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Hit by a big rig on Highway 4, Hillcrest, Lone Tree, or anywhere in Antioch? We lock down the truck’s data before the carrier can lose it, and we know the federal rulebook they have to answer to.
While you wait:
A passenger car colliding with an 80,000-pound commercial truck is not a comparable event to a typical auto crash. Truck cases live in a different legal universe, governed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs), administered by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), and shaped by commercial insurance policies that dwarf personal auto coverage. The trucking company already has a rapid-response team trained to lock down their version of events within hours of a crash. You need someone in your corner who knows the federal rulebook just as well. If no commercial truck was involved in your crash, our Antioch accident lawyers handle car, motorcycle, and other injury claims too.
When the rules below get broken and someone gets hurt, those violations become evidence of negligence. When the rules are followed but the crash still happens, the records of compliance often reveal the real cause. Either way, your case lives or dies on whether the right records get preserved and the right experts review them in time.
Antioch sits on one of Northern California’s busiest east-west freight arteries. Highway 4 connects the Central Valley, and the Port of Stockton, to the Bay Area. Big rigs, double trailers, gas haulers, paper-mill freight, utility trucks, and intermodal loads pass through Antioch every hour of the day. Add the I-680 connector through Concord, and the corridor becomes the meeting point for Bay Area and Central Valley freight. These are the locations where commercial truck crashes consistently cluster:
Heavy merge volume, exit-side rear-end crashes during commute hours. Truck braking distances from highway speed are many multiples of a passenger car; backups here produce catastrophic impacts.
High-volume retail and commuter feed where trucks slow rapidly into stop-and-go traffic. Last-second lane cuts and following-too-close patterns produce some of the worst crashes we see in eastern Contra Costa.
Known for lane-change and merge collisions, particularly involving trucks crossing multiple lanes to make their exit. Blind-spot sideswipes are a recurring pattern.
Antioch’s northern industrial frontage: paper plants, gas and utility freight, river-adjacent facilities. Constant commercial truck flow on narrower streets produces right-turn squeeze and intersection T-bone patterns.
Long stop-and-go segments where rear-end big-rig crashes do catastrophic damage to passenger vehicles in front of them. Tule fog and first-storm rain compound the risk seasonally.
Heavy commercial turn volume into and out of the freeway. Right-turn squeeze crashes, where trucks make wide turns from the wrong lane and trap passenger vehicles to the curb side, occur with predictable regularity.
A truck crash almost never has a single defendant. Sorting out who is responsible, and which insurance policy responds, is a core part of what we do. More defendants generally means more available coverage, which is critical in catastrophic-injury cases.
Almost always a defendant. Direct liability for unsafe operation: speeding, distraction, fatigue, impairment, or failing to maintain a safe following distance.
Direct liability for negligent hiring, retention, training, supervision, maintenance, and dispatch decisions that pushed the driver into HOS violations, plus vicarious liability for the driver under respondeat superior.
A separate company is often responsible for loading and securing the freight. Improper loading shifts liability, and policy coverage, to the loader.
Many carriers outsource maintenance to third-party shops. If a brake or tire failure caused the crash, the maintenance vendor may be a defendant with separate insurance.
Defective brakes, tires, steering, or trailers can put the manufacturer in the case under product liability. Freight brokers can be liable for negligently selecting an unsafe carrier with a poor safety record.
If a dangerous road condition contributed, a poorly designed merge, missing signage, signal failure, a public entity may share fault. Government claims have a 6-month presentation deadline.
This is the part that does not wait. Trucking companies are allowed to overwrite or destroy certain records on a regular cycle. Some of the most important evidence in your case has a shelf life measured in days or weeks unless a lawyer locks it down with a formal preservation (spoliation) letter.
The truck’s Electronic Control Module records speed, throttle position, brake application, and engine events in the seconds before impact. It can be lost the moment the truck is repaired or returned to service.
Electronic Logging Device data shows driver hours, location, hard braking, and engine events. Federal retention is generally six months for RODS, but carriers’ systems may overwrite event-level detail much sooner.
Many fleets run forward-facing and driver-facing cameras. Footage is often overwritten on a 30- to 90-day rolling cycle. We send preservation demands the day we’re retained.
Fuel receipts, bills of lading, dispatch records, toll records, text messages, and satellite messaging. These often show whether dispatch pressured the driver into HOS violations.
Federal rules require post-accident testing. The presence, or absence, of these records is itself meaningful evidence.
Annual DOT inspections, daily driver inspections, brake service records, tire condition logs. Skipped maintenance is a recurring root cause we find when we get the records.
The single most important practical advice we can give you: do not wait. ECM data can disappear when the truck is repaired. Dashcam footage cycles out in 30 to 90 days. Dispatch notes and text messages get purged. The longer you go before a lawyer sends a formal spoliation letter to the carrier, broker, loader, and maintenance vendor, the more of the evidence on which your case depends will be gone for good. Call 1-800-707-0707 the day of the crash if at all possible.
