Top Austin Truck Accident Lawyer 18-Wheeler & Commercial Truck Crashes
Hit by a truck in Austin? The trucking company already has people working. Most carriers send a rapid-response team to the scene the same day, and their investigators are photographing the wreck while you are still in the emergency room. We move just as fast on your side. SMB Law, PC has handled Texas injury claims since 2010, we take semi-truck and commercial truck accident cases on contingency, and the review is free. Call (512) 561-5003.
What Our Clients Say
Key Takeaways
- A truck case has more defendants and more insurance than a car wreck. Federal rules require interstate freight carriers to carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage, and many carry far more.
- The case is usually won on the carrier’s own records — the engine data, the electronic driver logs, the maintenance file. Some of it is only required to be kept six months, which is why the first weeks matter.
- Texas gives you two years to file suit, and the 51% bar rule wipes out your recovery entirely if the carrier can pin more than half the blame on you.
- You pay nothing up front and nothing at all unless we recover money for you.
Why an 18-Wheeler Case Is Nothing Like a Car Accident Case
Written and legally reviewed by Shane M. Boasberg, founding attorney at SMB Law, PC, licensed in Texas since 2002. Last updated August 25, 2026.
A loaded semi-truck runs about 80,000 pounds. A midsize car runs about 3,500. That ratio is why truck crashes on I-35 and US-290 produce spinal injuries, brain injuries, and amputations where the same impact between two cars would have meant a sore neck. It is also why the legal side of the case looks nothing like a fender bender.
Three things make these cases different. There is usually more than one defendant — the driver, the motor carrier, the company that loaded the trailer, the outfit that leased it, sometimes a broker or a maintenance contractor. There is usually far more insurance available, which means the other side fights harder. And the evidence that decides the case — engine data, electronic logs, inspection reports — lives on the truck and in the carrier’s own files, and some of it is only required to be kept for six months.
Handled like an ordinary personal injury claim, a truck case leaks value in the first month. We treat it as what it is: a case against a company with lawyers on retainer. We do the same on the surrounding-county cases we take, from Liberty Hill out to the freight corridors north and south of the city.
The most valuable thing you can do after a serious semi accident is call a lawyer early. Not for paperwork — for evidence. The tractor’s engine control module holds the last few seconds before impact: speed, throttle, brake application, whether the driver ever hit the brakes. That unit can be overwritten, and the truck itself can be repaired and back in service inside a week. Once we are retained we send a spoliation letter that puts the carrier on written notice to preserve the tractor, the trailer, the download, the logs, and the driver qualification file. After that, destroying any of it becomes its own problem for them.
We are a local firm. We work out of downtown Austin a few blocks from the Travis County courthouse, we know which corridors the freight actually runs on, and we handle cases from Round Rock and Georgetown down through Kyle and Buda. If getting to us is hard right now, we come to you.
Want a rough idea of what a claim might be worth before you call? Run your numbers through the free truck accident settlement calculator further down this page. If the crash involved a passenger vehicle rather than a commercial truck, use our car accident settlement calculator instead.
A Recent Truck Accident Result
No lawyer can promise you an outcome, and you should be wary of one who tries. What we can show you is what this work has been worth to the people who hired us:
- $1,000,000 — truck accident collision. Multiple injuries. The full policy limits available were recovered. (2026)
That case is a good illustration of why coverage matters so much in trucking claims. The ceiling on a recovery is very often the size of the policy rather than the size of the injury, which is why we identify every carrier, every excess layer, and every potentially liable company before anyone starts talking about settlement.
Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Every case turns on its own facts, the injuries involved, and the insurance coverage available.
What Is Your Austin Truck Accident Claim Worth?
There is no average truck case, but there is a starting point, and it is the same arithmetic the adjusters use: add up your economic damages, then apply a multiplier for pain and suffering scaled to how badly you were hurt. Enter your numbers below and you will have a range in about a minute.
Two things to keep in mind, both specific to trucking. Truck claims tend to sit at the higher end of the multiplier range because the injuries are more severe. And the practical ceiling is usually the available insurance rather than the injury — which is why finding every policy layer matters so much. Treat the number as a ballpark, not a promise, then call us for a real answer.
Please enter at least your medical bills or property damage to get an estimate.
Estimated Claim Value Range
$0 – $0
| Economic damages (bills, wages, property) | $0 |
| Pain & suffering (est.) | $0 – $0 |
| Reduction for your share of fault | $0 |
Trucking insurers open low and close fast. In one free conversation we can tell you what your case is actually worth — and you pay nothing unless we win.
