Houston, Texas · Representing Clients Nationwide

Houston Truck Accident Lawyers

18-Wheeler, Commercial Semi-Truck, and Logistics Crash Attorneys. Representation when motor carriers trade public safety for profit.

Why VB Attorneys
Board Certified Specialists. Both founding partners are Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization — a distinction held by less than 1% of Texas lawyers.
Black Box & Digital Forensics Recovery. We move immediately with preservation demands and temporary restraining orders to lock down engine control modules, ELDs, and dashcams before data can be overwritten.
Full Supply Chain Accountability. We look beyond the driver to expose the full corporate network, including negligent freight brokers, shippers, and parent motor carriers.
No Win, No Fee. We advance 100% of all accident reconstruction, electronic data recovery, and litigation expenses. You owe us nothing unless we win.
A VB Attorneys lawyer photographing a commercial truck during a vehicle inspection
Documenting a commercial vehicle during inspection — how federal motor carrier violations get proven.

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.

1
Your lawyer leads your case. The lawyer you hire is the lawyer who leads your case — an experienced trial lawyer, supported by a Board Certified partner — and you can talk to your lawyer directly. Not a case manager. Not an associate you’ve never met.
2
We find the evidence. Black-box data, ELD logs, telematics, cell-phone records, hidden social media, maintenance files. We dig until the other side’s own documents tell the story.
3
We build it for court. Experts retained early. Depositions taken to lock in testimony. Every claim traced to the defendant’s own witnesses and records.
4
You decide. When the offer comes — and it usually does — you’ll know exactly what your case is worth and exactly what going to court means. We give you our best advice; the decision to accept a settlement or go to trial is always, and only, yours.

Commercial Transportation Accidents We Handle

Heavy Freight Wrecks | Logistics & Supply Chain Negligence | Fleet Vehicle Violations

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.

Every link in the commercial trucking supply chain, the systemic failure at each, and the evidence we lock down immediately.
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.
Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC — U.S. Supreme Court (9-0)

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.

Serving 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
What Our Clients Say

In their words.

Chase Myrick · 18-Wheeler Crash Case

“They all worked so hard. They did an outstanding job.”

Chase Myrick · 18-Wheeler Crash Case

“These companies are all out just for their bottom line. They don’t care about other drivers or employees.”

David Kelly · 18-Wheeler Crash
Truck Accident Questions

Truck accident questions, answered.

