A trucking case is not a car wreck with a bigger vehicle. It is a case against a federally regulated business, and the records that prove it are on a deletion schedule.
TxDOT recorded 2,581 crashes involving a commercial motor vehicle in Bexar County in 2025, with 16 people killed and 37 suffering suspected serious injuries. Statewide the figure was 38,533 CMV-involved crashes and 528 deaths. Nationally, Texas leads every other state — NHTSA counted 699 large trucks in fatal crashes here and 720 people killed.
The number that matters most to a family calling a lawyer is this one: roughly 70% of the people killed in large-truck crashes are occupants of the other vehicle, not the truck. The physics are not symmetrical, and neither is the legal fight that follows.
Sadovsky & Ellis handles these cases from our office on North New Braunfels Avenue, in the county where most of them will be tried. If you were hurt, or a family member was killed, in a crash with a tractor-trailer, dump truck, tanker, box truck, or any other commercial vehicle, call (210) 832-9090. The consultation is free, and there is no fee unless we recover for you.
Federal law tells motor carriers how long they must keep the records that decide a trucking case. It also tells them when they may lawfully destroy those records. Those are the same rule read from two directions, and it is why the first days after a crash matter more than the first year.
Under 49 C.F.R. § 395.8(k)(1), a carrier must retain a driver’s records of duty status and the supporting documents behind them for not less than six months. Section 395.22(i) requires a backup copy of the electronic logging device data for the same six months. After that, the file showing whether the driver had been awake for nineteen hours can be gone — lawfully, routinely, and without anyone doing anything wrong.
Other categories run longer, but each has a horizon. The driver qualification file — application, motor vehicle records, road test, annual review, medical certificate — must be kept while the driver is employed and for three years after (§ 391.51). Maintenance and inspection records must be kept one year, and only six months after the vehicle leaves the carrier’s control (§ 396.3(c)). The accident register runs three years (§ 390.15).
The engine control module is the exception that surprises people. There is no federal retention rule for heavy-truck ECM data at all. The federal event data recorder standard, 49 C.F.R. Part 563, reaches only vehicles at or under 8,500 pounds GVWR — which excludes every Class 7 and Class 8 tractor on the interstate. Last-stop and sudden-deceleration records on a heavy truck are a proprietary feature of the engine manufacturer, and depending on the make and what happens next, they can be overwritten by subsequent key cycles, further driving, or a technician’s reset. Sometimes within days.
In Brookshire Brothers, Ltd. v. Aldridge, 438 S.W.3d 9 (Tex. 2014), the Texas Supreme Court held that the duty to preserve evidence arises when a party “knows or reasonably should know that there is a substantial chance that a claim will be filed” and that the evidence is material and relevant. The Court also held that the harshest remedy — a spoliation instruction to the jury — generally requires intent, not mere negligence.
That combination is why a preservation letter has to go out early and has to be specific. Its function is not to be polite. Its function is to establish what the carrier knew and when, and to close off the innocent-destruction explanation before it can be offered. A letter that names the categories, cites the retention rules, and identifies the tractor and trailer by unit number is a different document from a form letter, and it produces a different record.
Where a carrier goes quiet, Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 202 permits a pre-suit deposition to investigate a potential claim. It is an underused tool, and it exists for exactly this situation.
House Bill 19, now Chapter 72 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Since September 1, 2021, in a case involving a commercial motor vehicle collision, the court shall bifurcate the trial on a defendant’s motion. Phase one covers compensatory liability and damages; phase two covers exemplary damages. Section 72.053 gates regulatory-violation evidence in phase one — it comes in only if the violation was a proximate cause and the regulation is specific and governs the defendant’s duty of care. Section 72.054 codifies an admission rule: if the carrier stipulates the driver was its employee acting in the course and scope, ordinary negligent-entrustment evidence stays out of phase one.
The practical effect is that a trucking case now has to be built to survive a motion the defense will file within 120 days of its answer. Cases assembled without that in mind lose evidence they assumed the jury would see.
Werner Enterprises, Inc. v. Blake, No. 23-0493 (Tex. June 27, 2025). The Texas Supreme Court reversed and rendered a take-nothing judgment in a case where a jury had apportioned 70% of responsibility to the carrier, wiping out a judgment of roughly $90 million. The holding turned on substantial-factor causation: the Court concluded the sole substantial factor was the other driver losing control of his pickup on ice, and that the truck’s presence and speed were too attenuated. Defendants now cite Werner in nearly every serious Texas trucking case. Any assessment that does not account for it is describing a landscape that no longer exists.
