Practice areas / Truck accidents
Tractor-trailer and commercial truck claims
when the carrier's team is on scene before the road reopens
A motor carrier may send investigators to a serious crash within hours. Driver logs, vehicle data, maintenance records, and other evidence can be subject to short retention schedules.
Commercial truck claims may involve federal safety rules, multiple companies, and layers of insurance coverage. Preservation requests should begin immediately.
What Florida law actually says
Interstate carriers are bound by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations: hours of service, driver qualification, drug testing, inspection and repair.
The company can be directly liable for negligent hiring, training, supervision and entrustment, separate from anything the driver did behind the wheel.
Driver logs, engine data and dashcam footage all sit on retention clocks, some measured in days.
What gets secured first
A spoliation letter out immediately, naming the ECM download, the ELD data, the dashcam and the driver qualification file
Hours-of-service logs against fuel receipts, tolls and dispatch records, which is where falsified logs show themselves
Maintenance history on the tractor and the trailer separately, because they are frequently owned by different companies
The full chain above the driver: carrier, broker, shipper and every certificate of insurance between them
Asked in the first phone call
Why does speed matter more in a truck case?
The proof is electronic and it sits on someone else's server. Some of it is lawfully overwritten in days if nobody demands preservation.
Is the trucking company automatically on the hook for its driver?
Usually it answers for a driver working in the course of employment. It can also be independently at fault for putting that driver in that truck, which is a separate claim and often the stronger one.
Nothing on this site is legal advice. The deadlines and standards described here are general, they have exceptions, and they change. Florida rewrote several of them in 2023. Do not use this site to calculate your own deadline.