Midland, Midland County, Texas Train-Truck Collision — When an 18-Wheeler Gets Stuck on the Tracks and a Freight Train Cannot Stop
You know the intersection. Warehouse Road and West Industrial Avenue, out in the industrial corridor where Midland’s oilfield traffic meets the rail lines that cut through the Permian Basin like veins through rock. You have driven past those tracks a hundred times. Maybe you drive a truck on that route yourself — hauling water, hauling sand, hauling pipe to a pad somewhere south of town. On December 18, 2018, a semi-truck got high-centered on those exact tracks. The driver got out. He called 911. And then a Union Pacific freight train traveling toward Dallas slammed into the stuck rig because a freight train carrying thousands of tons of cargo cannot stop the way a car can — or even the way an 80,000-pound truck can. The driver survived. No injuries were reported that day. But if you are reading this page, you are probably here because your outcome was different — or because you are trying to understand what happens when it is. We are going to tell you everything: who is responsible, what the evidence looks like, how fast it disappears, what the law in Texas allows you to recover, and what the insurance companies on both sides of a train-truck collision are already doing while you are still trying to figure out what hit you.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We handle commercial-vehicle and catastrophic-injury cases in Texas. Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court, and he was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he asks questions for a living. Lupe Peña 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 — and now sits on your side of the table. He conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The call is free. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week — not an answering service, our staff.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the information below is what we would tell you if you were sitting across our table right now, because what you do not know about a train-truck collision can quietly erase your case before it begins.
Who Is Responsible When a Truck Gets Stuck on Railroad Tracks in Midland?
The short answer is: it depends on why the truck was stuck, whether the crossing was safe for the traffic that uses it, and whether anyone with the power to stop the train was notified in time. The long answer is that a train-truck collision in Midland’s industrial zone can expose a web of separate defendants, each with its own insurance, each ready to point at the others.
The railroad — Union Pacific or the operating carrier. A railroad owes duties at every grade crossing it maintains. It must keep the crossing surface in reasonable repair. It must provide adequate warnings — whether that is a crossbuck, a flashing signal, gates, or a combination. It must sound the horn and ring the bell approaching the crossing, as federal regulations require. It must maintain sight lines so a motorist (or a train engineer) can see what is ahead. And when a crossing is known to be problematic for large trucks — where the grade is too steep, the approach angle too sharp, or the surface too degraded for long-wheelbase vehicles to clear — the railroad and the road authority share responsibility for fixing it or warning about it. If the Warehouse Road crossing in Midland was a known high-center hazard for semi-trucks, and Union Pacific or the road authority did nothing, that is a liability theory that runs straight at the railroad.
The trucking company. If the driver was sent on a route that crossed tracks the truck could not clear, the company’s routing decision is its own negligence — separate from whatever the driver did or did not do. Federal motor carrier regulations require the carrier to maintain a driver-qualification file, to train the driver, and to ensure the equipment is safe for the route. If the driver was fatigued, distracted, or on a schedule that made rushing through an unfamiliar industrial zone the path of least resistance, the carrier’s choices are part of the cause. And in Texas — a state where employers can opt out of workers’ compensation — the injured truck driver may have a direct negligence claim against their own employer, not just the comp-benefits-only route that exists in most states.
The entity responsible for the road and the crossing design. Grade crossings exist at the intersection of railroad property and public roads. The road authority — which in Midland’s industrial zone could be the City of Midland, Midland County, or TxDOT — shares responsibility for crossing design, approach grades, signage, and routing restrictions. If the crossing’s geometry makes it a known trap for low-clearance, long-wheelbase trucks, and no warning signs tell drivers of large vehicles to find another route, the road authority can be a defendant.
The navigation or routing provider. If a GPS or fleet-routing system directed the truck onto a crossing it could not clear, the software provider may bear responsibility for routing commercial vehicles onto roads not designed for them. This is a newer and more contested theory, but it is increasingly part of the conversation when a truck driver is on an unfamiliar industrial route.
The railroad’s notification system. Federal regulators require grade crossings to have an Emergency Notification System (ENS) sign — a blue-and-white sign with a 1-800 number to call the railroad directly and a unique crossing identification number. When a truck is stuck on the tracks, calling that number is the fastest way to notify the railroad to stop or slow approaching trains. If the ENS sign was missing, obscured, or never installed at this crossing, the railroad’s own notification system failed — and that failure could be the difference between a train that stops and a train that does not. The 911 call the truck driver made was the right move, but the question is whether the 911 dispatcher reached the railroad’s dispatch in time, and whether the ENS system was available as the direct, fast link it was designed to be.
