Truck Accident Lawyer in Mobile, AL

An 80,000 pound truck does not hit a car the way another vehicle does. The forces involved are different and the injuries are often more severe than your typical car crash.

What most people do not know is that the trucking company already has a head start. Major carriers dispatch investigators to serious crash scenes within hours, sometimes before the vehicles have been cleared. Meanwhile the records that prove what happened, including driver logs, inspection reports, and the data stored in the truck itself, are subject to retention rules measured in months rather than years.

Long & Long Injury Attorneys has handled truck and commercial vehicle cases across the Gulf Coast for more than 30 years. Our results include $6,500,000 in a semi-truck case and $825,000 in Covington County. There is no cost to have us review your case, and no fee unless we recover compensation for you.

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Our Truck Accident Settlements

$110,000,000

18-Wheeler Accident

$6,500,000

Semi Truck Personal Injury Case – Shreveport, Louisiana

$3,400,000

18-Wheeler Rear-End Accident

$1,575,000

Commercial Truck Rear-End Accident

$1,019,000

Commercial Truck Accident

$1,000,000

Semi-Truck Accident – Columbia County, Florida

$1,000,000

Commercial Collision Accident

$850,000

18-Wheeler Rear-End Accident

$825,000

Semi Truck Accident Injury Case – Covington County, Alabama

$805,000

Semi Truck Accident- Mobile County, Alabama

Why a Truck Accident Lawyer in Mobile Has to Move Quickly

Three things make a truck accident claim different from an ordinary car wreck, and all three run on a clock.

Federal law governs commercial trucking: Carriers are required to keep driver logs, maintenance records, inspection reports, and qualification files, and those requirements come with retention periods. A record a company is only obligated to keep for six months is a record that may not exist in month seven.
The truck itself is evidence: Commercial vehicles carry electronic control modules that record speed, braking, and throttle in the moments before impact. That data can be overwritten when the truck returns to service, and a repaired or resold vehicle takes the proof with it.
You are not up against a driver: You are up against a motor carrier with commercial insurance, a claims operation, and defense counsel who handle nothing but trucking cases. Many major carriers send their own investigators to serious crash scenes the same day.

That is why our attorneys treat the first days differently in these cases. We send preservation letters immediately, move to secure the vehicle before it is repaired, and request the federal records a carrier is required to maintain before the clock runs out on them. If you were hurt by a commercial truck, our rapid response team can begin that work right away.

Why Choose Long & Long as Your Truck Accident Lawyer in Mobile?

What You’ll Get When You Work With Us

Trucking companies do not wait to build their side of the case, which is why the timing of your first call matters more after a truck accident than in almost any other kind of claim. Long & Long Injury Attorneys are committed to your claim from the start. Our legal team offers:

Free consultations
No out of pocket cost to you
Stress-free experience
24/7 access and support
Proven track record of great results

Easy Steps

HIRE LONG & LONG

We take it from here — building your case and fighting for maximum compensation.

FOCUS ON YOUR HEALTH

Your only job now is to rest, recover, and let us handle your case.

You Get Paid

We fight hard to maximize your claim.

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“Most people come to us on one of the worst days of their lives and they don’t know what to do. We work injury cases every single day, and we know how to make the legal process as easy as possible for our clients and maximize results.”

- Attorney Earle Long IV

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Where Truck Accidents Happen in Mobile

Mobile sits at the intersection of a working port, two interstates, and the freight corridors that connect them. Commercial trucks are not occasional traffic here. They are a constant.

The crashes we handle concentrate in a handful of places:

Interstate 10 and the Wallace Tunnel: The tunnel creates a predictable backup, and the transition from open interstate to stopped traffic produces some of the most severe rear-end and chain-reaction collisions in the region. A loaded truck needs far more stopping distance than a car, and that difference is what turns a slowdown into a catastrophe.
The Bayway: Elevated, narrow, and with almost no shoulder to speak of. There is nowhere to go when something happens ahead of you, which is why a single truck crash out there so often becomes a multi-vehicle one.
Interstate 65: The main freight route north out of Mobile, carrying long-haul traffic where driver fatigue becomes a real factor.
The port and terminal corridors: Container and bulk cargo traffic moving in and out of the Port of Mobile puts heavy trucks on surface streets shared with commuters, often making wide turns in tight spaces.
Highway 43, Highway 45, and US 98: Two-lane routes carrying industrial and log truck traffic, where head-on and passing collisions are more common and speeds are higher than most drivers expect.
The Theodore Industrial Canal corridor: Chemical, refinery, and industrial facilities generating specialized truck traffic, including tankers and oversized loads.

Where a crash happened affects more than jurisdiction. It shapes what evidence exists, whether there were cameras, how quickly the scene was cleared, and which agency responded.

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Who Can Be Held Liable in a Truck Accident?

Rarely just the driver can be held liable in a truck accident. A single load can involve half a dozen companies, and more than one of them may share responsibility for what happened to you.