Under 49 C.F.R. § 387.9, a for-hire interstate carrier hauling non-hazardous property in a vehicle over 10,001 pounds must carry at least $750,000. Carriers hauling oil or hazardous materials must carry $1,000,000. Certain explosives, poison gas, and radioactive shipments require $5,000,000.
That $750,000 figure is a federal minimum that has not been raised in four decades. It is frequently far less than a catastrophic injury is worth, which is why identifying every layer — excess policies, the shipper, the broker, a leasing company, a maintenance contractor, an owner-operator’s own coverage — is part of the work rather than an afterthought.
For contrast, Texas’s minimum for an ordinary passenger vehicle is $30,000 per person and $60,000 per crash (Tex. Transp. Code § 601.072). The distance between those two numbers is the reason a commercial case deserves a different kind of investigation.
A detail that matters in South Texas more than most places. Federal hours-of-service rules cap property-carrying drivers at 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour window after 10 consecutive hours off. But Texas has adopted its own intrastate rule: under 37 Tex. Admin. Code § 4.12, an intrastate driver may drive up to 12 hours after 8 consecutive hours off, and may not drive after 15 hours on duty.
The same fatigue analysis therefore produces a different answer depending on whether the load crossed a state line. Determining which regime applied is not a technicality — it can be the difference between a violation and a lawful trip.
There is also a set of oilfield-specific exceptions in 49 C.F.R. § 395.1(d) that appear constantly on Eagle Ford haul routes: a 24-hour restart for vehicles used exclusively to transport oilfield equipment, and an exclusion of well-site waiting time from on-duty hours for specially trained drivers of specially constructed well-servicing vehicles. That second exception is narrow — it requires both the training and the purpose-built vehicle — and it is misapplied often enough to be worth checking every time.
Preservation letters, vehicle inspection, and a Rule 202 petition where a carrier will not cooperate. This is the phase whose deadline is set by someone else’s document-retention policy.
Reconstruction, ECM and telematics analysis, an hours-of-service audit against both the logs and the supporting documents, and a review of how the driver was hired, trained, qualified, and dispatched.
Treating physicians, life care planning where the injury is permanent, and economic analysis of lost earning capacity. In a death case, the wrongful death and survival claims are proved separately.
Suit, written discovery, corporate representative depositions, and a strategy built around Chapter 72 bifurcation and the causation standard after Werner rather than one that hopes to avoid them.
Generally two years from the date of injury under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003. In a death case the two years runs from the date of death rather than the date of the injury. Claims against a governmental entity — a city vehicle, a school district, a TxDOT contractor — require formal notice far sooner, sometimes within 45 to 90 days under a local charter. Waiting until month twenty-three is not a plan; by then the driver’s logs have been lawfully destroyable for a year and a half.
No. A crash report reflects an officer’s assessment at the scene, usually made without the ELD data, the maintenance file, the driver qualification file, or an ECM download. Those records frequently tell a different story. Texas also applies proportionate responsibility: under § 33.001 you may recover so long as your share of responsibility is not greater than 50 percent, with your recovery reduced by your percentage.
Possibly both. Under 49 C.F.R. § 376.12(c)(1), a lease must provide that the authorized carrier has exclusive possession, control and use of the equipment and assumes complete responsibility for its operation. Be careful with older explanations of this rule, though — subsection (c)(4) states that nothing in it determines whether the driver is an employee or an independent contractor, and many law firm pages still describe the pre-2003 version. The answer depends on the lease, the facts of control, and Texas law.
We handle these on a contingency fee, so there is no hourly charge and no fee unless there is a recovery. Case expenses in a serious commercial case — reconstruction, download specialists, treating and retained experts, life care planning — are substantial, and are advanced by the firm. We explain the fee agreement and how expenses are handled in writing before you sign anything.
Eagle Ford rig, flowback, and well-site cases, including the § 395.1(d) hours exceptions.
Learn moreWho may sue under Chapter 71, and how the survival claim differs.
Learn moreLast-mile, parcel network and employee-driver collisions.
Learn moreSix months is the federal floor for a driver’s records of duty status. The sooner the preservation letter goes out, the more of the case still exists.