If an 18-wheeler hit you, the hardest part of your case is usually not proving the driver made a mistake. It is finding everyone who is responsible. The tractor, the trailer, the cargo inside it and the driver behind the wheel can belong to four different companies, and each one has its own insurance and its own lawyers.
Blase and Erica Inzina handle these cases personally from Lafayette. Blase spent more than twelve years defending insurance companies before switching sides. The call is free. No fee unless we win. We answer calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Is an 18-wheeler case different from other truck cases?
An 18-wheeler, a semi, a tractor trailer and a big rig all mean the same vehicle, and which word you use does not change your claim. What changes it is that a rig is two vehicles coupled together, not one, and how much it weighs. On the Interstate System the federal gross weight limit is 80,000 pounds. 23 U.S.C. 127(a)(2)
There is a Louisiana wrinkle worth knowing in cane country. The state may issue special permits for hauling sugarcane at up to 100,000 pounds during harvest, for no more than 100 days a year. 23 U.S.C. 127(a)(9) If a cane truck hit you in grinding season, it may lawfully have been heavier than the rigs running beside it.
Two things follow from that, and they run through the rest of this page. A combination vehicle behaves differently in a crash than anything else on the road. And because the tractor and the trailer are separate pieces of property, they can have separate owners.
If you are not sure the vehicle that hit you counts as a rig, that question is answered on our truck accident page, which covers every commercial vehicle from delivery vans up.
Who actually owns the 18-wheeler that hit you?
This is the question that decides most 18-wheeler cases, and the answer is rarely one company.
A typical rig on I-10 involves more owners than you would guess. The driver may own the tractor outright and be leased to a motor carrier. The trailer can belong to a third company, the cargo to a fourth, and a freight broker may have arranged the load. The name painted on the door is often not the owner of anything you can see.
Federal leasing rules matter here, and they tend to work in your favor. When a carrier leases a truck, the lease itself has to say that the carrier has “exclusive possession, control, and use of the equipment for the duration of the lease” and that it “shall assume complete responsibility for the operation of the equipment for the duration of the lease.” 49 CFR 376.12(c)(1) That requirement exists so a carrier cannot sidestep responsibility by renting its fleet instead of owning it.
What this means in practice: do not assume the small company on the door is the whole case. Ask who the carrier was, who owned the trailer, who loaded it, and who arranged the load. Those answers come from the lease, the bill of lading and the carrier’s filings, and they are not things you can see at the scene.
Can the shipper or the company that loaded the trailer be responsible?
Sometimes, and it is regularly missed.
A trailer that is loaded too heavy, loaded unevenly, or secured badly is dangerous before the driver ever pulls out. When a load shifts in a curve, or when a rig cannot stop in the distance the driver expected, the loading can be the reason. The company that packed and secured that trailer is not always the company that drove it.
This matters for a practical reason. The driver may have modest coverage while the shipper is a large company with real insurance. Leaving that defendant out can quietly cap what a case is worth.
What is an underride crash?
An underride crash is when a smaller vehicle slides underneath the trailer. They happen at the back of a trailer and along its sides, and they are among the most serious collisions on the road, because the trailer bed can pass over the hood and reach the people inside.
Federal safety standards require rear impact guards on most trailers and semitrailers rated at 10,000 pounds or more, and the guard itself has to be certified to a separate strength standard. 49 CFR 571.224, 49 CFR 571.223 The rules set how low the guard must hang and how far back it must sit, and they carve out some trailer types, so whether a particular trailer had to have one is a real question rather than a given.
Whether the guard met the standard, and whether it was inspected and maintained, is worth asking in any crash where a car went under a trailer. The answer lives in the carrier’s maintenance and inspection records, not in the police report.
Why I-10 and I-49 crashes are their own problem
Lafayette sits where two long-haul corridors cross. I-10 carries freight across the country and I-49 runs north through the state, and the rigs on both are frequently driven by people who live nowhere near Acadiana, for carriers based in other states.
That changes the practical side of a case. The driver may be hard to locate a week later. The carrier may have no Louisiana office. Evidence sits on servers in another state. None of that stops a claim, but it does mean the first weeks matter more than they would in a wreck between two local drivers, because the people and the records are already moving away from you.
The evidence that disappears first
A rig generates more data than almost anything else on the road, and much of it has a short life. The engine control module in the tractor, the electronic logging device, the carrier’s dispatch records, the cargo paperwork and any dashcam footage all tell part of the story, and none of them is preserved just because there was a crash.
If you can do it safely at the scene, photograph or write down the company name and the USDOT number painted on the tractor’s door, the trailer’s license plate, and which agency responded (city police, sheriff, or State Police). On an 18-wheeler the tractor and the trailer often carry different company names, so get both if you can. Those details help us identify every company involved and request the crash report.
We cover what has to be preserved and how quickly on these pages:
- How black box and ELD data gets preserved
- How driving-hour limits get proved
- Why a trucking company sends investigators to the scene
- Should you give the trucking insurer a recorded statement
Questions people ask us about 18-wheeler crashes
Does it matter that the truck was from out of state? Not to whether you have a claim. It affects where the case is filed and how quickly we have to move to secure records, which is a reason to call early rather than a reason to worry.
The trailer was empty. Does that change anything? It can. An empty trailer handles differently and weighs far less, which affects crash reconstruction, and it removes the cargo owner and the loader from the list of possible defendants. It does not affect the carrier’s responsibility for the driver.
I was told the driver is an owner-operator, not an employee. Is that the end of it? No, and it is a common thing to hear at the scene. The federal leasing rule says plainly that nothing in the exclusive-possession requirement above “is intended to affect whether the lessor or driver provided by the lessor is an independent contractor or an employee of the authorized carrier lessee.” 49 CFR 376.12(c)(4) In other words, the contractor label does not answer the question by itself.
How long do I have? Louisiana deadlines and the exceptions to them are covered on our truck accident page. Do not wait for that deadline; the evidence questions above move much faster than it does.
Recent 18-wheeler and commercial truck results
Commercial truck cases are the center of this firm’s practice, and the results below are why. In one of them the other side made no offer at all until the eve of trial.
- $4,000,000 Hit by a commercial vehicle, Vermilion Parish
- $1,000,000 Bicycle rider struck by a commercial truck, Lafayette Parish
- $500,000 Motorcycle rider struck by a commercial truck, Vermilion Parish
- $475,000 Collision with a commercial truck, New Iberia
- $416,000 Collision with a commercial truck, East Baton Rouge Parish, litigated in federal court
Figures shown are rounded; the exact amounts are on file. Past results are not a guarantee of future successes. Each case is different and is evaluated on its own facts.
See all recent case results · What decides the value of a truck case
Communities we serve
We handle 18-wheeler and commercial truck claims across Acadiana and along the I-10, I-49 and US-90 corridors, including crashes in:
- Lafayette Parish: Lafayette, Broussard, Youngsville, Scott and Carencro
- Acadia Parish: Crowley and Rayne, along I-10
- Iberia Parish: New Iberia and Jeanerette, along US-90
- St. Landry Parish: Opelousas and Eunice, along I-49
- St. Martin Parish: Breaux Bridge and St. Martinville
- St. Mary Parish: Morgan City and Franklin, along US-90
- Vermilion Parish: Abbeville and Kaplan
- Iberville and West Baton Rouge Parishes: Plaquemine and Port Allen, along I-10 near the Mississippi River bridge
Talk to a Lafayette 18-wheeler accident lawyer
Call (337) 347-7177 for a free consultation, or request a free case review and we will call you back. No fee unless we win.
Truck crashes do not happen on business hours, and neither do we. Call any time, day or night, including weekends.