In any train-truck collision, the defendants do not line up to accept blame. The railroad blames the truck. The trucking company blames the crossing. The road authority blames the railroad. The trucking company’s insurer and the railroad’s insurer each argue the other side was the real cause. Untangling that web — figuring out who actually had the duty that was breached — is the work that begins the day you call a lawyer. Not the month after. Not after the insurance adjuster has taken your recorded statement and the evidence has started to disappear.
Texas Law and Your Deadline — The Statute of Limitations on a Train-Truck Collision
Texas gives you two years. The statute of limitations for a personal injury claim in Texas is two years from the date of the injury. The statute of limitations for a wrongful death claim is two years from the date of death. These deadlines are hard. If you miss them, the case is over — no matter how strong the evidence, no matter how clear the liability, no matter how devastating the loss. The courthouse door closes and it does not reopen.
Two years sounds like plenty of time to a family that is just starting to process what happened. It is not. The first six months are consumed by medical treatment, by grief, by the logistics of a life that has been rearranged around an injury or a death. The insurance adjuster knows this. The insurance adjuster is counting on it. Every month the adjuster delays, the evidence dies a little more, and the family’s urgency to act is replaced by the fog of survival. By the time the family is ready to call a lawyer, the logs may be gone, the camera footage may be overwritten, and the witness memories may have faded.
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule. Your own share of fault reduces your recovery — and if you are more at fault than the other party, you are barred from recovering anything. In a train-truck collision, the defense will work hard to pin fault on the truck driver: the driver should have known the route, should have checked the crossing clearance, should not have driven onto tracks the truck could not clear. The counter is the crossing design, the routing decision, the notification failure, the inadequate warning — all the things that put the driver in a position where getting stuck was not carelessness but a foreseeable result of a crossing that was never safe for the trucks that use it every day in Midland’s industrial zone.
Texas does not impose a general cap on non-economic damages — pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of companionship — in ordinary negligence cases. This matters enormously in a train-truck collision, because the human losses in these cases are catastrophic. The loss of a life, the loss of a body’s function, the loss of the person someone was before the train hit — these are losses that a jury can value without a statutory ceiling telling it to stop. (Texas does cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases, but a train-truck collision is not a medical malpractice case.)
If the injured person was a railroad employee — a train crew member, an engineer, a conductor — a different federal law applies. The Federal Employers’ Liability Act, or FELA, is the exclusive remedy for an injured railroad worker against the railroad. It carries a three-year statute of limitations and a unique causation standard: the railroad is liable if its negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury. Contributory negligence reduces but does not bar the recovery. If a Union Pacific crew member was injured in this collision, the FELA claim against Union Pacific is a powerful and separate path from the negligence claim a truck driver or bystander would bring.
The Injuries a Train-Truck Collision Produces — and What They Cost Over a Lifetime
The forces in a train-truck collision do not injure the way a car crash does. They destroy. When thousands of tons of moving steel meet a truck fixed on the rails, the energy that transfers through the cab is orders of magnitude beyond what the human body is engineered to absorb.
Traumatic brain injury. The deceleration forces in a train impact can cause the brain to slam against the inside of the skull even without a direct blow to the head. Diffuse axonal injury — the tearing of the brain’s white-matter tracts — can occur when the head whips violently and stops. A “mild” traumatic brain injury — the word “mild” is a triage classification, not a description of the life that follows — can come with a perfectly normal CT scan. More than a third of patients scored at the top of the “mild” range on the Glasgow Coma Scale still had potentially life-threatening intracranial lesions. At least one in seven people with a so-called mild brain injury never fully recovers — the headaches, the memory loss, the personality changes, the inability to concentrate become a permanent condition. These injuries are proven with advanced imaging, neuropsychological testing, and the testimony of people who knew the person before. The defense will call it “subjective.” The medicine says otherwise. If you or someone you love took a blow to the head in a train-truck collision, understanding the guide to 18-wheeler accident injuries is a starting point — but the real evaluation takes a clinician and, often, a neuropsychologist.
