehicles still cross the federal weight threshold more often than people expect, and a delivery fleet has the same hiring, training and maintenance duties as a long haul carrier.
Buses and Passenger Vehicles
Crew transport, charter and transit operations carry their own regulatory layer and frequently involve multiple injured claimants against one policy.
If the vehicle that hit you was working a lease, start with the oilfield truck accident page instead. An oilfield trucking crash can be a commercial vehicle claim, a work injury claim and a lease operations claim at once, and the three sets of rules do not say the same thing.
Who Can Actually Be Held Responsible
Almost never just the driver. The driver is usually the least insured party at the scene and the one the carrier is most willing to hand you. The real question is who put that truck on that road in that condition at that hour.
The Driver
Speed, following distance, fatigue, distraction, impairment, or driving a load he knew was unsafe. The starting point, not the end of it.
The Motor Carrier
Responsible for its driver acting in the course of the job, and separately responsible for its own conduct in hiring him, training him, supervising him and dispatching him.
The Truck Owner
Frequently a different entity from the carrier. Owner operator arrangements and leased equipment are common and they change who answers for maintenance.
The Shipper or Loader
Overweight loads, shifting cargo and poorly secured freight are often traced back to the yard the trailer left, not the cab pulling it.
The Freight Broker
The party that selected the carrier. Choosing a carrier with a documented safety record and dispatching it anyway is its own claim.
Maintenance and Parts
The shop that serviced the brakes, the company that inspected the trailer, or the manufacturer of a component that failed. Brake and tyre failures leave a paper trail.
One tactic to expect. Carriers will often admit early that the driver was working for them at the time. It sounds like a concession and it is a strategy. Texas courts have at times treated that admission as a reason to narrow the separate claims about how the company hired, trained and supervised that driver, which are the claims that put the company's own conduct in front of a jury. How that admission is handled in the first few months shapes what the case looks like two years later, and it is one of the clearest reasons not to let an early settlement conversation run without a lawyer in it.
The Evidence That Disappears on Its Own
This is the part of a truck case that cannot be fixed later. Nobody has to destroy anything. The records simply run out on their own schedules, and most of those schedules are shorter than the time it takes an injured person to get out of hospital.
Engine Control Module
The black box. Speed, throttle, brake application and fault codes in the seconds before impact. It can be overwritten by continued operation or wiped when the truck is repaired.
Logs and Supporting Records
Carriers must keep records of duty status and the documents behind them for six months. After that, the proof of how long that driver had been awake is legitimately gone.
Post Crash Testing
Federal rules set tight windows for alcohol and controlled substance testing after a qualifying crash. Missing the window is itself a documented fact worth having.
The Truck Itself
Brake condition, tyre wear, lighting and load securement are physical evidence. Once the rig is repaired and back in service, that evidence exists only in photographs somebody thought to take.
Hours of service violations are the single most common finding in a serious freight case, and they only exist as a finding if the electronic logging records are pulled in time. The device records every hour that driver worked. The carrier is required to keep those records for six months and not a day longer, and six months passes very quickly when somebody is still having surgeries.
The answer to all of it is a preservation letter, sent to the carrier, the truck owner, the broker and the insurer, naming every category of record and telling them plainly that it has to be kept. Once that letter is received, losing the material stops being an accident and starts being something a jury can be told about.
The letter is worth very little six months out and worth a great deal in the first week. That single fact is why calling early matters more in a trucking case than in almost any other kind of injury claim.
- Engine control module and event data recorder downloads
- Electronic logging device records and dispatch history
- Driver qualification file and medical certificate
- Post crash drug and alcohol testing results
- Inspection, repair and maintenance records for tractor and trailer
- Bills of lading, weight tickets and load securement records
- Dashcam, in cab camera and telematics data
- The tractor and trailer themselves, held for inspection
What West Texas Roads Actually Produce
Truck wrecks here do not look like truck wrecks in Dallas. This part of the state mixes long haul interstate freight with an enormous amount of energy sector traffic, and it runs a lot of both down roads that were built for neither.
I-20 carries coast to coast freight straight through the middle of the Permian Basin, past Midland and Odessa and Big Spring, at the same hours that sand haulers, water trucks, vacuum trucks and crude transports are running lease to lease. Two completely different traffic patterns share the same asphalt, and the I-20 corridor through Ector, Midland and Howard counties produces the most serious freight collisions in the region.
