Got Hit by an 18-Wheeler? We Take On Trucking Companies.
In October 2025, an 18-wheeler changed lanes unsafely on the Dallas North Tollway and slammed into a Honda Civic driven by Juan Quiroz. His car crashed into a concrete barrier and flipped. Two more cars then hit him. Quiroz was heading to work. He had three kids at home. He died right there.
Two months later, a truck ran into two 12-year-old girls walking to their bus stop on Horizon North Parkway. Ziyah Sawyer and Elizah were holding hands. They’d checked for traffic. Didn’t matter. The truck hit them both. Broken bones, damaged organs, surgeries for both girls.
Eighty thousand pounds hitting your car or hitting you directly doesn’t leave many good outcomes. Hospital bills start arriving while you’re still recovering. Your paycheck stops showing up. Insurance people call asking questions before your stitches come out. The trucking company already has lawyers working.
We represent people hurt by commercial trucks throughout Plano and the Dallas area. We study federal trucking rules constantly and know insurance tactics. We’ve already recovered millions making trucking companies pay for what they did.
Come see us at Venture X Plano West: 6010 W Spring Creek Pkwy #112, Plano, TX 75024. We’ve settled multiple truck cases for over $2 million each.
Talking to us costs nothing. You don’t pay us unless we get you money.
Call (800) 863-5312 or our local line: (469) 809-5996.
Who Handles Your Truck Case
Jack Zinda opened this firm in 2008 sick of watching insurance companies push injured people around. He wanted something strong enough to stand up to any trucking corporation.
Truck crashes work totally different legally than regular car wrecks. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration controls commercial trucking through tons of regulations: how many hours drivers can stay on the road, how heavy loads can be, what maintenance schedules look like, who gets to drive commercially. Companies break these rules constantly. When they do and someone gets hurt, those broken rules become your proof. Our lawyers specialize in digging that up.
Hiring us means getting way more than one attorney. A hundred-plus people work injury cases for us: investigators who grab evidence before it disappears, specialists rebuilding crashes to show exactly what happened, experts who memorize federal trucking regulations, medical professionals who calculate what your care will really cost long-term, trial lawyers who’ve beaten trucking companies in court.
We reject cases regularly. We’re selective. That means your lawyer actually has time to know your file inside out, get back to you fast, and care about what happens to you.
Six thousand five hundred cases closed. Four hundred million dollars recovered for clients. Several truck settlements individually topped two million.
Want to discuss what happened? Call (800) 863-5312 or send information via our online form. We won’t charge you anything.
Victories Against Trucking Companies
Jack Zinda‘s a lifetime member of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum. You get there by winning seven-figure and eight-figure cases for catastrophically injured people. One percent of American lawyers qualify.
Several of our attorneys made The Trucking Trial Lawyers Association’s Top 10 and the National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40.
AWARDED TO JOHN C. (JACK) ZINDA BY THE NATIONAL TRIAL LAWYERS ASSOCIATION (2016-2020) AWARDED TO JOHN C. (JACK) ZINDA (2009, 2011-2012, 2014-2021), & NEIL SOLOMON (2020-2021) AWARDED TO JACK ZINDA (2016-2020) LIFETIME MEMBERS JOHN C. (JACK) ZINDAOur Awards
See How We’ve Helped Others
After a serious injury, the right legal support should make things simpler, not harder. At Zinda Law Group, our goal is to reduce uncertainty so you can focus on recovery while we handle the legal work.
Hear From a Real Client – Jacob
“With Zinda Law Group, I was able to get my life back together.” – Jacob
Hear From a Real Client – Marlon
“Zinda was very prepared and very compassionate.” – Marlon
Why People Hurt by Trucks Hire Us
We Only Get Paid When You Do
Here’s how it works: we win you money, we take a cut. We don’t win anything, we don’t get paid. That’s it. No hourly billing. Nothing upfront. Texas regulates what percentage we can take. We’ll explain the exact number before you agree to anything.
We Actually Know Federal Trucking Law
Most injury lawyers handle regular car accidents. Trucks operate under totally different federal rules. Those regulations control everything: driver work hours, cargo weight limits, maintenance requirements, licensing standards. When trucking companies violate these rules and hurt people, we know how to prove those violations.
Insurance Games Don’t Work on Us
Trucking insurers delay everything hoping you’ll get desperate and take whatever they offer. They blame you before they investigate. They make quick lowball offers before you realize how badly you’re hurt. We’ve seen every trick. None of them work.
A Whole Team Backs You Up
Evidence specialists move fast preserving proof before it’s gone. Medical experts figure out what your lifetime care will actually cost. Regulation experts catch violations other lawyers miss. Trial attorneys who’ve defeated trucking companies in courtrooms. Staff making sure nothing gets missed or delayed.