That matters for a practical reason. Each additional liable party may carry its own insurance, and in a case involving catastrophic injuries, finding all of them is often what determines whether there is enough coverage.

The Driver and the Motor Carrier

The driver is responsible for how the truck was operated. The motor carrier is responsible for who they put behind the wheel and how they ran the operation.

Carrier liability frequently turns on hiring and supervision. Whether the driver was properly qualified, whether their record was checked, whether they were pressured into schedules that could not be met legally, and whether the company enforced its own safety policies. Those questions are answered by records the carrier is required to keep.

Brokers, Shippers, and Cargo Loaders

Freight brokers arrange loads between shippers and carriers, and a broker who placed a load with a carrier it knew or should have known was unsafe may bear responsibility.

Cargo loading is its own category. An improperly secured or unevenly distributed load changes how a truck handles, and jackknife and rollover crashes frequently trace back to how the trailer was packed rather than how it was driven. The company that loaded it may be liable even though it never touched the truck.

Maintenance Contractors and Manufacturers

Brake failures, tire separations, and steering or coupling failures may point at whoever serviced the vehicle rather than at the driver. Where a component failed as designed rather than through neglect, a defective product claim against the manufacturer may exist alongside the trucking claim.

What You Have to Prove

Regardless of who is responsible, four elements have to be established:

Duty of care: Truck drivers must operate safely and follow federal regulations. Carriers have duties around hiring, training, maintenance, and load securement.
Breach of duty: Driving fatigued, impaired, or too fast. A carrier failing to maintain its fleet or ignoring loading standards.
Causation: That the breach caused the crash and your injuries. This is usually the hardest element and the reason reconstruction and vehicle data matter so much.
Damages: That you suffered actual losses, documented through medical records, bills, and employment records.

If more than one company was involved in the load that hit you, tell us. That detail is frequently what decides how much coverage is available.

Work With a Truck Accident Attorney in Mobile

If a commercial truck hurt you or someone in your family, the most useful thing you can do today is make one call. We can send preservation letters before records are purged and move to secure the vehicle before it goes back into service. We will also tell you honestly whether we think you have a claim worth pursuing. Your case review is free and commits you to nothing.

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Federal Trucking Regulations and Your Claim

Commercial trucking is regulated by the federal government in ways ordinary driving is not. Those rules exist for safety, but they also create a paper trail that does not exist in a normal car accident case.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration sets requirements covering nearly every part of a trucking operation. Four categories matter most to an injury claim.

Hours of Service and Driver Fatigue

Federal rules limit how long a driver can operate before required rest, and carriers must document compliance. Most commercial trucks now use electronic logging devices that record driving time automatically.

When a fatigued driver causes a crash, those logs frequently show it. They can also show a pattern, including whether a carrier was dispatching loads on schedules that could not be run legally.

Driver Qualification Files

Carriers are required to maintain a file on every driver covering their license, medical certification, employment history, road test, and driving record. Those files sometimes reveal that a driver should never have been operating the vehicle at all.

Maintenance and Inspection Records

Trucks require regular inspection, and drivers must document defects. Where a brake or tire failure caused a crash, maintenance records establish whether the problem was known and ignored. A carrier that deferred a repair has a very different case than one that had no warning.

Drug and Alcohol Testing Requirements

Commercial drivers are subject to testing requirements including post-accident testing after serious crashes. Whether testing was performed, and what it showed, is often decisive.

None of these records arrive because someone asked politely. They come through formal preservation demands and, when necessary, through discovery. They also have retention periods, which is why the timing of a request matters as much as the request itself.

How Does Long & Long Investigate a Truck Accident?

A truck accident case is built out of things the trucking company controls. Our job is to get them before they are gone.

The investigation typically covers:

Electronic control module data from the truck, showing speed, braking, and throttle before impact
Electronic logging device records establishing hours driven and rest taken
Dispatch communications and GPS data showing where the truck was and what the driver was told
Driver qualification files, training records, and prior violation history
Maintenance, inspection, and repair records for the tractor and trailer
Bills of lading, weight tickets, and cargo securement documentation
Post-accident drug and alcohol testing results
Dashcam footage from the truck, along with any traffic or business camera coverage of the scene

Alongside the records, our attorneys work with accident reconstruction engineers to establish how the collision actually occurred, and with medical and economic experts where an injury will have lasting effects. We advance those costs, so the work happens when the case needs it rather than when a client can afford it.

What Are a Truck’s Black Box Records

Most commercial trucks carry an electronic control module that continuously records operating data and preserves a snapshot around a sudden event like hard braking or an impact.

Depending on the system, that can include vehicle speed, engine RPM, throttle position, brake application, cruise control status, and seat belt use in the seconds leading up to a crash. It is the closest thing to an objective account of what the truck was doing, and it frequently contradicts what a driver reports.