Disclaimer: This calculator provides a rough educational estimate only. It is not legal advice, not an evaluation of your case, and not a guarantee of any recovery. Actual outcomes depend on liability evidence, the insurance coverage actually available across all responsible parties, the strength of your medical documentation, and Texas’s modified comparative fault rule, which can reduce or completely bar recovery. Use of this tool does not create an attorney–client relationship with SMB Law, PC.
How Our Austin Truck Accident Attorneys Handle Your Case
From the day you hire us, three things run at once: we lock down the evidence before it disappears, we take over every conversation with the adjusters, and we build the medical record that establishes what this crash is going to cost you for the rest of your life.
You will not be managing any of it. We call you when a decision is actually yours to make — and whether to accept an offer is always yours, never ours. The same approach applies across the heavy-vehicle cases we take, including RV and motorhome collisions, where who was behind the wheel and who owned the vehicle can decide the whole claim. Here is what the work looks like in practice.
The First 72 Hours: Getting the Evidence Locked Down
Speed matters more in a truck case than in any other kind of injury claim. Camera footage from businesses along the frontage road is typically overwritten in a week or two. Skid evidence washes off the pavement. The trailer gets unloaded and reassigned. Under the federal rules, a carrier only has to keep certain supporting documents for six months.
So the first thing we do is send the preservation letter. The second is pull the CR-3 crash report the investigating officer files with TxDOT, along with any DPS commercial vehicle inspection done at the scene — a post-crash inspection that flags brake or tire violations is often the strongest single document in the file. The third is get you seen by the right doctors and keep your treatment from going dark, because gaps in care are the first thing the defense will point at.
What you should do in the meantime is short: do not give the trucking company’s insurer a recorded statement, do not sign a blanket medical authorization, and do not post about the crash or your recovery anywhere public. Send us anything you already have — photos, the report number, the carrier’s letter — and let us take it from there.
What the Black Box and the Driver Logs Actually Show
Most people picture a truck case turning on eyewitnesses. It usually turns on data. The records we go after in almost every case:
- Engine control module (ECM) download — the tractor’s black box: speed, RPM, throttle position, hard-brake events, and whether the brakes were applied at all
- Electronic logging device (ELD) records — federally required since 2017, showing exactly how many hours that driver had been behind the wheel
- Driver qualification file — the CDL, the medical certificate, the road test, the prior employer checks the carrier was supposed to run before putting this person in a truck
- Maintenance and inspection records — brake adjustments, tire replacements, the daily vehicle inspection reports drivers are required to file
- Bills of lading and loading records — weight and cargo securement, which is where rollovers and shifted-load cases are won
- Dashcam and telematics data, drug and alcohol post-accident testing, and the carrier’s own internal incident report
Put next to each other, those records tell a story a jury can follow. A log showing thirteen hours behind the wheel, an ECM showing no braking before impact, and a maintenance file showing a brake adjustment that was deferred twice is not an accident. It is a decision somebody made.
On serious cases we add an accident reconstructionist, and where the medical picture is complicated, a life care planner who can put a defensible number on future treatment. Physics and arithmetic do not change their story on cross-examination the way witnesses do.
Negotiating With the Trucking Company's Insurer
Trucking insurers are nothing like your neighbor’s auto carrier. They handle catastrophic files for a living, defense counsel is involved within days, and their opening move is often a quick offer aimed at closing the file before anyone knows how bad the injuries are.
We do not send a demand until your doctors can say where you are going to end up. Settling before maximum medical improvement is how people end up paying for their own fusion surgery two years later out of a settlement that was supposed to cover it. When the demand goes out, it goes as a package: the download, the logs, the regulatory violations, the records, the wage loss, and a plain explanation of why the number is the number.
Most claims resolve there. When one does not, we file suit — and carriers keep track of which firms actually do.
What Causes Most Austin Truck Accidents
Austin sits on the I-35 freight corridor between San Antonio and Dallas, which means a constant stream of heavy trucks through a city whose road network was not built for it. The causes we see most:
- Driver fatigue. Hours-of-service limits exist because tired driving performs like drunk driving. Dispatch pressure and delivery windows push drivers past them, and the logs show it.
- Following too closely. A loaded semi at highway speed needs roughly the length of two football fields to stop. In stop-and-go traffic on I-35 or Mopac, that margin does not exist.
- Brake and tire failures. Out-of-adjustment brakes and retreads that let go at speed are the most common serious violations found in post-crash inspections, and they trace straight back to maintenance records.
