Midland, TX Big Rig and Train Collision on Highway 80: Your Legal Rights After a Permian Basin Truck-Train Crash
If you are reading this, someone you love was on that road near Highway 80 and CR 1130 when a big rig and a train met at a grade crossing in Midland County. You may be sitting in a hospital waiting room right now. You may have gotten a phone call that changed everything. You may be staring at a screen at two in the morning trying to understand what happens next. We are going to tell you the truth about what this collision really is, what the law requires, what evidence is disappearing while you read this, and what to do about it — plainly, without legal jargon, the way we would talk to you across your kitchen table.
A truck-train collision is not a car accident with a bigger vehicle. It is a catastrophic event governed by two separate federal regulatory regimes — one for the commercial truck, one for the railroad — and the evidence that proves what happened is on clocks that started ticking the moment the collision occurred. Some of that evidence can legally be erased in days. The decision you make in the next 72 hours about whether to get a lawyer involved will largely determine whether that technical evidence is preserved or lost forever. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We handle commercial trucking and catastrophic injury cases across Texas. This page is legal information, not legal advice, and contacting us is free and confidential. But the information here is the same analysis we would give you on the phone, because the urgency is real and the clock does not wait.
Why a Truck-Train Collision Is Not a Simple Accident
Midland sits in the heart of the Permian Basin, the most active oil and gas production region in the United States. The truck traffic on Highway 80 and the county roads branching off it — roads like CR 1130 — is extraordinary. Frac sand haulers, produced water trucks, crude oil tankers, equipment transporters, and over-the-road freight carriers all run these corridors, many of them on schedules driven by the oilfield economy that never stops. The county roads in this region cross active rail lines — lines that service the oilfield supply chain and carry cross-country freight. Those grade crossings are documented hazard zones where high truck traffic volumes, rural crossing configurations, and industrial logistics operations converge with active rail operations.
When a big rig meets a train at one of those crossings, the physics are devastating. A loaded tractor-trailer weighs up to 80,000 pounds. A freight train can weigh thousands of tons. The mass ratio is so extreme that the truck is essentially destroyed on impact. Survival in a direct train-truck collision is the exception, not the rule. The injuries that do occur — traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, crush injuries, traumatic amputations, severe burns from fuel ignition — are among the most catastrophic in transportation medicine. And the closure of the railroad, which public reporting confirms followed this collision, tells you the impact was severe enough to disrupt rail operations entirely.
This is not a fender-bender on a county road. It is a multi-party, federally regulated collision involving at least two industries, potentially three or more liable entities, and evidence systems on both sides that are designed to record what happened — and designed to erase it on a schedule. That schedule is the fight you are in whether you know it yet or not.
If your family was affected by this collision, you need to understand that the Permian Basin oilfield trucking economy that sends trucks across these crossings is a world we know — its deadlines, its driver pressures, its cargo, and the federal rules that govern every mile those trucks drive. That knowledge is the starting point for holding the right parties accountable.
Evidence That Is Disappearing Right Now
This is the single most urgent section on this page. If you read nothing else, read this.
A truck-train collision generates evidence in multiple independent systems — the truck’s, the train’s, the crossing’s, and the road’s. Each system records different parts of what happened. Each system erases its data on a different schedule. And the schedules are short — measured in days and weeks, not years.
The truck’s electronic data. Every commercial truck built in the last decade carries an Electronic Logging Device (ELD) that records the driver’s hours of service, and an Engine Control Module (ECM) that records vehicle speed, brake application, throttle position, and other operational data in the minutes before a collision. Federal law only requires the carrier to retain ELD records and supporting documents for six months. After that, deletion is legal. The ECM data has even shorter retention cycles — it can be overwritten on the next hard event or when the truck is driven again. If the carrier puts that truck back on the road, the engine computer writes over the crash data. The carrier must be placed on a litigation hold immediately — a formal, written demand that every electronic record be frozen — before the data cycles off.
The train’s event recorder. Locomotives carry event recorders — the railroad equivalent of an airplane’s black box — that capture train speed, horn activation, brake application, and signal system status at the time of collision. This data is critical for establishing whether the train crew sounded the horn, whether the crossing signals were functioning, and what the train’s speed was on approach. But railroads have internal data retention policies that can cycle this data off their systems within 30 to 90 days. The preservation demand to the railroad’s legal department must go out immediately.