Get medical care and follow through on it; gaps in treatment become the defense’s favorite exhibit. Do not give a recorded statement to the trucking company’s insurer. Photograph everything you can. And get a lawyer involved fast, because the most important evidence in a truck case (the electronic logs, the engine data, the dashcam footage) is in the trucking company’s hands, and some of it can be overwritten in days. We send preservation demands immediately.
Usually more than the driver. Behind most commercial trucks is a chain: the driver, the motor carrier that employed or controlled him, often a freight broker that selected that carrier, and sometimes the shipper. Texas law, including the statutory employer doctrine and negligent selection claims against brokers, lets us put every responsible link in the chain in front of the same jury, and identifying all of them is often where most of the case’s value lives.
Commercial trucks carry an engine control module that records speed, braking, and throttle in the seconds around a crash, plus electronic logging devices (ELDs) that record the driver’s hours under federal law (49 C.F.R. Part 395). Some of that data can be overwritten or ‘lost’ once the truck returns to service. We move immediately, with preservation letters and temporary restraining orders if necessary, to lock it down.
Be polite, take their name, and say your lawyer will be in touch. Nothing more. The adjuster’s job that week is to get a recorded statement and a quick, cheap release signed before you know what your case is worth. You are not required to give either.
A broker is the middleman that matched the load to the carrier. For years, brokers used federal law — the FAAAA — to try to get these claims thrown out before a jury ever heard them. That argument is over. In May 2026, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that negligent-selection claims against brokers are not preempted by federal law. The middleman now answers to the jury, and most firms still don’t know how to build the case against him. We do, and we litigate it.
Very possibly. Texas follows proportionate responsibility under Chapter 33 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code: you can recover as long as you are not found more than 50 percent responsible, with your recovery reduced by your percentage. Police reports are a starting point, not a verdict. The truck’s own data frequently tells a different story than the report written at the roadside.
It depends on the injuries, the conduct, and the defendants, and anyone who quotes you a number before the evidence is in is guessing. What we can tell you is how value gets built: hard medical proof, lifetime cost analysis, every responsible company in the case, and a defense that believes the case is going to a jury. Our $29,920,310 distracted driving result came from digital evidence other lawyers would never have found.
Generally two years under Texas law. But the real deadline is evidentiary, not legal: the data and video that decide truck cases can be gone in weeks. Earlier is stronger.
Trucking companies use the label to dodge responsibility. Federal regulations and the statutory employer doctrine often make the motor carrier responsible for the driver regardless of what the contract calls him. The label on the paycheck does not decide the case.
Because the carriers run rapid-response teams: investigators and defense lawyers dispatched within hours to control the evidence and the narrative. The family gets a tow bill; the company gets a head start. Our job is to erase that head start, and we built our reputation doing it.
The “sudden medical emergency” defense is a favorite tactic used by transportation companies to claim a wreck was an unavoidable Act of God. It is rarely as sudden as they pretend. We counter this defense by auditing the driver’s federally mandated medical examiner’s certificate and long-term medical histories to uncover unmanaged sleep apnea, high blood pressure, or prior episodes of impairment that the carrier consciously chose to ignore during hiring or annual reviews.
Yes, Texas law allows you to pursue exemplary (punitive) damages if we can prove the trucking company or its driver acted with gross negligence. This means proving the defendant had actual awareness of an extreme degree of risk but chose to proceed anyway with conscious indifference to the safety of others — such as sending a driver out with known disabled brakes or knowingly forcing a driver to violate hours-of-service mandates to meet a deadline.
Many severe closed-head injuries and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) do not show up on standard emergency room CT or MRI scans. Insurance adjusters treat a “normal scan” as absolute proof that no injury occurred. We build TBI claims by working with neurological experts to measure cognitive deficits, personality changes, and lost earning capacity to ensure your long-term medical needs are fully covered.
Yes. Corporate negligence isn’t limited strictly to the drilling floor or well pad. Crushing injuries during pipe loading, forklift rollovers at storage yards, and crashes on remote lease roads are fully actionable. Third-party liability claims allow for comprehensive financial recovery from responsible platform operators or contractors.
Yes, insurance companies routinely hire private investigators to conduct surveillance on injury victims. They will film you pumping gas, carrying groceries, or sitting outside, hoping to capture a single frame out of context to argue you are faking or exaggerating your physical limitations. Assume you are being watched or filmed any time you leave your home. The best defense against surveillance is simple: follow your doctor’s exact medical restrictions and let our trial team address their context traps in court.
Claims against government entities are strictly governed by the Texas Tort Claims Act, which carries extraordinarily short deadlines — frequently requiring a highly specific formal notice to be filed within 90 days or six months of the accident, depending on the municipality. Government claims also face strict statutory damage caps. If you are struck by a municipal vehicle or injured on government property, you cannot afford to wait. Immediate investigation is required to preserve your right to file a claim.
Nothing unless we win. The firm advances all case expenses and is paid only as a percentage of the recovery. If there is no recovery, you owe nothing.
Yes, as a separate practice. Bus, rideshare, motorcycle, aviation, and self-driving vehicle cases are covered on our Transportation Accidents page. The chain-of-responsibility discipline is the same; the evidence sources differ. If you’re not sure which page fits your crash, call. We’ll sort it out in one conversation.

Tell us what happened

If the commercial transportation network has seriously hurt you or someone you love, the companies are already protecting their records. You’ll get a straight answer about whether we can help.

Call our office directly for a free and confidential case review.

(877) 724-7800

No fees unless we win your case

No fees unless we win. Confidential evaluation.