We Speak Normal English
The Better Business Bureau gave us an A+. Clients consistently say one thing: we keep them informed. Legal stuff confuses everyone. Most lawyers talk like lawyers. We explain what’s happening using regular words, and we tell you right away when anything changes.
We’ve Beaten Big Trucking Companies
Complicated truck cases against major carriers with unlimited money for lawyers? We’ve won those across Texas. Millions recovered. Rich corporate defendants don’t scare us.
CASE RESULTS
How Cases Work
Step 1: Free Meeting
Tell us what happened. Show us whatever proof you have. Get our honest opinion. No cost. No obligation.
Step 2: Locking Evidence Down
We send legal preservation notices to trucking companies forcing them to keep all accident evidence. Investigators visit crash sites, interview witnesses, start collecting documentation before anything disappears.
Step 3: Thorough Investigation
We get driver logbooks, ELD data, maintenance logs, cargo records, employment files, training records, company safety documents. Crash reconstruction specialists and federal regulation experts spot every violation that contributed.
Step 4: Expert Analysis
Medical experts document injuries and project future treatment needs. Economic specialists calculate lifetime earning losses. Trucking experts testify about violated standards.
Step 5: Tough Negotiation
We build comprehensive demand packages showing exactly what you’re owed and why. We present them to insurance carriers. Our trial preparation shows we’re serious. Insurance companies recognize that and usually produce better offers.
Step 6: Court if Needed
If insurers refuse fair money, we file lawsuits and present cases to Texas juries. Our trial lawyers have extensive trucking case experience.
Crash Types We Handle
We represent people hurt in every type of commercial truck collision:
- Rear-end crashes when trucks couldn’t stop
- Sideswipe crashes during lane changes when drivers missed blind spots
- Head-on crashes when trucks crossed centerlines
- Rollover crashes from speed or shifting cargo
- Jackknife crashes where trailers swing wild
- Multi-car pileups on Dallas area highways
- Underride crashes where cars go under trailers
- Cargo spill crashes creating hazards
Why Hiring a Lawyer Matters
Trucking company insurers protect company profits, not you. Already got a settlement offer? It probably covers a tiny fraction of what this will really cost you over time.
Hiring lawyers means someone who figures out real value, collects proof, and says no to garbage offers.
They Already Have Lawyers
Commercial carriers keep lawyers on staff or on retainer. Those lawyers live and breathe trucking law. They use everything they know to attack your case, inflate your blame, and slash what they pay. We know the same law and build cases that stand up.
More People Are Usually Liable
Truck crashes usually involve way more responsible parties than you’d guess at first:
- The driver who messed up
- The trucking company creating impossible delivery schedules
- The truck owner (sometimes totally different from who operates it)
- Cargo loaders who didn’t secure things right
- Maintenance companies that skipped inspections
- Parts makers whose components failed
- Road agencies responsible for dangerous conditions
Finding everyone liable means more insurance money available.
Trucks Create Special Evidence
Regular car crashes don’t generate this stuff: driver logbooks, electronic logging device files, event data downloads, required maintenance records, cargo weight documents, driver qualification files, onboard camera footage, company safety policy papers. All of it can prove what caused your crash. We move immediately to grab everything before companies delete it, trash it, or say it never existed.
Missed Deadlines Kill Cases
Truck cases run on strict calendars. Miss a filing deadline or ignore a discovery deadline and your case can die right there. We handle every procedural thing that needs to happen.
Why These Crashes Happen
Most truck crashes stem from mistakes that shouldn’t happen. Truck drivers are responsible for keeping vehicles mechanically sound and following road rules. Thousands of people get injured in truck crashes every year. Common reasons:
Working Beyond Legal Hour Limits
Federal law caps how long commercial drivers can work. Companies pressure drivers to break those limits to meet delivery schedules. Tired drivers react slowly. Some fall asleep at the wheel. We get electronic logging data proving when drivers exceeded legal hours.
Drugs Affecting Performance
Drivers taking prescription medications or even over-the-counter drugs can have impaired alertness. Some prescriptions cause drowsiness. Even common medications can mess with judgment and reactions.
Getting Distracted
Texting, messing with GPS, eating, talking to dispatch while controlling 80,000 pounds creates huge risk. Seconds of distraction at highway speed means covering football fields blind.
Not Knowing the Roads
Drivers working unfamiliar areas make more mistakes. They miss exits, brake late, make unsafe moves trying to figure out where they’re going.
Following Too Close
Trucks need way more stopping distance than cars. The girls hit on Horizon North Parkway show what happens when trucks can’t stop in time. Drivers who tailgate are gambling with lives. When they guess wrong, people die.
Speed and Dangerous Choices
Delivery deadline stress pushes drivers to make dangerous moves: too much speed, aggressive lane changes, not enough spacing, illegal maneuvers. Those choices kill people.
