Trucking Companies Have Lawyers on Day One. So Should You.
Common causes of truck accidents include driver fatigue, speeding, distracted driving, improper maintenance, and overloaded trucks. These crashes can result in severe injuries such as spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, broken bones, and even death. Because commercial vehicle accidents are more difficult and complex than other highway accidents, they should be handled only by an experienced Texas truck accident lawyer.
Your attorney handles all communication with the insurance company, presents a strong case supported by evidence, expert opinions, and a thorough understanding of the law, and fights for maximum compensation — medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and every other damage you've incurred. If the insurance company refuses a fair settlement, we take the case to court.
Recent Truck Accident Results
- $6,000,000 — Wrongful death, truck accident (Dorsey H.)
- $3,500,000 — 18-wheeler settlement, resolved just before trial
- $2,250,000 — Commercial truck accident
- $915,000 — 18-wheeler settlement, resolved just before trial
- $750,000 — 18-wheeler, policy limits (Anya G.)
- $550,000 — 18-wheeler collision (Glenn B.)
- $475,000 — 18-wheeler rear-end (Booker)
"They were really good and done a good job. I would recommend them to anyone and I give them 5 stars."Glenn Baird · Truck Accident · $550,000 Settlement
Lindsey McKay's Truck Accident Credentials
Lindsey is a member of the prestigious Million Dollar Advocates Forum and Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum, the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys, and the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. She has the credentials, track record, and respect of judges to be effective in winning maximum settlements or verdicts in your injury case.
Federal Rules Trucking Companies Break — and How We Prove It
Interstate carriers are governed by Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) regulations that most drivers never hear about until a lawsuit. Hours-of-service rules cap driving at 11 hours within a 14-hour workday; electronic logging devices (ELDs) record whether the driver complied. Carriers must inspect and maintain their trucks, screen and drug-test drivers, and secure their cargo. When we take a trucking case, we send an immediate spoliation letter requiring the carrier to preserve ELD data, engine control module ("black box") downloads, driver qualification files, dispatch records, and post-crash drug test results — evidence that can otherwise be legally destroyed in a matter of weeks.
Who Can Be Held Liable in a Texas Truck Accident
Truck cases rarely stop at the driver. Depending on the facts, liable parties may include the motor carrier that employed or dispatched the driver, the owner of the trailer, the shipper or loader responsible for an unbalanced load, the maintenance contractor, and even the manufacturer of a defective component. Each defendant brings another insurance policy into the case — and federal law requires interstate carriers to maintain at least $750,000 in liability coverage, with many carrying $1 million or more. Identifying every defendant is often the difference between a policy-limits settlement and full compensation.
Why Hours Matter After an 18-Wheeler Crash
Trucking companies dispatch rapid-response teams — investigators and defense lawyers — to serious crash scenes within hours. If they get weeks of head start, skid marks fade, wreckage is scrapped, and electronic data cycles out. McKay Law's own Rapid Response Investigation Team exists to erase that head start. It's a major reason our recent 18-wheeler results — $3.5 million and $915,000, both secured just before trial — were built on evidence the defense couldn't dispute.
The Real Causes Behind Texas Truck Accidents
Behind almost every serious truck crash is a business decision. Driver fatigue comes from delivery schedules that push drivers to the edge of — or past — federal hours-of-service limits. Poor maintenance (brakes out of adjustment, worn tires, broken lights) comes from deferred inspections that federal rules require but cost money. Improperly loaded or overloaded cargo shifts in a curve and rolls the trailer. Negligent hiring puts drivers with suspended CDLs or failed drug tests behind the wheel because the carrier didn't check — or didn't care. Our job is to trace the crash back to those decisions, because that's where liability, and often exemplary damages, live.
Catastrophic Injuries and What They're Actually Worth
When 80,000 pounds hits a 4,000-pound car, the injuries are rarely minor: traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord damage and paralysis, amputations, severe burns from fuel fires, multiple fractures, and internal organ damage. Valuing these cases correctly requires more than adding up the bills to date. We work with life-care planners to project decades of future medical needs, economists to calculate lost earning capacity, and treating physicians to document permanent impairment — because a settlement that covers the first year of a lifetime injury is a settlement that failed. Our $3.5 million and $915,000 pre-trial results reflected exactly this kind of full-damages workup for clients requiring extensive treatment and long-term care.
How Trucking Companies Defend These Cases
Within hours of a serious crash, the carrier's insurer has investigators photographing the scene and adjusters building a defense: blame the passenger-car driver, dispute the severity of injuries, argue the driver was an independent contractor, and — if their exposure looks bad — offer an early settlement calibrated to close the file before you learn what the black box shows. Meeting that machine requires matching it: immediate preservation demands, our own reconstruction experts, and a documented willingness to try the case in front of a Texas jury. Lindsey McKay is a member of the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys, and insurers know which firms carry that credential.