- Improperly loaded or unsecured cargo. Freight that shifts changes the truck’s center of gravity mid-turn. This is how rollovers happen, and the shipper or the loading company may share the blame.
- Distraction and unsafe lane changes. A truck has blind spots along both sides and directly behind that swallow an entire car.
- Construction zones and unfamiliar routes. Austin has been under construction for a decade. Lane shifts on US-183 and Ben White catch out-of-town drivers who are looking at a GPS instead of the road.
Every one of those causes leaves a paper trail somewhere in the carrier’s files. That is the whole reason we chase the records early. If you want a sense of where Austin crashes concentrate generally, we mapped it in our study of the city’s 25 most dangerous intersections.
Jackknife, Underride, Rollover: The Semi-Truck Crashes We See
The crash type tells a commercial truck accident attorney where to look first.
Rear-end collisions come down to stopping distance and attention, and the ECM download settles the argument fast. Jackknife crashes, where the trailer swings out and folds toward the cab, point to braking, speed, and often an empty or badly loaded trailer. Rollovers point to speed through a curve or ramp and to how the freight was secured.
Underride collisions are the worst of them. A car slides beneath the trailer and the passenger compartment takes the impact at windshield height. Those cases turn on whether the trailer’s rear and side underride guards met federal standards and whether the trailer was properly lit and marked. Head-on and wide-turn crashes, tire blowouts, and cargo spills each have their own evidence trail.
None of these are cases you want to hand to a general practice firm that takes a truck case twice a year. The evidence has a short shelf life, the defense is organized from day one, and the difference between a claim built on a police report and a claim built on the carrier’s own records is often six figures. If the crash took someone in your family, it becomes an Austin wrongful death case, with its own rules about who can bring the claim and what the family can recover.
Who Is Actually Liable After a Truck Crash?
This is where truck cases separate from car cases. In a two-car wreck there is one defendant. In a truck case there are usually several, and finding all of them is most of the work:
- The driver, for the driving itself
- The motor carrier, both for the driver’s conduct and for its own — negligent hiring, inadequate training, keeping a driver it should have pulled off the road, pushing schedules that could not be run legally
- The maintenance contractor, when brakes, tires, or lighting were serviced by an outside shop
- The shipper or loading company, when the trailer was overloaded or the freight was not secured
- The trailer owner or lessor, in the leasing arrangements that are standard in this industry
- The manufacturer, when a tire, a brake component, or an underride guard failed
- A government entity, where road design or a missing traffic control contributed
To hold any of them responsible we have to prove four things: a duty of care, a breach of it, that the breach caused the crash, and damages we can quantify. In trucking, the breach is frequently a written rule somebody violated — which is a much cleaner argument to a jury than “he was driving carelessly.”
Texas also runs a modified comparative fault rule. Under Section 33.001 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, your recovery drops by your share of the blame, and at 51% it disappears entirely. Expect the carrier to work hard on that number from the first phone call. It is the main reason we tell clients not to talk to adjusters.
CDL Rules, Hours of Service, and Where Drivers Fail Them
Driving a commercial truck is a licensed, regulated job, and the rules are specific enough that violations are provable. A driver needs a commercial driver’s license for the class of vehicle and any endorsements the load requires, plus a current DOT medical certificate showing they are physically fit to drive.
The hours-of-service rules are where fatigue cases live. A property-carrying driver may drive up to 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, may not drive at all beyond the 14th hour after coming on duty, has to take a 30-minute break after 8 hours of driving, and is capped at 60 hours in 7 days or 70 in 8. Since 2017 those hours have been recorded by an electronic logging device wired to the engine, which is why the old paper-log games no longer work — and why the ELD record is worth pulling in every case.
Carriers also have to run pre-employment screening and prior-employer safety checks, keep a driver qualification file, and conduct drug and alcohol testing before hiring, at random, and after a crash. When a carrier skipped one of those steps and put an unqualified driver in the seat, that is a claim against the company directly, not just for what the driver did.
What a Texas Truck Accident Claim Can Recover
Texas sorts recovery into three categories, and in a truck case all three are usually in play.
Economic damages are the losses with a paper trail: the ambulance and hospital bills, surgeries, rehabilitation, medication, future medical care, the wages you lost, the earning capacity you lost if you cannot go back to the work you did, in-home care, vehicle and home modifications, and the truck-sized repair bill on your car.