Inadequate Training
Running commercial trucks safely takes skills regular driving doesn’t teach. High turnover means companies constantly hire new drivers. Some give minimal training and rush drivers onto roads.
Skipping Maintenance
Federal regulations require regular truck inspections. Brake failures, tire blowouts, steering problems often trace back to companies skipping required maintenance to save money. Insufficient inspection programs get people killed.
Improper Loading
Trucks loaded wrong become unstable. Cargo over weight limits or not secured right shifts during transport. That causes trucks to tip, jackknife, or lose control. Loading companies can be liable when loading problems contribute.
Company Negligence
Trucking companies pushing unrealistic schedules, ignoring safety violations, failing to train drivers properly, or neglecting vehicle maintenance face liability for crashes their negligence causes.
Injuries Truck Crashes Cause
When 80,000 pounds hits 4,000 pounds or hits people directly, the results are catastrophic. Ninety-eight percent of people who die in truck-versus-car crashes are the car occupants. Common injuries:
- Brain damage changing how you think and who you are forever
- Spinal cord injuries causing paralysis
- Multiple broken bones needing surgical repair
- Severe neck and back damage requiring procedures like ACDF surgery
- Internal organ damage and internal bleeding
- Severe burns needing skin grafts
- Amputations
- Crushing injuries with permanent effects
- Serious facial fractures
- Broken ribs and collapsed lungs
- Liver damage and hemorrhaging
- Deep cuts leaving permanent scars
- Chronic pain limiting everything you do
- Severe trauma, PTSD, anxiety
- Death
Financial costs can hit millions when you count emergency care, surgeries, extended rehab, permanent care needs, lost income for life, destroyed quality of life. We count all of it.
Money Available for Recovery
Truck crash settlements are way bigger than car accident settlements. Two reasons: trucking companies carry huge insurance policies, and injuries tend catastrophic.
All Medical Costs
Recovery often begins with emergency care and can extend for years. Compensation may include ambulance transport, emergency surgery, ICU stays, hospitalization, follow-up appointments, physical therapy, prescription medications, medical equipment, and in-home care. Future treatment is also factored in. Medical experts are often brought in to project long-term costs so your claim reflects what you will actually need, not just what you have already paid.
Lost Income and Destroyed Careers
Paychecks missed while recovering plus reduced earning ability if injuries stop you from returning to your old job. We calculate lost benefits, lost retirement money, and the multiplying effect of earning less the rest of your working life.
Property Damage
Whatever it costs to fix or replace your vehicle and belongings.
Physical and Emotional Pain
Real physical pain from injuries. Emotional trauma from the crash and hard recovery. Depression. Anxiety. Sleep problems. Constant stress. Texas law considers these real damages worth real money.
Permanent Life Changes
Physical limitations that last, visible scars, permanent changes to how you look or what you can physically do, changing how you live and work.
Marriage Impact
When injuries are severe, spouses can file separate claims for lost companionship, lost intimacy, lost emotional support.
Death-Related Money
When someone dies in a truck crash like Juan Quiroz did, surviving family can recover funeral costs, lost financial support, money reflecting the terrible loss.
Punishment Damages
When trucking company behavior crosses from regular negligence into willful safety violations, Texas courts can award punitive damages to punish that.
What to Do Right After Getting Hit
What you do in the hours after a crash directly affects how much money you can get.
See a Doctor Now
Go to doctors immediately no matter how you feel. Adrenaline masks pain. Brain injuries and internal bleeding often show no symptoms until hours or days later. Without medical records connecting your injuries to the crash, insurance companies will say you weren’t really hurt or something else caused it.
Get Official Reports
Call 911 right away. Police have to respond, document everything, file official reports. Those reports become foundational proof. Commercial trucks show company names, DOT numbers, identifying information police will record.
Collect Your Own Evidence
If you can physically do it: photograph all vehicles, the crash scene from every angle, your visible injuries, road conditions, weather, truck company markings and ID numbers. Get witness names and contact info. Write everything down while you remember. Keep damaged clothes and belongings.
Don’t Talk to Their Insurance
Insurance adjusters will call quickly. They’ll sound helpful. They’ll want quick recorded statements. Say no. Every word you say becomes ammunition against you later. Tell them to contact your lawyer. Then call us.
Get Lawyers Before Evidence Disappears
Trucking companies send investigators to crash scenes within hours. Electronic logging data stores only six months. Camera footage gets recorded over quickly. Maintenance records have short retention. The faster we’re involved, the more proof we can save through legal demands.
Texas Time Limits
Two Years Then Rights End
Texas gives exactly two years from your crash date to file a personal injury lawsuit. Miss that deadline and your case dies forever, no matter how strong it is. Wrongful death claims face the same two-year deadline.
