Midland 18-Wheeler & Commercial Truck Cases: What Happened, What It Means, and What to Do Now
Midland County deputies are searching for a man who, according to public reports, allegedly attempted to steal a truck tractor — the cab portion of an 18-wheeler, an 80,000-pound machine that becomes a weapon in the wrong hands. If you were anywhere near that incident, or if you have been hurt in any crash involving a commercial truck in the Permian Basin, you are reading this because something went wrong with one of these machines — and the clock on your evidence has already started running.
Midland lives and breathes oil. The Permian Basin is the most productive oil field in the United States, and every barrel of crude, every gallon of produced water, every ton of frac sand moves by truck at some point. The highways cutting through Midland County — Interstate 20, Highway 158 running west toward the oil fields, Highway 191 to Odessa, the Farm-to-Market roads connecting well pads to processing facilities — carry a relentless convoy of water haulers, sand transporters, crude tankers, and equipment trucks. When one of those 80,000-pound rigs collides with a 4,000-pound passenger car, the physics are not a contest. They are a killing machine.
We handle these cases. We know what the FMCSA regulations require trucking companies to keep and how fast those records can legally vanish. We know the corporate shell game — how the name on the trailer door is rarely the company that holds the insurance or the liability. And we know the insurance playbook, because Lupe Peña sat on the other side of the table for years before he joined our firm. If you were hurt, or if you lost someone, call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free, and we do not get paid unless we win your case.
What Happened in Midland County — and Why It Matters to You
Public reports indicate that Midland County deputies are looking for a man who allegedly attempted to steal a truck tractor. A truck tractor is the power unit of a commercial semi — the cab that pulls the trailer. It is not a car. It is a diesel-fueled machine weighing 15,000 to 25,000 pounds empty, designed to pull 80,000 pounds of loaded trailer down a highway at 70 miles per hour.
If someone takes that machine who should not be driving it, the danger is immediate and enormous. If you were struck by a tractor someone was operating without authorization — or if you were injured at a truck yard, a facility, or a well site where security should have prevented access to that vehicle — the legal questions are complex and the responsibility may extend beyond the person behind the wheel.
But the attempted theft of a tractor also illuminates a reality every Midland family already lives with: these machines are everywhere, they are massive, and when something goes wrong with one of them — whether a theft, a crash, a mechanical failure, or a fatigued driver — the injuries are catastrophic and the evidence has a short, legally defined shelf life. This page is for anyone in Midland County dealing with the aftermath of a commercial truck incident. We built it as the resource we would want our own family to have at 2 a.m.
Your First Questions, Answered Directly
Can I sue if I was hurt by a commercial truck in Midland?
Yes — if the truck, its driver, or the company that operates it contributed to your injury, Texas law gives you the right to pursue full compensation. This includes crashes on I-20, oilfield truck incidents on the FM roads, and situations where a commercial vehicle was operated negligently or by someone who should never have had access to it. The 18-wheeler practice page on our site covers the full scope of these cases.
How long do I have to file a claim?
Texas imposes a two-year statute of limitations on personal injury claims. For wrongful death, the deadline is also two years from the date of death. Two years sounds like a long time. It is not. The evidence that wins a truck case — the driver’s logs, the electronic data, the maintenance records, the drug-test results — can legally disappear in a fraction of that window. The deadline to sue is not the deadline that matters most. The deadline that matters most is the one on the evidence.
What if I was partly at fault?
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51 percent bar. If you were 50 percent or less at fault, you can recover — your award is reduced by your percentage of fault. If you were 51 percent or more at fault, you cannot recover. The insurance adjuster’s entire early strategy is built around pushing your percentage of fault as high as possible, because every point they hang on you is money off their payment. We know this play. We counter it with the physical evidence, the electronic data, and the federal regulations that the trucking company itself was required to follow.
Is there money to recover?
