West Palm Beach Truck Accident Lawyer
A loaded truck does not leave you with a fender bender. It leaves broken bones, months off work, and a company whose people were at the scene before you were. We can take it from here. Call 833-370-8692 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our West Palm Beach personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Palm Beach County since 1993.
Truck Accident claims in West Palm Beach
The carrier had an adjuster and an investigator on it before you left the hospital, and its own logs start being overwritten within days. In the meantime you are looking at surgery you did not plan for, a paycheck that stopped, and a vehicle you cannot replace. Getting to those records before they are gone is our job, and it starts the day you call.
Commercial traffic running I-95 through Palm Beach County shares the road with heavy commuter volume, and the collisions that result are rarely simple. Interstate carriers keep electronic logging data, driver qualification files and maintenance records that have no equivalent in a car case, and some of it can be lawfully destroyed within six months of the crash.
A West Palm Beach truck claim is made against the carrier as well as the driver, and it turns on federal records: duty status logs retained six months, engine data, and the hiring and maintenance files. Most claims arising on or after March 24, 2023 carry a two-year deadline, and the records clock runs out well before that.
What to do after a truck accident in West Palm Beach
- Get the carrier name and the DOT number, not just the driver. The door of the tractor carries a company name and a US DOT number, and the trailer often belongs to somebody else again. Photograph both. The driver is rarely the party that pays, and the difference between naming the right carrier in week one and finding it in month four is usually the difference between an intact file and a rebuilt one.
- Ask the officer for the crash report number before you leave. A commercial vehicle crash draws a longer investigation than a car crash, and sometimes a separate commercial vehicle enforcement unit. The report will list the carrier, the trailer, the insurer and any citation, and it fixes a date that several federal retention clocks then run from.
- Photograph the trailer, the placards and the load. The trailer number, any hazardous material placard, the way the load sat and whether it had shifted. A tractor is usually back in service within days and a trailer can be interstate the same night. What you photograph at the scene is frequently the only record of how that truck was actually loaded.
- See a doctor even if you walked away. A loaded tractor-trailer transfers force a car does not, and the injuries that matter often present two or three days later as numbness, headaches or a shoulder that will not lift. A gap between the crash and the first visit is the single most common argument a carrier makes about how badly somebody was hurt.
- Say nothing recorded to the carrier or its adjuster. A trucking company often has an adjuster and an investigator working the same day, sometimes at the scene. They will be courteous and they will ask for a recorded statement early, while nobody yet knows the extent of the injury. You have no obligation to give one, and we take that call from the day you hire us.
Where these happen in West Palm Beach
Palm Beach County carries a mix nowhere else in the region has. Interstate freight runs the I-95 spine, port traffic feeds the Port of Palm Beach at Riviera Beach, and agricultural hauling comes east out of the Glades on roads built for far less weight than they now carry.
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I-95 and the Okeechobee Boulevard interchange
The main freight corridor through the county, and the interchange where it meets downtown traffic.
- Rear-end collisions where traffic stacks back from the interchange without warning
- Lane changes across the weave between the interstate and the main road
- Seasonal traffic volume that a schedule set in another state does not account for
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The Beeline Highway and the port approaches
SR 710 and the roads into the Port of Palm Beach carry heavy freight on a route that is rural at one end and urban at the other.
- Two-lane sections with no median, where a crossover crash has nothing to absorb it
- Aggregate and bulk cargo, where load securement and weight are frequently the issue
- Long stretches with no camera coverage, which makes the engine data and the physical evidence decisive
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The agricultural corridors west of the city
Sugar and produce hauling out of the Glades on US-27, SR 80 and Southern Boulevard, at its heaviest during harvest.
- Harvest schedules that push drivers toward the limits of their permitted hours
- Farm equipment and heavy trucks sharing roads with commuter traffic
- Distance from a trauma center, which delays the first medical record and gives a carrier something to argue about
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Southern Boulevard and the retail main roads
Delivery and distribution traffic on the same roads as everyone else, where the vehicle is commercial even when the crash is not obviously a truck case.