The crossing signal system logs. If the grade crossing at or near Highway 80 and CR 1130 had active warning devices — lights, gates, bells — those systems generate event logs that show whether the signals activated, when they activated, and whether they were functioning properly at the time of the collision. Maintenance records reveal whether the crossing owner had notice of signal defects or sightline obstructions. Signal system event logs may have short retention windows, and maintenance history must be preserved before records are archived or destroyed under routine retention policies.
The truck’s dashcam footage. If the truck was equipped with a forward-facing camera or a driver-facing camera — and many oilfield service fleets are — that footage provides direct visual evidence of the truck’s approach to the crossing, the driver’s behavior, the signal status visible from the cab, and the collision itself. Dashcam footage is typically overwritten on loops ranging from hours to days depending on storage capacity. This is the fastest-dying evidence in the entire case.
The police crash report and scene evidence. The responding law enforcement agency — likely the Midland County Sheriff’s Office or another agency — will produce a crash report containing officer observations, measurements, witness statements, identified parties, DOT numbers, and a preliminary causation assessment. In Texas, crash reports typically take 5 to 10 business days to become available. But the physical scene evidence — skid marks, debris patterns, the condition of the crossing surface, vegetation that may have obstructed sightlines — begins eroding the moment the roadway reopens. Weather and traffic will erase skid marks within days. Vegetation changes seasonally. The crossing site must be photographed and surveyed by a professional before the conditions that contributed to this collision are altered.
The driver qualification file. The trucking company is required by federal law to maintain a driver qualification file containing the driver’s employment application, motor vehicle record, road test certificate, annual reviews, medical certification, and any prior crashes or violations. This file reveals whether the company hired a driver with a clean record or one with prior crossing violations, poor safety history, or inadequate training. The carrier must be placed on notice to preserve all driver qualification file contents, because personnel files can be culled under routine retention policies if not held.
Here is what all of this means in plain language: the proof of what happened at that crossing near Highway 80 and CR 1130 exists right now, in electronic systems and paper files held by entities that have no obligation to save it for you. The only thing that stops those records from being legally erased is a formal preservation demand — a litigation hold letter — sent by a lawyer. The day you call is the day that clock starts working for you instead of against you. If you wait, the evidence doesn’t just get harder to find. It gets legally destroyed. And the companies know this. They are counting on it.
When evidence that should have been preserved is destroyed after a preservation demand is on file, the law provides a powerful answer: a court can give the jury an adverse-inference instruction — meaning the jury may assume the lost record contained information as damaging to the company as the plaintiff says it was. That leverage begins the moment the letter is on file. Before it, the company can legally let the data die. After it, every deleted file is a sanctionable act.
Who May Be Responsible for This Collision
A truck-train collision is rarely a single-defendant case. The liability map spreads across multiple entities, each with its own insurance, its own lawyers, and its own version of what happened. Identifying every responsible party — and naming the right ones — is the difference between a case that fully compensates a family and one that runs dry at the first policy limit.
The trucking company. The operating carrier — the entity whose DOT number is on the truck, whose driver was behind the wheel, and whose federal operating authority governs that vehicle — bears direct liability for driver training, supervision, vehicle maintenance, and operational safety policies governing the approach to railroad crossings. The company is also vicariously liable for its driver’s actions under the legal doctrine of respondeat superior — if the driver was acting within the scope of employment, the company stands behind that driver’s share of fault. The specific carrier involved in this collision has not yet been identified in available reporting. Carrier identification will come from the DOT number, MC number, and vehicle markings captured in the police crash report, obtainable through the Midland County Sheriff’s Office or the responding law enforcement agency. Once identified, the carrier’s CSA scores, Hours-of-Service compliance history, maintenance records, and prior crash data will tell us whether this was an isolated event or part of a pattern.
The truck driver. The individual behind the wheel bears personal responsibility for failure to observe crossing signals, failure to stop at the grade crossing as required by federal regulation, failure to yield to the train, distracted driving, or fatigue-related impairment. Commercial drivers are held to a heightened standard of care at railroad crossings — a standard written into federal law that we will discuss in the next section.