A standard passenger car in Texas may carry as little as $30,000 in liability coverage per person — and one night in a trauma center can consume that entire amount. But an interstate commercial truck is a different animal entirely. Federal law requires interstate carriers of non-hazardous property to carry a minimum of $750,000 in liability coverage. Carriers hauling certain hazardous materials must carry $1,000,000. The most dangerous hazmat carriers — those hauling bulk explosives, poison gas, or large-quantity radioactive material — must carry $5,000,000. That is the floor. Many national fleets carry far more in layered excess and umbrella policies stacked above the federal minimum. Knowing which policies exist, in what order they pay, and what the real coverage tower looks like is half the value of the case.
The Law That Governs Your Case in Texas
The Statute of Limitations
Texas’s two-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims is the outer wall. Miss it and the case is over — no matter how strong the facts, no matter how severe the injury. The clock starts on the date of the injury. For wrongful death, it starts on the date of death, which may differ from the date of the crash.
But the two-year deadline is not the one that kills most truck cases. What kills them is the evidence clock — the federal regulations that let trucking companies destroy the very records that prove negligence, often in a matter of months. We address that clock in detail below. The day you call a lawyer is the day that clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Comparative Fault — The 51 Percent Bar
Texas applies a proportionate responsibility system. If you were partly at fault for the crash, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault — but only up to the 51 percent threshold. At 51 percent fault or higher, your recovery drops to zero.
The defense playbook is built on this number. The adjuster will try to pin every percentage point possible on you: you were speeding, you changed lanes, you were in the truck’s blind spot, you should have seen it coming. Every point is money. A 20 percent fault finding on a $1 million case takes $200,000 off the table. This is why the physical evidence — the truck’s electronic data, the scene reconstruction, the federal log violations — is so critical. It replaces the adjuster’s narrative with numbers the truck’s own computer recorded.
Damages Available in Texas
Texas does not cap non-economic damages (pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of companionship) in general personal injury cases involving commercial vehicles. This is a significant advantage over states that do cap these damages. The damages categories available include:
- Economic damages: past and future medical expenses, lost wages, lost earning capacity, property damage, funeral and burial costs
- Non-economic damages: physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, loss of consortium, loss of enjoyment of life
- Punitive damages: available in Texas when the defendant acted with gross negligence, malice, or fraud — a higher standard that requires showing the defendant acted with conscious indifference to the safety of others
Wrongful Death in Texas
If you lost a family member in a commercial truck crash, Texas allows the surviving spouse, children, and parents to bring a wrongful death claim. The personal representative of the estate can also bring a survival claim for the decedent’s pain and suffering between the injury and death, plus any medical expenses incurred during that period. These are two separate claims with separate damage categories — and a defense lawyer is happy to let a grieving family walk through only one door when two are available.
Who Really Owns the Truck — The Defendant Structure
Here is something the trucking company is counting on you not understanding: the name on the door of the truck is often not the company that holds the insurance, and the company that holds the insurance is often not the company that employs the driver. Commercial trucking is built on layers — and every layer is designed to put distance between the injured person and the deep pocket.
The Three Common Structures
The linehaul carrier running under its own federal authority. This is the simplest structure — a single company owns the tractor, employs the driver, and holds the operating authority registered with the FMCSA. When you look up the USDOT number on the SAFER database, one company appears. The coverage is relatively straightforward.
The leased operator / owner-driver model. The driver owns the truck and leases it to a carrier. The carrier’s name is on the door. The carrier controls the routes, the schedules, the dispatch, and the loads. Federal law at 49 CFR § 376.12 requires that the lease give the carrier “exclusive possession, control, and use of the equipment for the duration of the lease” and that the carrier “assume complete responsibility for the operation of the equipment.” The carrier will argue the driver is an “independent contractor” — but the federal leasing rule puts the carrier in control and makes it responsible for the truck on the road. The contractor label is the start of the fight, not the end of it.
The Permian Basin oilfield fleet. In Midland, the structure is often even more tangled. A water-hauling company may be a small LLC contracting with a larger oilfield services company, which contracts with an operator, which contracts with a leaseholder. The truck that hit you on Highway 158 may have five companies in the chain above it — and each one pointing at the others. Our Texas oilfield commercial truck accident page lays out how we trace liability through the oilfield contracting chain.