Spinal cord injury. The axial and flexion forces of a train impact can fracture vertebrae and damage the spinal cord, producing paralysis. The lifetime cost of care for a high cervical spinal cord injury — quadriplegia — runs into the millions of dollars. The national spinal cord injury registry puts the first year of care for a high tetraplegia injury at more than a million dollars, and lifetime costs for a young adult at multiple millions. Those figures deliberately exclude lost wages and earning capacity. A spinal cord injury does not end at the wheelchair — it opens the door to a lifetime of infections, pressure injuries, blood-pressure crises, and shortened life expectancy.
Crush injuries and amputation. The cab of a truck struck by a freight train can collapse inward, pinning and crushing the occupant. Crush injury can trigger compartment syndrome — a condition where swelling inside a sealed muscle sheath chokes off blood flow, and the limb dies within a roughly six-hour window if a surgeon does not open the sheath to relieve the pressure. Crush syndrome can flood the bloodstream with potassium and muscle protein, causing cardiac arrest and kidney failure — sometimes not at the moment of injury but when the trapped limb is freed. Amputation may follow. The lifetime cost of an amputation — prosthetic devices that must be replaced every three to five years, revision surgeries, physical therapy, lost earning capacity — runs into the hundreds of thousands to millions, with the largest study of limb-threatening injuries finding amputation costs roughly three times higher than limb reconstruction over a lifetime.
Thermal burns. If the truck’s fuel tanks rupture on impact and ignite, the driver or anyone nearby faces severe burns. Burn care follows a brutal arithmetic — roughly one day in the hospital for every one percent of the body burned. A burn covering a third of the body can mean a month in a burn unit, multiple grafting surgeries, and years of scar-release operations. The American Burn Association has published referral criteria that send every chemical burn, every high-voltage electrical burn, every burn to the hands or face, and any burn over a tenth of the body to a specialized burn center. Midland Memorial Hospital can stabilize a burn patient, but definitive burn care may require transfer to a specialized center — potentially hours away from Midland by ground or air.
Post-traumatic stress disorder. For the truck driver who escaped before the train hit — or for a train crew member who watched the collision happen and could not stop it — the psychological injuries can be as disabling as the physical ones. PTSD is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate diagnostic criteria, not a label a lawyer assigns. It is proven with validated clinical instruments and the testimony of treating clinicians. The defense will call it invisible. The science — and the diagnostic manual — say it is real, measurable, and compensable.
The common thread across every injury type is the same: the defense will work to minimize what it cannot see on a scan, to attribute the injury to a pre-existing condition, and to discount the future cost of care. The counter is the medical record built from day one, the treating specialists who document the trajectory, and the experts — life-care planners, forensic economists, neuropsychologists — who translate the harm into numbers a jury can hold.
How a Train-Truck Collision Case Is Actually Built — Week One to Resolution
Here is how a case like this is actually built, from the day you call to the day it resolves.
Week one: the preservation letter. The first document we send is a litigation-hold and evidence-preservation letter. It goes to the trucking company, to the railroad, and to any third party that holds evidence — the ELD vendor, the camera-system provider, the 911 dispatch center, the crossing signal maintainer. That letter says: do not destroy, alter, or overwrite any data, footage, logs, records, or physical evidence related to this collision. It is the single most time-critical step in the case. Everything else depends on the evidence surviving.
Weeks two through four: the downloads and records demands. The truck’s ECM is imaged by a qualified forensic technician with the right equipment — because doing it wrong, or even turning the key, can corrupt the data. The locomotive event recorder data is demanded from the railroad. The crossing signal logs are demanded. The 911 audio and CAD records are pulled. The driver-qualification file, the hours-of-service records, the post-accident drug test results, the dispatch records, and the truck’s maintenance history are all formally requested. The truck itself — the physical vehicle — is inspected before the carrier or the insurance company can repair it, sell it, or send it to a salvage yard. That truck is evidence, and it must not be released.
Months two through six: the experts. A reconstruction engineer examines the physical evidence — the truck, the crossing, the track, the debris field — and builds a model of the collision from the laws of physics. A human-factors expert analyzes whether the crossing provided adequate warning and whether the driver or the train crew had time to react. A crossing-design expert evaluates whether the grade, the approach geometry, and the warning system met the standards for the truck traffic this Midland crossing actually carries. If the driver was injured, a life-care planner begins building the cost stream of future medical care. A forensic economist begins the work of translating that stream into a present-value dollar figure.