The railroad company. The railroad operator — likely Union Pacific, which runs lines through the Midland area, though this must be confirmed from the crash report — may bear liability for crossing signal maintenance, sightline obstructions, inadequate warning devices, failure to maintain the crossing surface, or train crew failure to sound audible warnings as required by Federal Railroad Administration regulations. If the crossing lacked active warning devices, had obstructed sightlines from vegetation or structures, had malfunctioning signals, or had a deteriorated crossing surface that contributed to the truck stopping or sliding on the tracks, the railroad and the crossing maintainer face separate liability.
The crossing owner or maintainer. Grade crossings can be owned or maintained by the railroad, the county, or the municipality. Premises liability for a dangerous condition of the grade crossing — inadequate signage, vegetation obstructing sightlines, non-compliant crossing warning systems — may fall on whichever entity owns or maintains that specific crossing. This is a separate theory of liability from the trucking company’s negligence and the railroad’s operational duties.
The trucking company’s insurer. If the carrier carries an MCS-90 endorsement — a federal financial-responsibility filing required for certain interstate motor carriers — that endorsement guarantees coverage for public liability regardless of whether the specific cargo or trip was covered under the policy. This is a critical coverage reality in oilfield trucking cases, where the cargo and the route can raise complex insurance questions. The MCS-90 endorsement cuts through those questions and ensures there is money to recover.
Each of these parties has its own lawyer. Each has its own insurance adjuster. And each is already working — right now, while you read this — to build a narrative that minimizes its share of fault. The trucking company will point at the railroad. The railroad will point at the truck. The crossing maintainer will point at both. Your family needs someone who can see the entire board and name every party before the evidence that sorts it out disappears.
The Federal Rules That Govern Both the Truck and the Train
A truck-train collision is governed by two separate federal regulatory regimes. The commercial truck is regulated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration under 49 CFR Parts 390 through 399. The railroad and grade crossing are regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration. Both regimes create specific, mandatory duties — and violations of those duties are powerful evidence of negligence.
The FMCSA grade-crossing stop requirement. This is the single most important federal rule in any truck-train collision case:
49 CFR 392.10 requires commercial motor vehicle drivers to stop at railroad grade crossings and proceed only when safe.
In plain English: a commercial truck driver is not allowed to roll through a railroad crossing the way a passenger car might. The federal regulation requires the driver to come to a complete stop, look both directions, listen for an approaching train, and proceed only when it is safe to do so. This is a heightened standard that applies to commercial motor vehicles because of their size, their weight, and the catastrophic consequences of a collision. A violation of this regulation is negligence per se in most jurisdictions — meaning the violation itself establishes negligence without the need to prove separately that the driver was careless.
The FMCSA regulations also govern driver qualification standards, Hours-of-Service limitations that cap how long a driver can be behind the wheel, ELD compliance, and vehicle maintenance requirements. If the driver in this collision had been on the road past the 11-hour driving limit or the 14-hour on-duty window, fatigue may have contributed to the failure to stop at the crossing. The ELD data — which, as we discussed, can be legally erased in months — is the proof.
The FRA crossing safety regulations. The Federal Railroad Administration governs crossing safety, including audible warning requirements — specifically, horn use at crossings — and crossing signal maintenance standards under the Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Safety Program. The train crew is required to sound the horn at approaching crossings in a specific pattern. The event recorder on the locomotive captures whether the horn was activated and when. If the horn was not sounded, or if the crossing signals did not activate, the railroad bears a share of fault that the event recorder data will prove — if it is preserved in time.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration regulations. If the truck was hauling hazardous materials common to oilfield operations in the Permian Basin — crude oil, fracking chemicals, produced water with high salinity, or other regulated materials — additional federal regulations apply, and the insurance requirements are higher. A carrier hauling certain hazardous materials in bulk is federally required to carry a minimum of $5,000,000 in liability coverage, compared to the $750,000 floor for general freight. The cargo on this truck, once identified, will determine which coverage floor applies.