The “Not Our Driver” Defense
The carrier will tell you the driver was an independent contractor, not an employee — and therefore the carrier is not responsible for what the driver did. This is the most common defense in commercial trucking cases. It is also the defense that federal law is specifically designed to counter. The lease rule puts the carrier in exclusive control of the equipment. The carrier’s own dispatch system, routing app, and quotas control where the truck goes and how fast it gets there. The carrier’s name is on the trailer. We do not concede the contractor label. We break through it with the facts of who actually controlled the work.
The Evidence Clock: How Fast Proof Disappears
This is the section that decides whether your case is strong or dead. Every record below is something federal law forces a trucking company to create. Every record below also has a legal shelf life — a date after which the company is allowed to destroy it. If no one has formally demanded that the records be preserved, they disappear on schedule.
The 6-Month Log Shredder
Federal law requires motor carriers to retain the driver’s records of duty status — the logs that show how many hours the driver had been behind the wheel — for a specific, limited period:
“A motor carrier shall retain records of duty status and supporting documents required under this part for each of its drivers for a period of not less than 6 months from the date of receipt.”
— 49 CFR § 395.8(k)(1)
Six months. After that, the company can legally shred the logs. The electronic logging device data, the paper logs, the fuel receipts, the toll records, the dispatch messages — all of it can be gone in half a year. If the driver had been awake for 16 hours and the log shows it, that document may not exist by the time a lazy claim resolves. This is why the preservation letter goes out the day you call us — not the month you feel better, not the week the insurance company makes an offer. The day you call.
The 3-Month Inspection Report
Drivers are required to fill out a Driver Vehicle Inspection Report at the end of each day, noting any defects in the brakes, steering, lights, tires, coupling devices, and emergency equipment. The carrier must retain these reports for three months from the date they were prepared. Three months. If the truck that hit you had bad brakes and a prior driver had already written them up, that document — the proof the company knew — can be legally destroyed before the first season changes.
The 3-Year Accident Register
Carriers must maintain a register of all crashes for three years. This is where a pattern lives — proof that the same carrier has been involved in wreck after wreck. But the register records involvement, not fault. FMCSA’s own rule states that a crash preventability determination “does not assign fault or legal liability for the crash.” We use the register to show pattern and notice, never to claim the carrier was found at fault in prior crashes.
The Post-Crash Drug and Alcohol Testing Window
After a serious crash — one involving a fatality, or a citation plus injury, or a citation plus a tow — federal law at 49 CFR § 382.303 requires the carrier to test the driver for alcohol and controlled substances. For alcohol, the testing window closes after 8 hours if no test was administered. For drugs, the window closes after 32 hours. After those windows, the test simply cannot be done — the proof is gone forever. If the carrier did not test, they are required to document in writing why they did not. That missing piece of paper tells its own story.
The Telematics and Camera Data
Modern commercial trucks — including oilfield trucks running through the Permian Basin — often carry telematics systems and AI cameras that record speed, braking, GPS location, and driver behavior. This data is typically retained on short, vendor-set cycles that are not governed by any federal retention mandate. It can auto-overwrite in days or weeks. The truck’s engine control module (ECM) records hard-brake events and last-stop data — but only holds a few events before overwriting on the next cycle. This is the fastest-dying evidence in the entire file. The preservation letter must name these systems by name and demand they be frozen.
What We Send — and When
The day you call us, we prepare a spoliation / preservation letter directed to the carrier, the driver, and any third-party data vendors. That letter demands they preserve: the electronic logging device data, the ECM download, the telematics and camera footage, the driver qualification file, the records of duty status and supporting documents, the DVIRs, the post-accident drug and alcohol testing records, the accident register, the maintenance records, the dispatch and routing records, the written lease agreement, and the truck itself — not repaired, not sold, not scrapped until our expert has inspected it.
If the company lets required evidence die after receiving that letter, the law answers. A court can give an adverse-inference instruction — telling the jury they may assume the lost record was as bad as the plaintiff says it was. The leverage begins the moment the letter is on file.
