A crash with a car is usually decided by what the drivers say and what the police report records. A crash with a commercial truck is often decided by records the trucking company controls — and those records start expiring almost immediately.
Here is the order that matters.
Hour 0–2: at the scene
Call 911. Everything below is secondary to medical care.
Then, if you are physically able:
- Photograph the truck, including the door — the USDOT number is usually printed there.
- Photograph the plates, the trailer, and the cargo placards if any.
- Photograph the road: skid marks, debris, signage, the light, the weather.
- Get the driver’s name and employer, and the name of any witness who stops.
- Do not discuss fault with the driver, the carrier, or anyone who arrives to “help”.
The USDOT number is the single most useful thing you can write down. It identifies the carrier, its safety history and its insurer.
Day 1: the calls you will get
Expect contact from an adjuster, sometimes within hours. Their job is to record your account early, before the data exists, and to get a statement while you are injured and unrepresented.
You are not obliged to give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurer. You are obliged to notify your own insurer promptly — that is a different call and it is usually required by your policy.
Day 1–3: preserve the evidence
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the one that cannot be undone later.
A carrier’s electronic logging data, dashcam footage, engine telematics and maintenance records are kept on rolling retention cycles. Federal rules require a carrier to keep a backup copy of ELD records for six months — but that is a floor for compliance, not a promise that the specific data survives, and it says nothing about the dashcam or the telematics.
Send a written preservation demand to the carrier. Ours takes about two minutes:
Generate a preservation letter
Day 2–3: the paper trail
- Get the police report number and request the report. Crash reports can take weeks to become available.
- Start a folder: photos, the report, the USDOT number, every letter and email, and a note of every call with the time and who said what.
- Write down your own account while it is fresh, including your speed and what you saw. Memory degrades, and the other side’s account will be written down.
- Keep treatment records. Gaps in treatment are used to argue the injury was not serious.
What not to do in the first 72 hours
| Don’t | Why |
|---|---|
| Give a recorded statement to the other carrier | it becomes the anchor for the fault percentage |
| Sign a release or a “medical authorization” | authorisations can reach your whole history |
| Post about the crash on social media | it is collected |
| Accept a quick settlement | the first offer is priced before the evidence exists |
| Assume the police report decides fault | in a truck case, the data usually does |
Why the sequence matters
The two-year filing deadline is real, but it is not what loses truck cases. Cases are lost in the first week, when the percentage of fault gets set by an early statement and the evidence that would have contradicted it is overwritten.
Preserve first. Argue later.