Months six through twelve: discovery and depositions. Once the lawsuit is filed, the discovery process begins. The railroad produces its crossing inspection records, its signal maintenance logs, its train crew’s hours-of-service records, its event recorder data, its camera footage. The trucking company produces its driver-qualification file, its routing policies, its training records, its ELD data. The depositions follow — the train engineer, the conductor, the trucking company’s safety director, the crossing maintainer, the 911 dispatcher. Under oath, in front of a court reporter, the people whose decisions put the truck on the tracks and the train on the same rails have to answer for what they did and what they knew.
The number. The number at the end is not a guess. It is built from the medical records, the life-care plan, the economic-loss projection, the comparative-fault analysis, and the evidence of what each defendant did wrong. It accounts for past and future medical care, lost wages and earning capacity, household services, pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, and — where the facts support it — punitive damages. The defense’s first offer will be a fraction of it. The negotiation is the process of closing that gap with evidence, not with argument. And if the gap will not close, the case goes to a jury in the Midland County courthouse, where twelve people from this community decide what a life is worth.
For a broader look at how commercial truck cases work from start to finish, the definitive guide to commercial truck accidents walks through the process in plain language.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the railroad if my truck was hit by a train?
Yes — if the railroad’s negligence contributed to the collision. A railroad’s duties at a grade crossing include maintaining the crossing surface, providing adequate warnings, sounding the horn and bell, maintaining sight lines, and operating the train at a reasonable speed. If the crossing was a known hazard for large trucks and the railroad did nothing, if the warning signals failed, if the crew did not sound the horn, or if the railroad was not notified in time because its emergency notification system was missing or inadequate, the railroad can be a defendant. The railroad will argue the truck should not have been on the tracks. The answer is that the crossing should have been safe for the trucks that use it every day in Midland’s industrial zone — or at minimum, warned them away.
What if the truck driver was partly at fault for getting stuck on the tracks?
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule. Your own share of fault reduces your recovery, and if you are more at fault than the other party, you are barred. But “partly at fault” does not mean “no case.” If the crossing design was the reason the truck got high-centered — if the grade was too steep for the truck’s wheelbase, if there was no signage warning large vehicles, if the approach geometry was a known problem — then the crossing design is a separate cause that shifts fault back to the railroad and the road authority. The adjuster will work hard to pin fault on the driver. The counter is the crossing itself.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit after a train-truck collision in Texas?
Two years. Texas’s statute of limitations for personal injury is two years from the date of the injury. For wrongful death, it is two years from the date of death. If the injured person was a railroad employee, the Federal Employers’ Liability Act gives three years from the date of the injury. These deadlines are absolute. Miss them and the case is over. But the evidence clocks are shorter than the legal clock — the truck’s logs can be destroyed in six months, the camera footage in weeks. The deadline to sue is two years. The deadline to save the evidence is measured in days.
How much is a train-truck collision case worth?
There is no single number. The value of a train-truck collision case depends on the severity of the injuries, the cost of past and future medical care, the loss of earning capacity, the pain and suffering, the age and occupation of the injured person, the number and insurance limits of the defendants, and the comparative-fault allocation. A catastrophic injury — spinal cord, traumatic brain injury, amputation — can produce a case worth millions of dollars in lifetime care costs alone. A wrongful death case includes the financial support the family lost, the companionship lost, and the emotional devastation. The firm has recovered $50 million-plus across its practice, including multi-million-dollar recoveries in trucking wrongful-death cases. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What evidence disappears fastest after a train-truck crash?
The forward-facing camera footage on the locomotive — potentially gone in days or weeks if not preserved. The truck’s ECM hard-brake and last-stop data — overwritten the next time the truck is driven. The truck driver’s ELD logs and supporting documents — legally destroyable after six months. The crossing signal system logs — maintained on the signal system’s own schedule. The 911 audio — retained per agency policy. The physical truck — repairable, salable, or crushable once the carrier or insurer decides to dispose of it. The preservation letter that freezes all of these is the most time-critical document in the entire case.
Can a freight train stop in time to avoid a stuck truck?