Non-economic damages cover what the injury did to your life: physical pain, mental anguish, physical impairment, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life. These carry real weight in truck cases because the injuries are catastrophic more often — brain injuries, spinal cord damage, crush injuries, amputations. You prove them with specifics, not adjectives: the job he cannot do, the child she cannot lift, the eleven-year softball league he had to quit.
Exemplary damages, which most people call punitive, are reserved for gross negligence — a driver who tested positive after the crash, a carrier that knew about a brake defect and ran the truck anyway, a company that falsified logs. Chapter 41 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code caps them and sets a higher standard of proof, but where the conduct supports them they change the value of a case, and the evidence for them has to be gathered early.
What to Do After a Truck Accident in Austin
Call 911 and stay put if you safely can. A crash involving a commercial vehicle brings out an officer and, often, a DPS trooper who can perform a commercial vehicle inspection on the spot — that inspection is evidence you cannot recreate later.
Photograph everything you are able to: both vehicles, the resting positions, the trailer’s DOT number and the company name on the door, the license plates, the cargo, the skid marks, the road conditions, and your own injuries. The DOT number matters — it is how we identify the carrier and pull its federal safety record. Get names and numbers from witnesses before they leave, because they are the evidence that vanishes fastest.
Then, in the days after:
- Get medical care within 72 hours, even if you think you can walk it off. Adrenaline hides disc injuries and concussions, and a treatment gap is the first argument the defense makes.
- Do not give a recorded statement to the trucking company’s insurer, and do not sign the medical authorization they send. You are not required to do either.
- Report the crash to your own insurer with the facts and nothing more. Do not apologize at the scene — in Texas that is good manners, and in a claim file it is an admission.
- Keep everything. Bills, explanations of benefits, pay stubs showing missed time, prescription receipts, and a short daily log of what hurts and what you cannot do.
- Call a truck accident lawyer within days, not months. The preservation letter has to reach the carrier while the truck and the data still exist.
Why Truck Insurance Policies Change What Your Case Is Worth
Here is the part most people do not know. A car in Texas can legally be insured for as little as $30,000 per person. An interstate tractor-trailer hauling general freight is required by federal regulation to carry at least $750,000, and loads involving hazardous materials require $1 million to $5 million. Many carriers buy far more, layered across a primary policy and one or more excess policies.
That changes the case in both directions. There is real coverage available to pay for a catastrophic injury, which is often not true in car wrecks. And because the exposure is large, the other side spends accordingly: rapid-response investigators, defense counsel retained within days, and adjusters whose job is to build the file against you from the beginning.
Do not accept an early offer, and do not assume the first policy anyone mentions is the only one. Part of our job is finding every layer — the carrier’s primary, its excess coverage, the trailer owner’s policy, the broker’s, and your own underinsured motorist coverage if it is still needed after all of that.
The Federal Trucking Rules That Decide These Cases
Interstate trucking runs on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, enforced by the FMCSA. They are dense, but they are also a checklist, and a violation is a fact you can prove rather than a judgment call you have to argue. The provisions that decide most cases:
- Hours of service — the 11-hour driving limit, the 14-hour window, the 30-minute break, and the 60/70-hour weekly caps, all recorded by the ELD
- Inspection, repair, and maintenance — systematic maintenance and the daily vehicle inspection reports drivers must complete
- Driver qualification — licensing, medical certification, prior-employer safety checks, and the file the carrier must keep on each driver
- Drug and alcohol testing — pre-employment, random, reasonable suspicion, and post-accident testing within set time limits
- Cargo securement — weight limits and tie-down standards for every type of freight
- Minimum financial responsibility — the insurance floors described above
Texas layers its own rules on top, adopting most of the federal standards for intrastate carriers and adding state inspection requirements. We also pull the carrier’s federal safety record. A company with a history of the same violation that caused your crash is a very different defendant than one with a clean file.
How a Truck Accident Lawsuit Works in Travis County
The first meeting is free and it is a real conversation: what happened, what your injuries look like, what coverage is likely out there, and what we think the case is worth. If we think you do not need a lawyer, we will say so.
If we take it, the preservation letter goes out immediately and the investigation starts while you treat. Once your medical picture is clear, we send the demand. If the number is not there, we file suit in the appropriate Travis, Williamson, or Hays County court, and the case moves into discovery — written questions, document production, and depositions of the driver, the safety director, and the company’s corporate representative. Most courts order mediation before trial, and a large share of filed cases resolve there.