The Money: Insurance Towers and What Your Case Is Worth
The Coverage Ladder
| Coverage Layer | Amount | What It Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Texas personal auto minimum | $30,000 / person | What a passenger car may carry — often consumed in one night |
| Federal interstate carrier minimum | $750,000 | The floor for a non-hazardous interstate property carrier |
| Hazmat carrier minimum | $1,000,000 | Required for carriers hauling oil and certain hazardous substances |
| Most dangerous hazmat | $5,000,000 | Bulk explosives, poison gas, large-quantity radioactive |
| Excess / umbrella layers | Varies | Stacked above the primary — the real money on a national fleet |
A loaded crude tanker rolling through Midland County may be required to carry $1 million or more in coverage. A water hauler running under a non-hazmat authority may sit at the $750,000 floor. But the real question is what excess and umbrella layers sit above that primary — and those numbers are discoverable only in litigation. The $750,000 federal minimum is a negotiating floor, never the ceiling.
What Your Case Is Actually Worth
The value of a commercial truck case is not a single number pulled from a chart. It is built from the ground up, category by category, by a team that includes a life-care planner and a forensic economist. The economic losses include: past and future medical expenses, past and future lost wages, lost earning capacity, home and vehicle modifications, and household services the injured person can no longer perform. The non-economic losses include: physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of consortium.
For catastrophic injuries — traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, amputation — the lifetime cost of care alone can reach into the millions. The National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center projects lifetime care costs for a high cervical spinal cord injury in the range of multiple millions of dollars, depending on age at injury and severity. That figure does not include a single lost paycheck or a single dollar of pain and suffering. A severe traumatic brain injury can carry similar lifetime costs, with neurocritical-care days alone running into the thousands per day.
Our firm has recovered $2.5 million-plus in truck crash cases, $5 million-plus in brain injury settlements, and $3.8 million-plus in amputation cases. We have recovered millions in trucking wrongful-death cases. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but those numbers exist because we build the case from the medicine up, not from a settlement formula down.
The Hospital Lien
Texas has a hospital lien statute that allows a hospital that treated your injuries to place a lien on your personal injury recovery. If you were taken to Midland Memorial Hospital or another Texas hospital, that lien may already be on file — and it can eat into your recovery if it is not negotiated down. We handle hospital liens as part of the case. The lien is real, but the amount is often negotiable, and it should never be the reason a family accepts less than full value.
The Medicine: Injuries That Change Everything
The Physics of an 80,000-Pound Truck
A fully loaded tractor-trailer weighs 20 to 30 times what a passenger car weighs. Kinetic energy — the destructive force released in a crash — scales with the square of speed and directly with mass. A loaded truck moving at 65 miles per hour carries roughly 525 feet of stopping distance under ideal conditions, compared to about 316 feet for a passenger car. That is the length of nearly two football fields. When a truck driver is following too closely, or is fatigued, or is distracted, the truck physically cannot stop in time — and the car in front of it absorbs the entire differential.
In a two-vehicle crash, the lighter vehicle undergoes the larger change in velocity — the delta-V — and delta-V is the single best predictor of occupant injury severity. The people in the car take the force. The people in the truck often walk away. This is why, in fatal large-truck crashes, roughly two out of every three people killed are not in the truck — they are in the other vehicle.
The Injuries We See in Midland Truck Crashes
Traumatic brain injury (TBI). The word “mild” in a brain injury diagnosis is a hospital triage word, not a prognosis. On the Glasgow Coma Scale, “mild” means a score of 13 to 15 — the patient was still talking. But more than one-third of patients with a GCS of 13 have potentially life-threatening intracranial bleeding. A normal CT scan does not mean the brain is fine — in mild TBI, the CT is normal about 90 percent of the time because the damage is microscopic tearing of nerve fibers that the scan was never designed to see. These injuries are proven with advanced imaging (diffusion tensor imaging, susceptibility-weighted MRI), neuropsychological testing, and the testimony of people who knew the person before. At least one in seven people with a “mild” brain injury never fully recovers.