- Box trucks and delivery vehicles over 10,000 pounds carrying commercial policies
- Wide right turns across a lane the driver had stopped watching
- Reversing into a loading bay from a live traffic lane
What causes them
- Brakes out of adjustment, which is the most common violation found in roadside inspections nationally
- Tires run past their service life on long Florida heat cycles
- A driver who should never have been hired, with a record the carrier could have pulled in an afternoon
- Speed that was legal for a car and wrong for eighty thousand pounds on wet pavement
- Blind spots along both sides and directly behind, made worse by a trailer the driver cannot see past
The injuries we see, and what each one turns on
Crush and orthopedic injuries
Pelvis, femur, tibia and complex joint fractures that need hardware, then a second operation to remove or revise it. The first settlement offer usually arrives before anybody has said out loud that a second operation is coming, and it is priced on the bills that exist rather than the ones that will.
Internal injuries
Organ damage and internal bleeding, which is why a commercial vehicle crash goes to a trauma center rather than an emergency room. Some of it is not apparent at the roadside and is found only on imaging hours later.
Amputation and burns
An underride or a fuel fire changes the nature of the claim entirely. It becomes a life care case: prosthetics that need replacing on a schedule, home modifications, and decades of work somebody will not do.
What Florida law requires you to prove
The federal rules that decide most of these cases
Interstate carriers run under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, and that is the practical difference between a truck case and a car case. A driver may not drive more than 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, and may not drive at all beyond the 14th hour of a shift, under 49 CFR § 395.3. Carriers must keep records of duty status and the supporting documents behind them for six months under 49 CFR § 395.8(k), which is the clock that decides whether a case is provable.
Who can be held responsible besides the driver
The carrier answers for its driver, and it can also answer for its own decisions: hiring somebody it should not have, keeping them after it knew, training that did not happen, maintenance that was deferred. The trailer owner, the company that loaded it and the broker that arranged the freight can each be separate defendants, which matters because a single policy is often not enough for a catastrophic injury.
The deadlines and the coverage floor
Most Florida negligence claims arising on or after March 24, 2023 carry a two-year limitation period under Fla. Stat. § 95.11. Fault is shared under Fla. Stat. § 768.81, and a person found more than 50 percent at fault recovers nothing. Interstate freight carriers must hold at least $750,000 in liability coverage under 49 CFR § 387.9, and considerably more for some hazardous loads.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide truck accident page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Palm Beach County
Palm Beach truck cases are decided by records rather than by recollection, and most of those records sit with the carrier and have federal retention periods.
- The crash report naming the carrier, the trailer, the insurer and any citation
- Records of duty status and supporting documents, retained six months, which show the hours actually worked
- Engine control module and telematics data for speed, braking and hard-brake events
- The driver qualification file and the pre-employment record check, which is where a hiring claim starts
- Maintenance and inspection records, and the carrier roadside inspection history
- Weight tickets and bills of lading, which matter more here than in most counties because of the bulk and agricultural loads
- Post-accident drug and alcohol testing, which has short federal windows
- Any camera footage along the route, which in the western corridors is often the one thing nobody has
On the rural corridors there is frequently no video at all, so the physical evidence and the electronic data carry the case on their own. That makes the timing of the preservation letter and the vehicle inspection more decisive here than in the coastal parts of the county.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in West Palm Beach is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled truck accident claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.
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Brett J. Yonon Senior Trial Attorney Selected to Florida Super Lawyers in 2024 and 2025. Nearly two decades in Florida courts, including a $3.5 million funeral home negligence verdict. Full profile → -
Richard P. Pravato Founding & Managing Attorney Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar since 2004, and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Injury cases exclusively since 1996. Full profile →
How insurance companies handle these claims
A trucking insurer is not the carrier that handles fender benders. It is a commercial file, often with counsel assigned early, and the people running it do this work every day.
- The offer arrives before anybody knows what the injury is
- An early number is priced on the bills that exist in month one, and it is often made while somebody is still deciding whether they need surgery. Nothing is signed until the treating doctors have said where this settles, because a release cannot be reopened when the second operation is scheduled.
- Fault is moved onto you by degrees
- You were in the blind spot, you braked hard, you changed lanes. Under Florida comparative fault every percentage point they move is money off the claim, and past 50 percent it is the whole claim. Scene photographs, the engine data and an independent reconstruction are what answer it, and all three depend on how early the work started.
- The driver is described as a contractor, not an employee
- It is a common answer and it is frequently wrong on the facts. What matters is who controlled the work: the dispatching, the schedule, the equipment, the training. Federal law also makes a carrier answerable for the vehicle operating under its authority, whoever technically employs the person driving it.
What a claim can include
Pain, and what daily life has become
Sleep, mobility, the things somebody used to do without thinking about them. It is proved with the account of the people around the injured person as much as with records.
Life care costs after a catastrophic injury
Equipment, home modification, attendant care and the replacement schedule for any of it. A life care plan prepared by a professional is what turns that from an argument into a number.
The vehicle and what was in it
Repair or actual cash value, the rental while it is sorted out, and personal property destroyed in the crash.
What we have recovered
Verified matters this firm has handled on truck accident claims. Figures are gross recoveries, before attorney fees, costs and medical liens come out of them.
Our client was a passenger in a work truck on a private dirt road owned by the company.
Settlement on the eve of trialEvery verdict and settlement we publish, with the press coverage for the ones that were reported. No result predicts another case: every claim turns on its own facts, its own evidence and the insurance actually available.
Why Wolf & Pravato in West Palm Beach
A Palm Beach County truck case is filed in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit in downtown West Palm Beach, minutes from this office. The venue a carrier expects to be tried in shapes what it offers, because commercial insurers keep records of which firms in a county actually take cases to a jury.
Board Certification in Civil Trial law is the Bar’s own measure of trial experience, and 861 of Florida’s 109,000-plus lawyers hold it. Richard Pravato has held it since 2004. It is the credential that changes how an adjuster reads a file, because it says the case has somewhere to go if they will not pay it.
Asking costs nothing and there is no fee unless we win. If we look at what happened and think the claim is not worth pursuing, we will say so on the first call instead of signing you up.
West Palm Beach truck accident questions
It happened on a two-lane road with no cameras anywhere. What is there to work with?
More than it appears. Modern tractors record speed, throttle, braking and hard-brake events, and that data does not depend on a witness. Physical evidence at the scene, tire marks, gouges and final rest positions, supports a reconstruction. Duty status records and maintenance files come from the carrier regardless of where the crash happened. The absence of video makes early work more important, not less.
The truck was hauling sugar cane during harvest. Does that matter?
It can. Harvest schedules push hours, and load weight and securement become live questions. Some agricultural operations also fall under different hours-of-service provisions during planting and harvesting seasons, which is one of the first things worth establishing rather than assuming.
How much insurance does a trucking company have to carry?
Interstate freight carriers must hold at least $750,000 in liability coverage under the federal rules, and considerably more for certain hazardous loads. That is a floor rather than a typical figure, and many carriers hold far more. Where an injury is catastrophic, finding the additional policies and the additional responsible companies is often what decides whether the claim can actually be paid.
The trucking company offered to settle quickly. Should I take it?
Be careful. An early offer usually arrives before anyone knows the full extent of your injuries, and accepting it ends the claim permanently. It also arrives before the carrier has produced a single log or maintenance record. An offer made that early is priced on what you do not yet know.
What if the truck driver was not at fault but the load shifted?
Then the company that loaded the trailer may be the responsible party, not the driver. Bills of lading, weight tickets and loading records show who packed it and how. This is a good example of why the paperwork matters more here than in a car case.
The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.
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Tell us what happened
A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 2101 Vista Parkway, Suite 4500, West Palm Beach, FL 33411.