One Texas wrinkle worth knowing about: a 2021 law now found in Chapter 72 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code lets a trucking company ask the court to split the trial into two phases, so that the company’s own conduct — the hiring, the training, the maintenance decisions — is heard separately from the question of whether the driver was negligent. It was written to keep that evidence away from the jury in phase one, and it means the case has to be built with the split in mind from the start. Ask any firm you interview how they handle it. You can reach us any time through SMB Law, PC.
The Attorney Handling Your Case
When you hire this firm you work with Shane M. Boasberg, not a case manager you never meet. Shane has been licensed in Texas since 2002 and founded SMB Law, PC in 2010. Before private practice he worked in the Texas Legislature and the Office of the Texas Attorney General, which is a useful education in how large institutions and their lawyers actually behave.
He is a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Austin Bar Association, and the Capital Area Trial Lawyers Association, and has been recognized by Texas Monthly as a Rising Star and by Elite Lawyer. Truck cases sit inside a broader Austin personal injury practice, which matters more than it sounds: one crash can involve a commercial vehicle accident, a rideshare driver, and an uninsured motorist claim at once, and they have to be worked together.
Our clients tend to say the same two things in their reviews: they could reach their lawyer, and they always knew what was happening with their case. Those reviews are at the top of this page.
How Long Do You Have to File a Truck Accident Claim in Texas?
Two years from the date of the crash. That is the general rule under Section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, and courts apply it without sympathy. File on day 731 and it does not matter how badly you were hurt or how plainly the carrier was at fault.
Several deadlines land much sooner. If a government-owned vehicle was involved — a city truck, a transit vehicle, a school district vehicle — the Texas Tort Claims Act requires written notice within six months, and some cities require it sooner under their own charters. An underinsured motorist claim has notice requirements written into your own policy. A wrongful death claim runs from the date of death.
And the practical deadline is shorter than any of them. The engine data can be overwritten, the truck can be repaired and reassigned, and some federally required records only have to be kept for six months. Run your dates through our Texas injury deadline calculator, then call us the same week if you can.
Talk to an Austin Truck Accident Lawyer Today
The trucking company has had people working your file since the day of the crash. You should have someone working it for you, and the clock on the evidence is shorter than the clock on the claim.
Call SMB Law, PC at (512) 561-5003 or request a free case review. We will read the crash report, look at the coverage, walk through your injuries, and tell you plainly what we think the case is worth and what it will take to get there. You pay nothing unless we win, and nothing at all for the conversation.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Can you sue the truck driver, or do you have to sue the trucking company?
Usually both, and often several other companies as well. The driver is responsible for the driving, and the motor carrier is responsible both for the driver’s conduct on the job and for its own decisions — who it hired, how it trained them, whether it maintained the truck, and what schedule it demanded. Depending on the facts, the trailer owner, the company that loaded the freight, a maintenance contractor, or a parts manufacturer can be defendants too. Identifying all of them early is most of the work in a truck case.
What is the average settlement for a truck accident in Texas?
There is no meaningful average, and any figure you see quoted online is a marketing number. What a Texas truck case is worth turns on the severity of the injuries and the future care they require, the lost earning capacity, how clear the liability evidence is, how much insurance is actually available across all the layers, and your share of the fault under Texas’s comparative fault rule. For a starting range built on your own numbers, use the truck accident settlement calculator on this page, then call us at (512) 561-5003 for a real answer.
Why are truck accident claims worth more than car accident claims?
Three reasons. The injuries are more severe, because of the weight difference between an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer and a passenger car. There is more insurance available — a federal minimum of $750,000 for interstate freight carriers, against $30,000 per person for a Texas car. And there are usually multiple liable parties, which means multiple policies. That said, more coverage also means a better funded defense, so the value only materializes if the evidence is developed properly.
How long do I have to file a truck accident claim in Texas?
Two years from the date of the crash under Section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. If a government vehicle was involved, the Texas Tort Claims Act requires written notice within six months, and some cities require it sooner. The evidence deadline is much shorter than either: engine data can be overwritten and the truck put back in service within days, so a preservation letter needs to reach the carrier quickly.
What should I not say to the trucking company’s insurance adjuster?
Do not guess, do not minimize, and do not agree to a recorded statement — you are not required to give one to the other side’s insurer. Avoid saying you are fine, avoid estimating your speed or the distance between vehicles, and never accept any share of the blame; under Texas’s 51% rule that admission can end your claim. Give your name and the basic facts, then tell them your lawyer will follow up.
Truck Accident Lawyers Serving Nearby Communities
SMB Law, PC represents clients across Central Texas. Choose your city for local court, filing, and case details: