How We Prepare Your Case
Most cases settle. The number they settle at depends on whether the other side believes your case is ready for a courtroom. Ours always are.
Commercial Transportation Accidents We Handle
Heavy Freight Wrecks | Logistics & Supply Chain Negligence | Fleet Vehicle Violations
- 18-Wheeler Jackknife & Rollover Crashes
- Underride & Rear-End Commercial Wrecks
- Broker Liability & Negligent Carrier Selection
- Electronic Logging Device (ELD) & Hours-of-Service Violations
- FMCSA Safety Rule Broken-Promise Cases
- Improperly Loaded & Overloaded Cargo Spills
- Oilfield Trucking & Commercial Logistics Crashes
- Fleet Van and Delivery Vehicle Accidents
- Fatal Semi-Truck Wrongful Death Claims
A loaded 18-wheeler weighs up to 80,000 pounds, twenty times a family sedan. When one hits a car, physics does not negotiate. The injuries are severe, life-altering, or fatal, and the questions start immediately: how did this happen, and who allowed it to happen?
Behind every commercial truck is a chain of companies. A driver. A motor carrier that put him on the road. Often a freight broker that chose that carrier, sometimes despite a public record of crashes and federal violations. Within hours of a serious wreck, the carrier’s rapid-response team is at the scene, securing the company’s version of events. The family gets a tow bill. The company gets a head start.
Our job is to erase that head start. We move immediately to lock down the truck’s electronic evidence, we trace responsibility up the full corporate chain, and we prepare every case for a jury. One of our founding partners is a trained computer scientist, and in these cases, that is not a biographical detail. It is how a few million becomes twenty-two.
The Commercial Trucking Supply Chain: Mapping Liability
Winning a severe trucking case requires looking past the individual driver to hold the entire corporate freight network accountable for systemic safety breakdowns.
| Operational Link | The Systemic Failure | Key Evidence We Lock Down Immediately |
|---|---|---|
| Shipper | Cargo Loading Violations: Cargo left unsecured or overloaded, causing flatbed spills and lethal load shifts in transit. | Bills of lading, weigh-station tickets, dock and loading video footage, and scene photography. |
| Freight Broker | Negligent Carrier Selection: Middleman hands the load to a carrier with a known record of crashes, safety violations, or unpaid federal fines to cut corporate costs. | Broker load logs, carrier-screening data, FMCSA SMS safety records, and internal dispatch emails. |
| Motor Carrier | FMCSR Broken Promises: Carrier completely ignores federal driver-qualification (Part 391) and maintenance (Part 396) rules, deploying unsafe rigs into service. | Driver Qualification Files (DQF), commercial pre-trip inspection logs, maintenance work orders, and drug/alcohol test records. |
| Driver | Fatigue & Distraction: Forced past federal hours-of-service limits (Part 395) or overwhelmed by phone and dispatch pressure behind the wheel. | ECM “black box” data, active Electronic Logging Devices (ELD), forward/inward-facing dashcams, and mobile carrier logs. |
The Court explicitly held that a negligent-selection claim against a freight broker is NOT preempted by federal law. The corporate middleman is now squarely in front of the jury.
Truck Accident Law, in Plain English
The electronic evidence
Modern trucks record everything: the engine control module captures speed, braking, and throttle around a crash; electronic logging devices record the driver’s hours under federal hours-of-service rules (49 C.F.R. Part 395); telematics and dashcams capture the rest. Some of it can be overwritten once the truck returns to service. We send preservation demands immediately, and when companies hesitate, we get court orders. In one case, recovered cell phone data and hidden social media evidence moved the outcome from a few million dollars to $29,920,310.
The full chain of responsibility
The driver is rarely the whole answer. The motor carrier answers for its driver, and the statutory employer doctrine often makes that true regardless of what the contract calls him. And the freight broker — the middleman that picked the carrier — belongs in the courtroom too. In May 2026, a unanimous United States Supreme Court ended that argument. In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, the Court held that a negligent-selection claim against a broker is not preempted by federal law. When a broker hands freight to a carrier with a record of crashes, violations, or unpaid federal fines, that broker now answers to the same jury as everyone else.
The federal rulebook
Federal motor carrier regulations are not paperwork. They are promises the industry made to the public in exchange for the right to put 80,000-pound vehicles on shared roads: hours-of-service limits (49 C.F.R. Part 395) because fatigued drivers kill, maintenance and inspection standards (Part 396) because brake failures kill, drug and alcohol testing (Part 382), and driver qualification rules (Part 391) because the wrong person behind the wheel kills. When a crash traces to a broken rule, that violation becomes the spine of the case. We prove it from the company’s own records, and we make the jury understand what the promise was for.
Built for a jury, from the start
The defense bar keeps track of which firms actually take cases to verdict. The number the defense offers follows that reputation. Every truck case we accept is prepared as if a jury will decide it: experts retained early, depositions taken to lock testimony down, every claim traced to the defendant’s own records.
Go Deeper
Truck litigation rewards depth. These are the pressure points where these cases are won.
The head-on look at semi-truck crash cases.
18-Wheeler AccidentsWhen the middleman chose a dangerous carrier.
Broker LiabilityThe data that decides truck cases, and how fast it disappears.
Electronic EvidenceWhen a crash becomes a wrongful death case.
Fatal Truck AccidentsPhones, telematics, and proving what the driver was really doing.
Distracted DrivingLease roads, fatigue, and federal motor carrier rules.
Oilfield TruckingServing Truck Accident Victims Throughout Texas and Major Transportation Corridors
When a commercial vehicle or semi-truck causes serious harm on our highways, the motor carrier’s team of accident investigators is mobilized within hours. Contact VB Attorneys immediately to launch an independent, data-driven investigation.
Our specialized commercial transportation practice areas cover all critical logistical networks:
- Houston Truck Accident Lawyers
- I-10 & Texas Gulf Coast 18-Wheeler Crash Law Firm
- Permian Basin & West Texas Oilfield Trucking Attorneys
- Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex Fleet Vehicle Lawyers
- San Antonio & Eagle Ford Shale Commercial Delivery Claims
- Laredo & I-35 International Trade Corridor Wreck Injury Law