If your family was affected by this collision, the 18-wheeler accident practice page explains in more detail how these federal regulations work in practice and how we use violations of them to build liability. The regulations are not suggestions. They are the standard of care — and when a company or driver falls below them, the violation is the spine of the case.
Texas Law: Your Rights, the Deadline, and the Fault Rule
This collision occurred in Texas, and Texas law controls the claims. Three pieces of Texas law matter most to your family right now.
The statute of limitations. Texas imposes a two-year statute of limitations on personal injury and wrongful death claims, running from the date of the incident. That means you have two years from the date of this collision to file a lawsuit. Two years sounds like a long time when you are sitting in a hospital waiting room. It is not. The evidence disappears in days and weeks. The investigation takes months. The medical treatment and rehabilitation for catastrophic injuries can take years to reach the point where a life-care plan can be finalized. The two-year deadline is a hard bar — miss it and the case is gone, no matter how strong it is. But the real deadline is not the statute of limitations. The real deadline is the evidence-retention clock, which is measured in days.
If a governmental entity — a county, a municipality, or a state agency — may be named as a defendant for crossing design or maintenance, the notice-of-claim deadlines can be significantly shorter than the two-year statute of limitations. Those deadlines must be checked specifically for any governmental entity that may be responsible for the crossing at Highway 80 and CR 1130.
The comparative-fault rule. Texas applies a modified comparative negligence standard with a 51% bar. If the plaintiff is found to be 51% or more at fault, recovery is barred entirely. If the plaintiff is found to be 50% or less at fault, recovery is reduced by the plaintiff’s percentage of fault. This rule is exactly why the insurance adjuster works so hard to pin percentage points of fault on the injured party — every point of fault assigned to the plaintiff is money off the recovery. In a truck-train collision, the defense will try to shift fault to the truck driver, to the crossing design, to the railroad, and to any other party that can absorb percentage points. The comparative-fault fight is a zero-sum game over money, and it is fought with evidence — the same evidence that is disappearing right now.
The Stowers doctrine. Texas recognizes the Stowers doctrine, which creates a duty on liability insurers to accept settlement offers within policy limits when an ordinarily prudent insurer would do so. If the trucking company’s insurer unreasonably refuses a settlement offer within policy limits and a subsequent verdict exceeds those limits, the insurer can be held liable for the full verdict amount — even the portion above the policy limits. This is a powerful tool in commercial trucking cases, where the coverage can be substantial but the damages in a catastrophic truck-train collision can exceed it. Stowers exposure changes the insurer’s calculus and creates leverage that a lawyer who understands Texas insurance law can use for your family.
Texas does not impose a general cap on economic or non-economic damages in commercial trucking cases. Punitive damages are available under Texas law when the defendant acted with malice, gross negligence, or conscious indifference — factors that may be present if the trucking company had prior crossing violations, failed to train drivers on grade-crossing protocols, or if the crossing owner ignored known hazards. Punitive damages are subject to statutory limitations tied to the amount of economic damages awarded, but they are not off the table.
If the collision resulted in a death, Texas provides two separate claims: a wrongful death action (brought by the surviving family members for their losses — lost financial support, lost companionship, mental anguish) and a survival action (brought by the estate for the decedent’s damages — pain and suffering between injury and death, medical expenses, funeral costs). These are separate claims with separate damages, and both must be pleaded. The wrongful death claim page explains this split in more detail.
What the Injuries Look Like and What They Cost
A commercial truck-train collision is among the most physically devastating crash types in transportation litigation. The mass disparity between a loaded big rig and a freight train is so extreme that the truck is effectively demolished on impact. The injury patterns that result — in the rare cases where someone survives — are catastrophic.
Traumatic brain injury. The deceleration forces in a train collision can cause the brain to impact the inside of the skull even without a direct head strike. Diffuse axonal injury — the tearing of the brain’s white-matter connections — can occur from rotational forces alone. A “mild” traumatic brain injury can come with a perfectly normal CT scan, because the damage is microscopic and invisible to standard imaging. Roughly one in seven people with a so-called mild brain injury still has symptoms three months later: the headaches, the lost words, the short fuse, the personality changes that a family sees across the dinner table before any scan sees them. For severe TBI, the lifetime cost of care runs into the millions — and the lost earning power typically costs more than the medical bills.