The first few hours after a commercial truck crash determine a lot. Trucking companies dispatch rapid-response teams to the scene to lock down their narrative, sometimes within minutes. Here’s exactly what to do:
Miss these and you may lose your right to recover entirely. Truck cases also have a separate, urgent timeline for evidence preservation that runs in days, not years:
Statute of limitations from accident date (Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 335.1)
If Caltrans, City of Antioch, or Contra Costa County share fault (Gov. Code § 911.2)
Truck records may be overwritten before a spoliation letter goes out
Truck cases involve catastrophic injury patterns more often than passenger-only crashes. Recoverable damages must account for the lifetime cost of those injuries, not just the bedside number an early adjuster might quote.
Three reasons. One: commercial truck injuries are typically more severe; an 80,000-pound vehicle produces catastrophic injury patterns that passenger-only crashes don’t. Two: available insurance is much higher, $750K to $5M in federal minimums versus California’s $30K auto minimum. Three: federal regulations create more avenues to prove fault, and documented violations support larger non-economic and punitive damages awards.
You call us at 1-800-707-0707. We listen, answer your questions honestly, and tell you whether you have a case worth pursuing. No commitment. No fee.
Within hours of being retained, we send formal preservation letters to the carrier, broker, loader, and maintenance vendor, demanding ELD data, dashcam, driver logs, dispatch, the DQ file, drug and alcohol testing, maintenance records, and the truck and trailer themselves.
We pull the Antioch PD or CHP report, run the FMCSA SAFER report on the carrier, gather medical records, identify witnesses, secure surveillance footage, and reconstruct the crash with engineers when warranted.
We make sure you’re getting the medical care you need, including specialists for TBI, spine, and orthopedic injuries, and we handle lien arrangements if you don’t have health insurance.
Once you’ve reached maximum medical improvement (or future care can be valued by a life-care planner), we send a comprehensive demand to every applicable insurance policy and negotiate hard.
If the carrier and its insurer won’t pay what your case is worth, we file suit at the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse in Martinez. Willingness to try cases is what produces serious offers.
We pull crash reports for our clients as part of intake. You don’t have to deal with the bureaucracy yourself.
More Antioch injury help:
Often more than one party. The driver is almost always a defendant, but the trucking company, the cargo loader, the maintenance contractor, the broker, the manufacturer, and even a government entity may share responsibility. Identifying every responsible party and every applicable insurance policy is a core part of trucking case work, and is the reason truck cases recover much more than equivalent passenger-only crashes.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulates commercial trucking in the United States. Its rules, the FMCSRs, govern hours of service, driver qualification, drug and alcohol testing, vehicle maintenance, and cargo securement. Violations of FMCSA rules are powerful evidence of negligence in your case.
Federal rules require Electronic Logging Device data and supporting records to be retained for a finite period, generally six months for RODS. Carriers’ internal systems may overwrite event-level detail much sooner, and dashcam footage often cycles out on a 30- to 90-day rolling basis. The single most important reason to call a lawyer immediately after a serious truck crash is to get a spoliation letter out before this data disappears.
Federal law requires interstate commercial trucks to carry between $750,000 and $5 million in liability coverage depending on cargo type, with hazardous-materials carriers at the higher end (49 CFR 387). California’s minimum auto liability is just $30,000 per person. Because the available coverage is much larger, well-supported truck cases are valued substantially higher than equivalent passenger-only crashes.
Most truck crashes involve interstate carriers based outside California, and we routinely handle these cases. Out-of-state carriers are still subject to California state-court jurisdiction for crashes that occur in California, and federal regulations apply uniformly across state lines. We pursue claims regardless of where the carrier is headquartered.
Two years from the date of the accident under California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. If a government entity contributed (Caltrans, City of Antioch, Contra Costa County), a written claim is required within 6 months under Government Code § 911.2. But the practical deadline that controls truck cases is much shorter: the spoliation letter to preserve ECM, ELD, and dashcam data needs to go out within days.
Almost never, not before you talk to a lawyer. Early offers in trucking cases are designed to close out the claim before the carrier’s own records have to be produced and before the full extent of the injury becomes clear. Once you sign a release, the case is over. Call us first, consultations are free.
Nothing up front. Scranton Law works on contingency. Our fee comes out of the settlement or verdict, only if we win. We also advance the costs of investigation, expert witnesses, accident reconstruction, life-care planners, and litigation. If we don’t win, you owe us nothing.
The trucking company’s first offer is what they hope you’ll accept before their records get pulled into discovery. Get a free evaluation before the evidence cycles out. Free consultation. No fee unless we win.
Attorney Advertising. Scranton Law Firm, 2450 Stanwell Dr, Concord, CA 94520. Responsible attorney: Christian Scranton, California State Bar #196959. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.