Off the interstate it gets harder. US 87 between San Angelo and Big Spring, US 67 west toward Mertzon, SH 158, SH 349 and a long list of farm to market roads carry heavy commercial traffic on two lanes with no shoulder, no median and long passing sight distances across flat country. Head on and crossover collisions on those roads are a different category of wreck from anything that happens on a divided highway.
Then there are the loops. Loop 250 in Midland, Loop 338 in Odessa and Loop 306 in San Angelo are where interstate freight, local delivery and oilfield traffic all merge at speed, and they produce a steady volume of turning and merging collisions involving trucks that need far more room than the geometry gives them.
Distance is its own factor. Response times out on the lease roads and the farm to market network are long, the nearest trauma care is often an air ambulance away, and injuries that would be survivable closer to a city become far more serious out here. That is a damages issue as much as a liability one, and it belongs in the case from the start.
- Tom Green, Midland and Ector
- Howard, Martin and Glasscock
- Reagan, Upton and Crane
- Ward, Winkler and Andrews
- Sterling, Irion, Coke and Concho
- Pecos, Reeves and Loving
Where a case is filed depends on where the wreck happened and where the defendant companies do business, not on where you live. Crews and drivers out here come from all over Texas and a good deal further.
What Texas Law Does With Your Claim
Federal rules decide what the trucking company was supposed to do. Texas law decides what happens when it did not. Four pieces of it change the shape of a commercial vehicle case.
Two Year Deadline
Two years from the date of the wreck to file suit, and two years from the date of death in a wrongful death claim. A government vehicle or a public entity can shorten the written notice deadline to months.
Shared Fault
You can recover as long as you are not more than fifty percent responsible, and what you recover is reduced by your share. Expect the defence to work hard on that percentage.
Split Trials
Texas law now lets a trucking defendant ask for the trial to be divided, so a jury decides fault and basic damages before it hears most of the evidence about the company's own safety record.
Two Death Claims
A wrongful death claim belongs to the spouse, children and parents. A survival claim belongs to the estate. They carry different damages and both have to be protected from the same day.
The split trial rule is the one most people have never heard of and it is the most consequential. It was written to keep the company's history out of the first phase of a trial, which means the work of tying this wreck to that company's own decisions has to be done through the crash evidence itself rather than through its record. That is a case built from the logs, the maintenance file and the dispatch records, and it is another reason those records need to be locked down early.
If somebody was killed. Do not sign anything the company or its insurer puts in front of the family in the first weeks, including anything described as help with expenses. The wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving spouse, children and parents and covers what the family lost. The survival claim belongs to the estate and covers what the person who died went through. They carry different damages, they are proved differently, and both have to be protected from the same day. The truck and its records need a preservation letter immediately, before the rig is repaired and put back in service.
What To Do This Week
Get Treated Properly
Go back if symptoms change. Gaps in treatment are the first thing an adjuster points at, and a vague note in a chart becomes an argument against you two years later.
Photograph Everything
The truck, the trailer, both sets of markings, the DOT number on the door, the damage and the road. Company names on doors and placards on trailers identify defendants nobody else will name for you.
Give No Recorded Statement
Not to the carrier's adjuster and not to its investigator. You are under no obligation to give one, and the question you answer casually in week one gets read back to you at deposition.
Call Before The Records Expire
The preservation letter has to reach the carrier while the black box data, the logs and the truck itself still exist. That is the step that most often decides a truck case.
San Angelo, Midland, Odessa and the Basin
San Angelo
The office is here, in Tom Green County. US 87 and US 67 meet in town and both carry heavy commercial traffic on two lane sections outside the city limits. Loop 306 handles the through freight. Cases filed in Tom Green County are tried by a lawyer who practises in that courthouse.
Midland
I-20 runs straight through Midland County alongside one of the densest concentrations of energy sector truck traffic in the country. Loop 250 and FM 1788 carry the overflow. Freight and lease traffic mix here more heavily than almost anywhere else in Texas.