Spinal cord injury. The compressive and flexion forces of a train impact can fracture or dislocate vertebrae and damage the spinal cord. A cervical injury 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 $1.4 million and the lifetime cost for a young adult at more than $6 million — and that figure deliberately excludes every lost paycheck. Those numbers are real, they are published, and they are what a life-care planner uses to build the damages demand.
Crush injuries and traumatic amputation. The cab of a truck struck by a train is a crush zone. Limbs caught between collapsing metal suffer degloving, comminuted fractures, and vascular disruption that can force amputation even when the limb initially appears intact. The lifetime cost of an amputation — including prosthetic devices that must be replaced every three to five years — runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. A microprocessor-controlled knee for an above-knee amputee costs as much as a new car, and the warranty runs out in three years.
Severe burn injuries from fuel ignition. Both the truck’s diesel fuel and the train’s fuel can ignite in a high-energy collision. Burn injuries are among the most expensive injuries in medicine — roughly one day in the hospital for every percent of the body burned, multiple surgeries to graft skin, and years of operations to release scars as the body heals. The pain is extraordinary, and the scarring is permanent.
Fatality outcomes. In direct train-truck collisions, fatality is the statistical norm, not the exception. When the collision results in death, the damages include the decedent’s lost future earning capacity, the financial support the family will go without, the pain and suffering the decedent endured between injury and death, funeral expenses, and the loss of companionship that no dollar figure can truly capture but that Texas law allows a jury to value.
For catastrophic injuries like TBI and spinal cord damage, the brain injury practice page covers the medicine, the proof problems, and the lifetime arithmetic in more detail. The short version: a life-care plan — a formal medical-economic document built to a national professional standard — prices out, year by year, every surgery, therapy, medication, wheelchair, and caregiver hour a person will need for the rest of their life. That is what turns “lifetime care” from a phrase into a figure a jury can trust.
What This Case Is Worth
The case value range for a truck-train collision in Midland County runs from approximately $250,000 at the low end to $15,000,000 or more at the high end. That extraordinarily wide range reflects the absence of confirmed injury or fatality information in available reporting. If the truck driver or train crew sustained minor injuries with full recovery and the case is primarily property damage, the value clusters at the low end. If the collision produced catastrophic injuries — traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, amputation — or fatalities, which is the statistical norm for truck-train collisions, the case value escalates rapidly into the multi-million-dollar range.
The factors that drive value upward include: the commercial defendant’s insurance coverage, which for an interstate carrier starts at a federal minimum of $750,000 and rises to $5,000,000 for certain hazmat haulers; the Permian Basin economic context, which means the trucking company is likely well-capitalized and operating in a high-revenue industry; Midland County’s historically plaintiff-receptive jury pool; and the availability of punitive damages if gross negligence is established through prior violations or conscious indifference to crossing safety. Stowers exposure against the trucking company’s insurer can create settlement leverage above policy limits if the insurer unreasonably refuses a within-limits settlement offer.
The factors that drive value downward include: comparative fault assigned to the truck driver or other parties, which reduces recovery proportionally; the possibility that the crossing design contributed to the collision, which spreads fault across multiple defendants; and the availability of insurance coverage, which varies by carrier and cargo type.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The figures here are an honest framework, not a promise. The real number is built from the medical records, the life-care plan, the economic loss projection, and the evidence of what the defendants did wrong — all of which takes time to develop and all of which depends on evidence that is disappearing right now.
What the Insurance Company Is Already Doing
Within hours of a collision this severe, the insurance machinery starts moving. Here are the plays you should expect — and the counter to each.
Play 1: The friendly “just checking in” call. Within days, someone will call you or your family member. The voice will be warm, concerned, sympathetic. They will say they just want to “check on you” and ask you to “tell us what happened” — on a recording. That recording is being built to be quoted against you in court. The adjuster is not your friend. The adjuster is a professional whose job is to minimize what the company pays. The counter: do not give a recorded statement. You are not required to. Say nothing about the collision, your injuries, or your recovery to any insurance representative — yours or theirs — until you have a lawyer. Every word you say will be transcribed, taken out of context, and used to shrink your claim.