Spinal cord injury. A crash that delivers axial or flexion-distraction forces to the spine can fracture or dislocate vertebrae and damage the spinal cord. Cervical injuries can mean tetraplegia — paralysis from the neck down. The National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center puts the first-year cost of a high cervical injury at over $1 million and the lifetime cost at multiple millions, depending on age at injury. Vehicular crashes are the leading cause of spinal cord injury in the United States.
Amputation and crush injuries. When an 80,000-pound truck pins or rolls over a limb, the damage is often not survivable without amputation. The lifetime cost of an amputation — including the prosthetic device, which must be replaced every three to five years — runs into the hundreds of thousands. The LEAP Study, the largest investigation of limb-threatening injuries ever conducted, found the lifetime healthcare cost of amputation runs roughly three times the cost of limb reconstruction, because a prosthesis is never purchased once. It is bought, worn out, and re-bought for life.
Burns and post-collision fires. When a truck’s fuel system ruptures in a crash, a survivable collision can become a fire. Federal motor vehicle safety standards limit the amount of fuel a crashed vehicle is allowed to leak — but when a diesel tank on an 18-wheeler splits, the volume is enormous. Burn care follows a brutal arithmetic: roughly one day in the hospital for every percent of the body burned, followed by years of scar-release surgeries.
The Trauma Care Reality in Midland
Midland Memorial Hospital serves Midland County, but it is not a Level I trauma center. The nearest Level I trauma centers are hours away — in Lubbock and in El Paso. If you were badly hurt in a truck crash on I-20 or on a Permian Basin oilfield road, the helicopter flight to a trauma center may have taken longer than the crash itself. Those hours matter — to your survival, to your recovery, and to your case. Delayed care worsens outcomes, and the distance between the crash scene and definitive trauma care is a factor we document and present.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — Named, Countered
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before he joined our team. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows the plays because he used to run them. Here are the ones you are most likely to see — and what we do about each.
Play 1: The “Just Checking In” Recorded Statement Call
Within days of the crash, someone friendly will call to “check on you” and ask you to “just tell us what happened” — on a recording. The questions are engineered to get you to say “I’m feeling okay” or “I didn’t see the truck until the last second” or “I think I might have been going a little fast.” Every word becomes a exhibit in the defense file.
The counter: Do not give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurance company. You are not required to. The adjuster sounds caring. The recording is built to be quoted against you. If they call, take their number and tell them your attorney will be in touch. Then call us.
Play 2: The Fast Settlement Check With a Release Buried Under It
A check may arrive in the mail quickly — sometimes within weeks. It looks like help. Attached to the back of it, or included in the same envelope, is a release of all claims. Once you sign it and cash the check, your case is over. The MRI that shows the herniated disc you did not know about yet? Too late. The surgery you will need in two years? Too late. The wage loss from the job you have not lost yet but will? Too late.
The counter: Never sign a release from an insurance company before your medical picture is complete. The fast check is designed to close the file before the real cost of your injury is known. An offer that arrives before the MRI results does not reflect the value of your case. It reflects the value of closing their file.
Play 3: The Comparative Fault Argument
The adjuster will tell you that you were partly at fault — you were in the truck’s blind spot, you changed lanes without signaling, you stopped too suddenly. In Texas, every percentage point of fault assigned to you reduces your recovery. The adjuster knows this number cold. The entire early strategy is built around inflating your share.
The counter: We replace the adjuster’s narrative with the truck’s own electronic data. The ECM, the telematics, the ELD, the camera footage — these are the truck’s own records of what actually happened. The adjuster’s opinion about your lane change does not survive a data download that shows the truck was speeding and the driver had been on duty for 14 hours.
Play 4: The Independent Medical Examination With Their Doctor
The insurance company will ask you to see “their doctor” for an independent medical examination. It is not independent. It is a doctor the insurer picks, who is paid by the insurer, and whose report will almost certainly say you are not as injured as your treating physicians say you are.
The counter: You have the right to choose your own doctors. If the defense demands an IME, we prepare you for it, we make sure the exam is properly scoped, and we compare the defense doctor’s report against your actual medical records — which were built before anyone had a lawsuit to defend.