Electronic Evidence Auto-Deletes
ELD data typically auto-deletes after six months. Camera footage might last weeks. Companies only keep records as long as federal regulations force them. Lawyer preservation demands create legal obligations forcing them to keep everything.
Witnesses Forget Quickly
People remember crashes most accurately right after. Weeks later, critical details blur. Months later, finding witnesses becomes nearly impossible.
Their Lawyers Start Immediately
Trucking company insurers assign adjusters, investigators, defense lawyers instantly. They’re building their defense while you’re still in the hospital. Getting lawyers early means someone protects your interests from minute one.
Proving They’re Liable
Winning requires proving four things:
- Duty Existed: Truck drivers and trucking companies owe legal duties to operate safely and follow every state and federal regulation.
- Duty Got Broken: Traffic violations, federal trucking regulation violations, basic safe driving failures all count. Examples: driving exhausted, overloading cargo, skipping required maintenance, operating distracted, using alertness-affecting medications.
- Violation Caused Harm: We use crash reconstruction specialists, medical experts, electronic data proving clear connections between what they did wrong and what happened to you.
- Real Losses Occurred: Medical bills, lost paychecks, physical pain, destroyed property all count. We document every loss and calculate complete impact.
If Blame Gets Shared
Texas uses modified comparative negligence. You can still get money as long as you’re 50% or less at fault.
Your money drops by your fault percentage. Example: $300,000 total damages with 20% fault assigned means you get $240,000. Hit 51% or more fault and you get nothing.
Insurance companies aggressively try increasing your fault percentage to cut what they pay. We fight back with thorough investigation and solid proof of what actually happened.
More Helpful Information
- How Driver Fatigue Can Cause Accidents for Truckers
- How Long Do Semi-truck Cases Last?
- 3 Important Records to Obtain After a Truck Accident
- Texas Trucking Accidents Can Involve Complicated Liability
- How Long Does It Take to Settle a Truck Accident Claim?
- Understanding Truck Accident Compensation – Key Insights
- Common Causes of 18 Wheeler Truck Accidents: Driver Error
- Essential Evidence for your Truck Accident Case
Start Today, Tell Us What Happened
Recovering from truck crashes takes all your strength. Legal fights shouldn’t drain what’s left.
Call and talk to someone who gets what you’re going through. We’ll listen carefully, answer questions honestly, explain your options using everyday words.
Your first meeting costs nothing. Taking your case requires nothing upfront. We get paid only from money we recover for you.
Got hurt by a commercial truck in Plano or anywhere around Dallas? Call (800) 863-5312 or our local office: (469) 809-5996. Fill out our online form for quick callback.
Meetings by appointment.
FAQs
What if the truck driver says I caused the crash?
It is common for trucking companies to shift blame immediately. We investigate the scene, review electronic data, examine logbooks, and work with reconstruction experts to determine what actually happened before fault percentages get assigned.
Can I still bring a claim if I was a passenger in the car?
Yes. Passengers are almost never at fault. You may have a claim against the truck driver, the trucking company, or even the driver of the vehicle you were riding in, depending on what caused the crash.
What happens if the trucking company denies responsibility?
Denials are routine. That does not end your case. We gather records, depose company representatives, and, if necessary, file a lawsuit to force the company to answer under oath and produce evidence.
Will my case have to go to trial?
Most truck cases resolve before trial, but we prepare every case as if it will be presented to a jury. That preparation often leads to stronger settlement offers. If the insurer refuses to pay fair money, we are ready to go to court.
How long does a truck accident case usually take in Texas?
Timelines vary based on injury severity, medical treatment length, and how hard the insurance company fights. Some cases resolve in months. Catastrophic injury or wrongful death cases can take longer because damages must be fully documented.
What if the truck driver was an independent contractor?
Trucking companies often label drivers as independent contractors. That does not automatically shield the company from liability. We analyze contracts, control over the driver, and federal regulations to determine who can be held responsible.
Can black box data from the truck help my case?
Yes. Many commercial trucks store event data such as speed, braking, throttle position, and engine performance before impact. That information can strongly support your claim if preserved quickly.
What if the truck that hit me was owned by a different company than the one on the trailer?
Multiple companies can be involved in one shipment. The truck owner, trailer owner, carrier, and cargo company may all carry separate insurance policies. Identifying every responsible party increases available coverage.
Do I have to speak with the trucking company’s lawyers?
No. Once you hire us, all communication goes through our office. You do not have to give recorded statements or answer legal questions from their attorneys.
How much does it cost to start a truck accident case?
Nothing upfront. We work on a contingency fee basis. If we do not recover money for you, you do not owe attorney’s fees.
John (Jack) Zinda
Founder / CEO
Over 100 years of combined experience representing injured victims across the country.
Available 24 / 7|Free Consultation
Neil Solomon
Partner
Real results matter. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
Available 24 / 7|Free Consultation