Play 2: The fast settlement check. A check may arrive quickly — sometimes within weeks — with a release form attached. The release, once signed, extinguishes your right to seek any further compensation, no matter how serious your injuries turn out to be. The check is designed to arrive before the MRI results do, before the full extent of the brain injury is diagnosed, before the life-care plan is built. The counter: never sign a release from an insurance company without a lawyer reviewing it. A release is a final surrender of your rights. The money they are offering now is a fraction of what the case is worth once the full medical picture is known.
Play 3: The “you were partly at fault” argument. The adjuster will begin building a narrative that assigns fault to the injured party. In a truck-train collision, this might take the form of arguing the truck driver was contributorily negligent for failing to stop, or that the crossing design contributed to the collision. Every percentage point of fault assigned to the plaintiff reduces recovery — and in Texas, if the plaintiff is found to be 51% or more at fault, recovery is barred entirely. The counter: the comparative-fault fight is won with evidence — the ELD data showing speed and braking, the event recorder showing horn use, the signal logs showing whether the crossing was functioning. The evidence that wins this fight is the same evidence that is disappearing right now.
Play 4: The surveillance and social-media watch. The insurance company may assign investigators to watch you. They will photograph you in public. They will mine your social media. A photograph of you smiling at a family event — taken on a day when you were in agonizing pain but pushed through for your child’s birthday — will be presented in court as proof that you are not really hurt. The counter: assume you are being watched. Set your social media to private. Do not post about the collision, your injuries, your activities, or your recovery. Do not discuss the case with anyone except your lawyer. A moment of normal activity captured on camera can be twisted into a defense exhibit.
Play 5: The independent medical examination. The insurance company will send you to a doctor of their choosing for an “independent” medical examination. That doctor is not independent — the insurance company picks the doctor, pays the doctor, and the doctor knows what result keeps the referrals coming. The examination is designed to produce a report minimizing your injuries. The counter: never attend an IME without your lawyer’s guidance. The IME doctor’s report is a defense exhibit from the moment it is written.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a truck-train collision case is built — not a summary, but the actual steps, told by someone who has run them.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out — to the trucking company, to the railroad, to the crossing maintainer, and to any third-party data vendor (the ELD provider, the dashcam company, the telematics platform). That letter orders every entity to freeze every record: the ELD data, the ECM data, the event recorder, the signal logs, the dashcam footage, the driver qualification file, the maintenance records, the dispatch records, the crew-hours logs, the internal communications. The letter is the firewall between evidence that survives and evidence that legally disappears. It goes out the day you call.
Weeks two through four. The crash report is obtained from the responding agency. The DOT number and MC number on the truck are cross-referenced with FMCSA SAFER and SMS databases to identify the operating carrier, its safety history, its crash and inspection record, and its insurance filings. The railroad is identified and its FRA accident and incident record is pulled. The crossing is identified by its US DOT crossing inventory number, and its signal system type, warning devices, and accident history are pulled from the FRA crossing inventory database.
Months one through three. The truck’s ELD and ECM are downloaded by a forensic expert — before the carrier can “service” the device or put the truck back on the road. The train’s event recorder data is demanded from the railroad’s legal department. The crossing signal system logs and maintenance history are subpoenaed. The driver qualification file is produced in discovery. The site is surveyed by a board-certified accident reconstruction expert who measures crossing geometry, assesses sightlines, documents vegetation and signage, and models the vehicle dynamics leading to impact.
Months three through six. Discovery proceeds on parallel tracks. One track targets the trucking company’s regulatory compliance: was the driver qualified? Was he trained on grade-crossing protocols? Had he been driving past the hours-of-service limits? Was the truck maintained? The other track targets the railroad’s crossing maintenance: did the signals work? Was the horn sounded? Had there been prior complaints about this crossing? Were the sightlines obstructed?
Months six through twelve. The depositions happen. The safety director explains the company’s choices under oath. The train crew describes what they saw and heard. The crossing maintainer answers for the signal system. The reconstruction expert presents the physics. The life-care planner presents the cost of a lifetime of care. The forensic economist presents the present value of everything lost.