Play 5: Social Media Surveillance
The adjuster is watching your social media. If you post a photo of yourself at a family barbecue, they will use it to argue you are not in pain. If you post about the crash, they will use it to argue you are litigious. If you post nothing, they may send an investigator to your home.
The counter: Set every social media account to private. Do not post about the crash, your injuries, your medical appointments, or your activities. Do not accept new friend or follow requests from people you do not know. Assume everything you post will be handed to the defense.
How a Commercial Truck Case Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk — the same one we run on every truck case, from the day the phone rings to the day the number is built.
Week one: the preservation letter goes out. We send a formal demand to the carrier, the driver, and every third-party data vendor, ordering them to freeze the electronic logs, the ECM data, the telematics, the camera footage, the driver qualification file, the DVIRs, the maintenance records, the post-crash drug test records, the accident register, the dispatch records, and the physical truck itself. Nothing gets repaired, sold, or scrapped until our expert has inspected it.
Weeks one through four: the evidence download. Our forensic experts image the truck’s electronic systems — the ECM, the ELD, the telematics module, the camera hard drive. We pull the police report, the 911 dispatch records, the scene photographs, and any available dashcam or surveillance footage. If the truck has not been moved, we send a reconstruction engineer to photograph, measure, and document the scene before weather and traffic erase the physical evidence.
Months one through three: records demands and medical development. We serve formal discovery on the carrier — interrogatories, requests for production, requests for admission. We subpoena the driver’s qualification file, the carrier’s safety-management files, the written lease, and the insurance declarations. Your medical treatment is ongoing. We are building the record of your injuries in real time, through your treating physicians, not through a defense doctor’s snapshot.
Months three through six: the expert phase. Our reconstruction engineer analyzes the crash physics. Our life-care planner evaluates your future medical needs and builds a year-by-year cost projection. Our forensic economist reduces that cost stream to present value. If a brain injury is involved, our neuropsychologist administers testing and our neuroradiologist reads the advanced imaging. Every dollar in the demand is traceable to a named expert and a published methodology.
Months six through twelve: depositions. The carrier’s safety director sits across from us and answers questions under oath. The driver explains his hours, his route, his schedule, and his training. The dispatch supervisor explains the routing decisions. The maintenance manager explains the brake inspection history. These transcripts are where the case is won — because the company’s own people, under oath, often admit what the company’s lawyers have been denying.
The demand and the resolution. With the evidence assembled, the experts aligned, and the company’s own records on the table, we build the demand. The number is not invented. It is calculated — from the medical bills, the life-care plan, the lost-earning-capacity analysis, and the human losses no spreadsheet can hold. Some cases settle. Some go to trial. The ones that settle for full value are the ones where the carrier has seen the evidence and knows what a jury will do with it.
Your First 72 Hours: A Practical Roadmap
Hour 1 through Hour 24: Medical First
If you have not been seen by a doctor, go now — to Midland Memorial Hospital, to an urgent care, to your primary care physician. The adrenaline of a crash masks injuries. A brain injury can present as “just feeling foggy.” A spinal injury can present as “just a stiff neck.” Internal bleeding presents as nothing until it is life-threatening. The medical record created in the first 24 hours is the foundation of your injury claim. If you wait two weeks to see a doctor because you thought you would “shake it off,” the defense will argue you were not really hurt. Get seen. Get documented. Follow every referral.
Hour 24 through Hour 48: The Evidence Hold
If you have not called a lawyer yet, this is the window. Every day that passes is a day the truck’s electronic data may be overwriting itself. The camera footage from the truck may be gone in days. The driver’s log may be editable or disappearing. The physical truck may be in a repair shop being “fixed” — which means the evidence of mechanical failure is being erased. The preservation letter is the only thing that stops this clock. The day you call us is the day that letter goes out.
Hour 48 through Hour 72: What Not to Do
- Do not give a recorded statement to the trucking company’s insurance adjuster. You are not required to, and nothing you say will help your case.