Sometimes. A freight train’s stopping distance from 50 miles per hour can be well over a mile — dramatically more than the 525 feet a loaded truck needs at 65. If the train was two miles from the crossing when the railroad was notified, emergency braking might bring it to a stop in time. If it was a mile away, it likely could not. The question is not just distance — it is notification. How long between the 911 call and the railroad’s dispatch being alerted? Was the Emergency Notification System sign present at the crossing? Did anyone call the railroad’s 1-800 number? The timeline between the stuck truck, the 911 call, the notification, and the collision is the spine of the liability case against the railroad.
Does the Federal Employers’ Liability Act apply to truck drivers?
No. FELA protects railroad employees — train crews, engineers, conductors, track workers — not truck drivers or motorists. If a Union Pacific crew member was injured in the collision, they would have a FELA claim against the railroad with a three-year statute of limitations and a unique “featherweight” causation standard that requires only that the railroad’s negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury. A truck driver injured in the same collision would bring a state-law negligence claim, not a FELA claim. The two are separate legal paths for separate plaintiffs, even though they arise from the same event.
What if the grade crossing was designed poorly for trucks?
That is a central liability theory in many train-truck collisions. A crossing that creates a “hump” — where the road rises to meet the tracks at a grade that long-wheelbase, low-clearance vehicles cannot clear — is a known and documented hazard. If the crossing at Warehouse Road and Industrial in Midland was a known high-center risk for semi-trucks, and no signage warned large vehicles to avoid it, no alternative route was designated, and no corrective engineering was done, the entities responsible for the crossing design and maintenance — the railroad, the road authority, or both — can be held liable for the conditions that caused the truck to get stuck.
Can I still recover if the trucking company says I was an independent contractor?
Yes. Federal leasing regulations (49 CFR § 376.12) provide that when a carrier leases on a driver and equipment, the carrier has exclusive possession, control, and use of the equipment for the duration of the lease and assumes complete responsibility for its operation. The carrier cannot simply wave off responsibility by calling the driver a contractor — the law put the carrier in control of that truck, and the carrier answers for what happened with it. If you were an owner-operator leased to a carrier, the carrier’s insurance and the lease structure are part of the recovery path.
What should I do if the insurance company already called me?
Be polite. Do not give a recorded statement. Do not sign anything. Do not discuss your injuries, your memory of the collision, or your current condition. Say: “I am not prepared to give a statement at this time. I am represented by counsel and will have my attorney contact you.” Then call 1-888-ATTY-911. The adjuster’s call is not a welfare check. It is evidence collection, and everything you say is being recorded and transcribed for the purpose of reducing or denying your claim.
The Firm Behind This Analysis
Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in Texas courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — a reporter who learned to ask questions, verify facts, and tell the truth in plain language. He is the managing partner of the firm. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. He does not like losing, and the cases he takes are the ones where the company’s choices — not the victim’s — are what put the harm in the room.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their valuation software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours — before the real injuries are diagnosed. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered. He knows the IME doctors the insurers pick and the surveillance they run. He now uses that knowledge for injured clients. He is a third-generation Texan, fluent in Spanish, and he conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Hablamos Español.
We take 18-wheeler and commercial-truck collision cases across Texas, including the Permian Basin, where the oilfield truck traffic that runs through Midland’s industrial corridors meets the rail lines that cross them. The Permian Basin oilfield truck practice is where the water haulers, sand movers, and crude haulers that dominate this region’s roads become the defendants we know how to investigate. And when a train-truck collision takes a life, the wrongful death practice is where the family’s loss becomes a case that a jury in Midland County can value honestly.
The fee is contingency. Thirty-three and a third percent before trial. Forty percent if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. You will speak to a person, not a recording, 24 hours a day. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911).
If you are reading this page at 2 a.m. from a hospital room in Midland, or from a kitchen table covered in medical bills and tow-yard receipts, the most important thing we can tell you is this: the evidence in your case is on a clock. The truck’s logs have six months. The camera footage has weeks. The locomotive’s recorder has its own cycle. The crossing signal data is on a timer. The preservation letter that freezes all of it is the first thing we send — the day you call. Not the week after. Not after the funeral. The day you call.
Call. 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. The firm is a powerful resource for the education, the governing law, the evidence clocks, the honest case evaluation, and the fight — but the firm has not been retained on, has not investigated, and has taken no action on the December 2018 Midland train-truck incident described above. This page exists to serve anyone facing a situation like it.