The number. The number at the end is built from all of it — the medical records, the life-care plan, the economic loss projection, the regulatory violations, the deposition testimony, and the proof of what the defendants knew and when they knew it. That number is what the demand is built on, what the Stowers offer is calibrated to, and what the jury hears if the case does not settle.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
Medical care first. If you or your loved one has not been fully evaluated by a physician, do that before anything else. Symptoms of traumatic brain injury can be subtle — the headache that does not go away, the word you cannot find, the irritability that is not like you. Symptoms of spinal injury can emerge days after the collision. A full medical evaluation creates a contemporaneous record that connects your injuries to the collision. Without it, the insurance company will argue your injuries came from somewhere else.
Do not give a recorded statement. Not to the trucking company’s insurer. Not to the railroad’s insurer. Not to your own insurer until you have spoken with a lawyer. Say: “I am not ready to give a statement. I need to speak with an attorney first.” That sentence protects you. Everything else you say can and will be used against you.
Do not sign anything. No release. No authorization. No settlement agreement. No medical authorization that gives the insurance company access to your entire medical history. If someone puts a document in front of you and says “just sign this so we can help you,” do not sign it. Call a lawyer first.
Preserve everything you can. Photograph the vehicle if you have access to it. Photograph the crossing if it is safe to do so. Save every text message, every phone log, every piece of correspondence from the trucking company, the railroad, or any insurer. Do not post about the collision on social media. Do not discuss it with anyone except your lawyer and your doctors.
Contact a lawyer. The preservation letter — the single most time-sensitive document in this entire case — cannot go out until a lawyer is retained. The evidence clocks we discussed earlier do not pause while you decide. Every day that passes is a day closer to legal destruction of the proof that decides your case. The call is free. The consultation is free. You do not pay us anything unless we win your case.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the railroad after a truck-train crash?
Yes — if the railroad’s negligence contributed to the collision. The railroad can be held liable for failing to maintain crossing signals, for allowing vegetation or structures to obstruct the sightlines at the crossing, for inadequate warning devices, for a deteriorated crossing surface that contributed to the truck stopping or sliding on the tracks, or for train crew failure to sound the horn as required by FRA regulations. The railroad is a separate defendant from the trucking company, with its own insurance and its own duties. Whether the railroad bears fault in this specific collision depends on what the crossing signal logs, the event recorder data, and the maintenance records show — which is why preserving that evidence is so urgent.
What if the truck driver was at fault?
If the truck driver failed to stop at the grade crossing as required by 49 CFR 392.10, that violation is powerful evidence of negligence — and in most jurisdictions, negligence per se. The trucking company is vicariously liable for its driver’s negligence under the doctrine of respondeat superior, meaning the company stands behind the driver’s share of fault. The company may also bear direct liability for negligent hiring, training, or supervision if the driver had a poor safety record, prior crossing violations, or inadequate training for the route. Even if the driver was at fault, the company is the defendant with the insurance and the assets to pay.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit?
Texas imposes a two-year statute of limitations on personal injury and wrongful death claims, running from the date of the collision. If a governmental entity may be named — for example, a county or municipality responsible for crossing maintenance — shorter notice-of-claim deadlines may apply. But the real deadline is not the statute of limitations. The real deadline is the evidence-retention clock: ELD data can be overwritten in days, dashcam footage in hours to days, train event recorder data within 30 to 90 days, and crossing signal logs on short retention windows. The preservation letter that freezes those records cannot go out until a lawyer is on the case.
What if the injured person was partly at fault?
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. If the injured party is found to be 50% or less at fault, they can recover damages reduced by their percentage of fault. If they are found to be 51% or more at fault, recovery is barred entirely. This is exactly why the insurance adjuster works so hard to pin fault on the injured party — every percentage point is money. The comparative-fault fight is won with evidence: the ELD data, the event recorder, the signal logs, the reconstruction. The same evidence that is disappearing while you read this.
How much is my case worth?
The case value range for a truck-train collision in Midland County runs from approximately $250,000 to $15,000,000 or more, depending on the severity of the injuries, whether a fatality occurred, the available insurance coverage, and whether punitive damages are available. Catastrophic injuries — TBI, spinal cord injury, amputation, severe burns — push the value toward the high end. The commercial defendant’s federal insurance minimum starts at $750,000 for general freight and rises to $5,000,000 for certain hazmat haulers. The real number is built from the medical records, the life-care plan, the economic loss projection, and the evidence of regulatory violations. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What evidence disappears fastest?