What to Do After a Truck Accident in Texas
Call 911 and accept medical transport — internal injuries and TBIs often hide behind adrenaline. Photograph everything you safely can: vehicle positions, the truck's DOT and unit numbers, skid marks, debris fields, and your injuries. Get contact information for witnesses; in trucking cases, independent witnesses are gold. Do not discuss fault with anyone at the scene, do not speak with the trucking company's representatives when they call — and they will call, sometimes within a day — and get a truck accident lawyer involved before evidence retention windows close. The consultation is free 24/7, and our Rapid Response team can be on scene the same day.
Truck Accident Claims Across Texas's Freight Corridors
Texas moves more truck freight than any state in the nation, and the corridors that carry it run straight through our communities: I-30 from Dallas through Greenville, Sulphur Springs, and Mt. Pleasant toward Texarkana; I-20 through Tyler, Longview, and Marshall; I-35 up the spine of the state; I-10 across the south; and US-271 and US-69 threading East Texas towns where a loaded rig shares two-lane road with school traffic. We have offices along these routes — Sulphur Springs, Greenville, Tyler, Dallas — and we've handled crashes on these exact stretches of highway. Venue matters in trucking litigation: knowing the counties, the courts, and the juries where these cases are tried is part of how full value gets reached, and it's an advantage out-of-state settlement mills advertising on billboards simply don't have.
Compensation Available in a Texas Truck Accident Case
A complete truck accident recovery accounts for every loss, present and future: emergency and hospital care, surgeries, rehabilitation, and a lifetime of projected medical needs for permanent injuries; lost income from day one and diminished earning capacity for careers the injuries end; pain, mental anguish, physical impairment, and disfigurement — the human damages Texas juries take seriously when they're proven rather than merely claimed; and property damage, which McKay Law handles for injured clients at no fee. Where the evidence shows gross negligence — a carrier that kept a driver after failed drug tests, a rig on the road with brakes it knew were failing — Texas law adds exemplary damages designed to punish and deter. We present each category with documentation and expert support, because insurers pay for what's proven, not what's asserted.
Why McKay Law for Your Texas Truck Accident Case
Trucking litigation is a specialty, and we've built for it: membership in the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys, a Rapid Response Investigation Team that reaches crash scenes while evidence still exists, established relationships with the reconstructionists and trucking-industry experts these cases require, and results that include a $6,000,000 wrongful-death recovery and $4.4 million in 18-wheeler settlements secured on the courthouse steps. Just as important is what your family experiences during the case: direct access to your legal team, a staff nurse guiding medical treatment, property damage handled free, every insurer call intercepted, and no fee of any kind unless we win. From our East Texas home base in Sulphur Springs to offices in Dallas, Tyler, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, and Greenville, we take trucking cases statewide — and we prepare every one of them for a jury.
Truck Accident Questions, Answered
Should I file a police report after a truck accident in Texas?
Yes. Almost all commercial vehicle accidents meet Texas' reporting requirements: more than $1,000 in property damage, personal injuries, or deaths. The responding officer will most likely file a CR-3 crash report summarizing your accident — which can help you hold the trucking company liable later.
How long do I have to file?
Most Texas injury claims must be filed within two years of the accident. Trucking cases also involve evidence — driver logs, black-box data, maintenance records — that can disappear quickly, so contact a lawyer as soon as possible.
What does it cost?
Nothing upfront, and no fee unless we win. The consultation is free, 24/7, and we come to your doorstep if you can't travel.
Who can be sued after a truck accident in Texas?
Potentially the driver, the trucking company, the trailer owner, the cargo loader, a maintenance contractor, or a parts manufacturer. Each additional defendant typically means additional insurance coverage available for your recovery.
What if the truck driver was an independent contractor?
Carriers often claim their drivers are contractors to dodge liability. Federal regulations and Texas law frequently make the carrier responsible anyway — especially when the truck displayed the carrier's DOT number.
What is a truck's "black box" and why does it matter?
Modern commercial trucks carry engine control modules and electronic logging devices recording speed, braking, throttle, and driving hours. This data can prove the driver was speeding, never braked, or was hours past federal limits — but carriers control it, and it can be overwritten or destroyed unless a preservation demand goes out fast.
The trucking company's insurance adjuster called me. What should I say?
Nothing beyond referring them to your attorney. They record these calls hoping for statements that limit their payout. You have no obligation to speak with them, and doing so almost never helps your claim.
How long does a truck accident case take in Texas?
Longer than car cases — often twelve to twenty-four months — because the injuries are more serious, the evidence is deeper, and carriers defend harder. Both of our recent multi-million-dollar 18-wheeler results settled on the eve of trial, which is typical: full value tends to arrive when the carrier's lawyers see a prepared case and an approaching jury.