- Do not sign anything the insurance company sends you — not a medical authorization, not a release, not a “quick settlement” form. If it arrives in the mail, put it in a folder and call us.
- Do not post about the crash on social media. Not the photos, not the complaints, not the “I’m okay” update. Everything you post is discoverable.
- Do not throw away anything — not the clothes you were wearing, not the personal items in your car, not the tow receipts, not the medical paperwork. Every piece of paper is evidence.
- Do not talk to the trucking company’s investigator. If someone shows up at your door or your hospital room claiming to be an “accident investigator,” ask for their card and tell them your attorney will contact them. Then call us.
When to Call
Now. The consultation is free. The call costs you nothing. The cost of waiting is measured in evidence that disappears and rights that expire. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — and it is a live person, not an answering service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue if I was hit by a stolen or unauthorized commercial truck?
Yes — and the liability analysis is more complex than a standard crash. If a truck tractor was taken by someone who should not have been driving it, the question of who failed to secure the vehicle becomes central. A truck yard, a facility, or a company that left an 80,000-pound machine accessible may bear responsibility for what happened next — particularly if prior incidents put them on notice that their security was inadequate. The driver’s unauthorized status does not automatically shield the company that owns or controls the vehicle. These cases require immediate investigation of the security arrangements, the access controls, and the company’s own policies for securing equipment.
How long do I have to file a truck accident claim in Texas?
Two years from the date of injury for personal injury claims, and two years from the date of death for wrongful death claims. But the evidence clock runs much faster. The driver’s logs can be legally destroyed in six months. The daily vehicle inspection reports in three months. The camera data in days or weeks. The two-year deadline is the outer wall. The deadline that matters is the one on the evidence — and that is measured in days and months, not years.
What if the trucking company says the driver was an independent contractor?
This is the most common defense in commercial trucking, and it is the one federal law is designed to counter. When a carrier leases a truck and driver, federal regulations at 49 CFR § 376.12 require the carrier to assume “exclusive possession, control, and use of the equipment” and “complete responsibility for the operation of the equipment” for the duration of the lease. The carrier’s name is on the trailer. The carrier’s dispatch controls the route. The carrier’s quotas control the schedule. We do not concede the contractor label. We break through it with the facts of who controlled the work — and the federal regulation that puts the carrier in control is the first exhibit.
How much is my Midland truck accident case worth?
The value depends on the specific facts: the severity of your injuries, the cost of your past and future medical care, your lost wages and lost earning capacity, the available insurance coverage, and the degree of fault assigned to each party. A case involving a catastrophic brain injury or spinal cord injury against a carrier with a $1 million primary policy and multi-million-dollar excess layers will have a different value than a soft-tissue injury against a minimum-coverage operator. We build the number from a life-care plan and a forensic economic analysis — not from a settlement calculator. What we can tell you is that the federal minimum coverage for an interstate carrier is $750,000, and many Permian Basin oilfield trucks carry $1 million or more.
What evidence disappears fastest in a commercial truck case?
The truck’s camera footage and telematics data — these are typically on vendor-set retention cycles with no federal mandate, and they can auto-overwrite in days to weeks. The ECM hard-brake and last-stop data holds only a few events before overwriting on the next cycle. The driver’s daily vehicle inspection reports must be kept for only three months. The records of duty status (the logs) must be kept for only six months. The preservation letter — sent the day you call — is the only thing that freezes these records before they vanish.
I was partly at fault — can I still recover in Texas?
Yes, if your share of fault is 50 percent or less. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51 percent bar. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, but it is not eliminated unless you cross the 51 percent threshold. The insurance adjuster will work hard to push your percentage up, because every point is money off the payment. We counter with the physical evidence, the truck’s electronic data, and the federal regulation violations that show the truck — not the car — was the proximate cause.
What if the truck that hurt me was an oilfield truck?
Oilfield trucking in the Permian Basin operates under special considerations. Federal hours-of-service rules include exceptions for certain oilfield operations that can allow drivers to stay on the road longer than standard truckers. Water haulers — trucks moving produced water from well sites to disposal wells — are among the most common and most dangerous vehicles on Midland’s roads. These trucks are heavy, they run constantly, and they travel rural FM roads that were not built for this volume of commercial traffic. The company that operates the truck, the oilfield services company that contracted the haul, and the operator that hired the services company may all be in the liability chain. Our oilfield truck accident page covers this in full detail.