The dashcam footage is the fastest-dying evidence — it can overwrite itself in hours to days. The truck’s ECM data can be overwritten when the truck is driven again. The ELD data must be retained for six months under federal law, but after that, deletion is legal. The train’s event recorder data has internal railroad retention policies that can cycle it off within 30 to 90 days. The crossing signal system logs have short retention windows. The physical scene evidence — skid marks, debris patterns, crossing condition — erodes with weather and traffic within days. The preservation letter that freezes all of this cannot go out until a lawyer is retained.
Does it matter that this happened in the Permian Basin?
Yes. Midland sits in the heart of the Permian Basin, the most active oil and gas production region in the United States. The truck traffic on Highway 80 and county roads like CR 1130 is extraordinary — frac sand, produced water, crude oil, equipment — and many of these trucks are on oilfield-service schedules that push drivers to their limits. If the truck in this collision was an oilfield service vehicle, the federal Hours-of-Service regulations, the ELD requirements, and the cargo-specific insurance requirements all apply. The Permian Basin economic context also means the trucking company is likely well-capitalized and operating in a high-revenue industry — which affects the available coverage and the company’s ability to pay.
What if the crossing had no gates or lights?
If the grade crossing at Highway 80 and CR 1130 was a passive crossing — meaning it had only signs, no active warning devices like gates, lights, or bells — the crossing owner or maintainer may bear liability for inadequate warning devices under federal grade-crossing safety standards. The adequacy of the warning system is evaluated against the crossing’s history, traffic volume, sightline conditions, and the federal design standards for that crossing type. A crossing that should have had active warning devices but did not is a dangerous condition that the owner knew or should have known about. The crossing inventory data from the FRA database will show what warning devices were installed and whether they met the applicable standards.
Can the train crew sue if they were injured?
Yes. If train crew members were injured in this collision, they may have claims under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA) — a federal statute that is the exclusive remedy for injured railroad employees against their employer. FELA uses a featherweight causation standard: the railroad is liable if its negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury. If the railroad’s crossing maintenance practices contributed to the collision, third-party claims against other defendants are also available to truck occupants and others. FELA claims and third-party claims are separate legal tracks with different rules, deadlines, and defendants.
How do I pay for a lawyer?
We work on contingency. That means you pay nothing upfront and nothing out of pocket. Our fee is 33.33% of the recovery if the case settles before trial and 40% if it goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The first phone call costs you nothing. The preservation letter — the most urgent document in your case — goes out at our expense. Every piece of evidence we gather, every expert we retain, every filing we make is fronted by us and reimbursed only from the recovery. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing.
Who We Are
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We have been handling commercial trucking and catastrophic injury cases across Texas since 2001. Ralph Manginello, our managing partner, has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — 27+ years of trial practice including federal court. He is a journalist who became a lawyer, and he approaches every case with the same instinct: find the facts, name the truth, and make the other side answer for what they did. Ralph’s background is on our site if you want to see it.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. Before he joined this firm, Lupe spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. He knows how claims are valued from the inside, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is deployed, and how the delay tactics work. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. If your family is more comfortable in Spanish, you will speak directly with him — not through a translation service, not through a paralegal, but with the attorney who will be working your case.
We are based in Houston with offices in Austin and Beaumont, and we take commercial trucking and catastrophic injury cases across Texas, including Midland County. Our fee is contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if trial is necessary. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free, and it is confidential. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 — that is 1-888-288-9911 — any hour of any day. Our line is staffed 24/7 by live people, not an answering service.
Hablamos Español.
If your family was affected by the big rig and train collision near Highway 80 and CR 1130 in Midland, the most important thing you can do right now — today, before the evidence disappears — is call. The preservation letter goes out the day you retain us. The evidence freeze starts the day you call. Everything else — the investigation, the medical records, the life-care plan, the depositions, the demand — follows from that first letter. Without it, the proof of what happened at that crossing can be legally erased while you are still in the hospital.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win your case. Every day you wait is a day closer to the evidence being gone.