Odessa
Ector County sits on the same I-20 corridor with Loop 338 taking local and commercial traffic around the city. Odessa produces the largest share of this firm's oilfield work, and a great deal of that work involves vehicles.
Everywhere Else
Big Spring, Fort Stockton, Monahans, Andrews, Pecos and the counties between them. We travel to clients who cannot travel to us, and distance has never been a reason to turn down a case out here.
The firm also handles oilfield injury and death claims across the same region. Those pages are San Angelo, Midland and Odessa. The question of which companies can be held responsible is covered in more depth in who is liable for injuries in Texas, and the full practice list sits on our services.
Truck Accident Questions
How long do I have to file a truck accident claim in Texas?
Two years from the date of the wreck for a personal injury claim, and two years from the date of death for a wrongful death claim. If a government vehicle or a public entity is involved, written notice can be due in as little as six months and sometimes sooner depending on the city. The deadline that matters more in practice is the evidence deadline, because the data inside the truck can be gone in days and the driver's logs only have to be kept for six months.
The insurance company called the day after. Should I talk to them?
You can be polite and you do not have to give a recorded statement. The adjuster calling you works for the company that owned the truck, and the purpose of that call is to establish the company's version while you are still medicated, still shaken and do not yet know how badly you are hurt. Give your name, confirm you were in the wreck, and tell them you will be in touch. Then call a lawyer before you say anything else or sign anything at all.
What is the black box in a truck and why does it matter?
It is the engine control module, and on most modern tractors it records speed, throttle position, brake application, engine RPM and fault codes in the seconds around a hard braking or impact event. It settles arguments that would otherwise come down to one driver's word against another. The problem is that it holds a limited amount of data, it can be overwritten as the truck keeps running, and it is often cleared when the truck is repaired. Preserving it is a matter of weeks, not months.
How do I prove the driver was over his hours?
Through the electronic logging device. Federal rules require most commercial drivers to log hours electronically rather than on paper, and the device records the actual driving and on duty time rather than what somebody wrote down afterwards. The carrier has to keep those records for six months. Beyond that window the records can be gone lawfully, which is why a preservation letter in the first weeks is worth more than almost any other early step. Dispatch records, fuel receipts and weight tickets are used to corroborate the logs and to catch edits.
Can I still recover if I was partly at fault?
Yes, as long as you are not found more than fifty percent responsible. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, so a claim worth a hundred thousand with twenty percent on you pays eighty. Expect the defence to argue your share hard, especially on two lane roads and at intersections, and expect that argument to be built from the same physical evidence that gets preserved or lost in the first month.
My husband was killed by a truck. Where do we start?
Do not sign anything the company or its insurer puts in front of you in the first weeks, including anything described as help with expenses. There are two separate claims in Texas. The wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving spouse, children and parents. The survival claim belongs to the estate and covers what your husband himself suffered. They carry different damages and both have to be protected from the same day. The truck and its records also need a preservation letter immediately, before the rig is repaired and put back in service.
I was hit by a water hauler on a lease road. Is that this kind of case?
It is both. An oilfield trucking crash can be a commercial vehicle claim, a work injury claim and a lease operations claim at once, and the three sets of rules do not say the same thing. If you were working at the time, or if the wreck happened on a lease road rather than a public highway, the analysis changes. That is covered on the oilfield truck accident page, and it is worth reading before you assume it is an ordinary road case.
The load came off the trailer. Is the trucking company still responsible?
Often, and frequently somebody else is too. Federal cargo securement rules place duties on the carrier and the driver, and the driver is required to inspect the load. But responsibility regularly runs back to whoever loaded the trailer, which in West Texas is very often a yard, a plant or a lease rather than the trucking company itself. Weight tickets and bills of lading usually answer the question, and they are among the records that need preserving early.
What does it cost to hire a truck accident lawyer?
Nothing up front. These cases are taken on contingency, which means the fee is a percentage of what is recovered and you owe no fee if there is no recovery. The firm advances case expenses, which in a commercial trucking case can include downloading the engine control module, retaining a reconstruction engineer and obtaining the carrier's federal safety records.
Hit By a Truck in West Texas? The Records Are Already Expiring.
Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. The consultation is free, there is no fee unless there is a recovery, and we travel to clients who cannot travel to us. Bring the crash report and anything the insurer has sent you.