Should I give a recorded statement to the insurance company?
No. You are not legally required to give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurance company. The adjuster’s questions are designed to elicit responses that can be used against you — “I’m feeling okay” becomes “the plaintiff was not injured,” and “I didn’t see the truck” becomes “the plaintiff failed to keep a proper lookout.” If they call, take their information and tell them your attorney will contact them. Then call us.
How long does a truck accident case take?
A commercial truck case that goes through full discovery, depositions, and expert preparation typically resolves in 12 to 24 months, though some settle sooner and some that go to trial may take longer. The timeline depends on the complexity of the liability analysis, the severity of the injuries and the length of medical treatment, the number of defendants and their corporate structures, and whether the carrier chooses to litigate or negotiate. What we will not do is rush your case to resolution before the full cost of your injury is known. The fast settlement is the defense’s goal, not yours.
What if I lost a family member in a truck crash in Midland?
Texas allows surviving spouses, children, and parents to bring a wrongful death claim. The personal representative of the estate can bring a survival claim for the decedent’s pain and suffering between the injury and death, plus any medical expenses incurred during that period. These are two separate claims with separate damage categories. The statute of limitations is two years from the date of death. The evidence clock — the six-month log retention, the three-month DVIR, the vanishing camera data — runs on the same schedule. If you lost someone, call us today. The wrongful death page on our site covers this in more detail.
Why Attorney911
Ralph Manginello — Managing Partner
Ralph Manginello has been licensed to practice law in Texas since November 6, 1998 — 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court in the Southern District of Texas. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston and his B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. Before he was a lawyer, he was a journalist — and that training shows in every case. He does not guess at the facts. He goes and finds them. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas. He is the lead counsel in the active $10 million-plus Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston hazing lawsuit in Harris County. He is a Million Dollar Member of the Trial Lawyers Achievement Association. He does not like losing. That is not a marketing line — it is the disposition that has driven this firm for more than two decades.
Lupe Peña — Associate Attorney
Lupe Peña has been licensed in Texas since December 6, 2012. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston and his B.B.A. in International Business from Saint Mary’s University in San Antonio. He is a third-generation Texan with family roots tracing to the King Ranch. He was born and raised in Sugar Land, and he still lives there.
Here is what makes Lupe different: he spent his early career as an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how the claim-valuation software works. He knows how the reserves are set in the first 48 hours after a crash — before the real injuries are diagnosed. He knows which IME doctors the insurers pick and why. He knows the surveillance, the social-media mining, and the delay tactics — because he used to run them.
Now he uses that knowledge for injured people. He handles personal injury, commercial and construction litigation, wrongful death, dram shop, and trucking cases. And he conducts full consultations in Spanish — without an interpreter.
The Fee
We work on contingency. We charge 33.33 percent of the recovery if the case resolves before trial, and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The first phone call costs nothing. The cost of not calling is measured in evidence that disappears and rights that expire.
Hablamos Español
Lupe Peña conducts full consultations in Spanish — without an interpreter. If your family communicates in Spanish, we will meet you in the language you think in. The legal system does not become less intimidating because you are navigating it in a second language. We make sure you do not have to. Hablamos Español.
The Bottom Line for Midland
If you were hurt in a commercial truck crash in Midland — on I-20, on the oilfield roads, at a facility where a truck tractor should have been secured — the evidence is already on a clock. The logs can be shredded in six months. The camera footage can be gone in days. The truck itself can be repaired or scrapped before anyone measures the damage. The call you make today is the call that freezes all of it.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. We answer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — a live person, not an answering service. And if we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you that honestly. But if you were hurt by a commercial truck in the Permian Basin, we are the firm that knows the federal regulations, the corporate structures, the insurance playbook, and the evidence clock — and we know it from the inside.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. Call 1-888-ATTY-911.