It is also fragile. That data can be overwritten as the truck continues operating, and once a vehicle is repaired, sold, or scrapped, it is generally gone.

Why Preservation Letters Have to Go Out Immediately

A preservation letter puts a carrier on formal notice that specific evidence must be retained. It is the single most time-sensitive step in a truck accident case.

Without one, a company operating within its normal document retention schedule may lawfully destroy records that would have proven your case. The same applies to the truck itself, which a carrier has every commercial incentive to repair and return to service quickly.

This is why we do not wait to be retained before starting. If you contact us in the days after a crash, the letters can go out while the evidence still exists.

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Common Causes and Types of Truck Accidents

Truck crashes are rarely mysterious. They usually come down to a driver who could not stop in time, a company that pushed a schedule, or equipment that failed.

The causes we see most often include driver fatigue, improper loading, mechanical failure, speeding, distraction, inadequate training, and pressure to meet delivery windows that could not be met legally.

Those causes produce a handful of recognizable crash types:

Jackknife accidents: The trailer swings out from the cab at an angle, sweeping across lanes. Often caused by braking too hard, an unbalanced load, or slick pavement.
Rear-end collisions: A loaded truck needs far more distance to stop than a passenger vehicle. At highway speed the difference can be several hundred feet.
Rollovers: A truck loses control and tips, sometimes across multiple lanes. Frequently traced to shifting cargo, speed on a curve, or an improperly loaded trailer.
Underride accidents: A smaller vehicle slides beneath the trailer, and the point of impact ends up at windshield height rather than bumper height. These are among the most fatal truck crashes, and whether the trailer had adequate underride guards is always a detail to consider.
Wide turn and blind spot collisions: Common on surface streets near the port and in tight urban intersections, where a truck swings wide to make a turn or a vehicle disappears into a blind spot.

Common Truck Accident Injuries

Injuries from truck accidents are typically severe because of the vehicle’s size and weight:

Broken bones
Spinal cord injuries
Traumatic brain injuries
Lacerations and crush injuries
Internal bleeding and organ damage
Amputations

These injuries often require extensive treatment and long-term care, and the full cost is rarely knowable in the first weeks. Settling before anyone understands the long-term picture is how a serious case gets undervalued.

What to Do After a Truck Accident in Mobile

A truck accident claim is usually won or lost on things that happen before anyone calls a lawyer:

Ensure your safety and call 911: Move to a safe location if you can do so without worsening injuries. Reporting the crash is required and creates the official record, and emergency responders will document the scene.
Get medical attention immediately: Injuries from truck crashes, including internal bleeding and head trauma, are not always apparent right away. A same-day medical record also ties your injuries to the collision in a way that is difficult to dispute.
Photograph the scene from every angle: Vehicle positions, damage, skid marks, road conditions, traffic controls, and the truck itself. Capture the company name, the DOT number on the cab, and the trailer number if you can. Those identifiers matter later.
Get contact information from witnesses: Names, phone numbers, and what they saw. In a multi-vehicle crash the witnesses scatter quickly.
Do not speak to anyone the trucking company sends: Major carriers dispatch investigators and adjusters to serious crash scenes, sometimes within hours. They may be sympathetic and may offer to help. They are working for the company, and anything you say to them goes in their file.
Contact a truck accident lawyer as soon as you can: Preservation letters and vehicle inspection requests are time-sensitive, and the sooner they go out the more evidence still exists.

A missed step is not a lost claim. Federal records, dashcam footage, and inspection reports can often still be requested, and our attorneys know which ones to ask for.

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What Compensation Can You Recover?

Truck accident claims tend to be worth more than ordinary car accident claims, and not only because the injuries are worse. Commercial policies carry far higher limits than personal auto coverage, which means there is usually more available when the case is proven.

Damages our attorneys pursue in truck accident claims include:

Medical expenses: Emergency treatment, surgery, hospitalization, rehabilitation, and the future care a serious injury will require.
Lost wages and earning capacity: Income lost during recovery, and where an injury has lasting effects, the difference between what you could earn before and what you can earn now.
Pain and suffering: Physical pain, emotional distress, and the loss of activities and independence.
Disfigurement and permanent disability: Scarring, amputation, and lasting limitation.
Property damage: Repair or replacement of your vehicle and personal property.
Punitive damages: Available in cases involving particularly reckless conduct, such as a driver who was impaired or a carrier that knowingly put an unsafe truck on the road.

Were you partially at fault? Alabama’s contributory negligence rule can bar recovery entirely if you are found to share any responsibility, which is why trucking companies work so hard to shift blame. Being accused is not the same as being at fault.

What If a Truck Accident Killed Someone in My Family?

Truck crashes are the most fatal category of motor vehicle accident, and Alabama handles wrongful death claims unlike any other state.

In Alabama, wrongful death damages are punitive only. There is no recovery for medical bills, funeral costs, or lost future income. What a jury considers instead is how wrongful the defendant’s conduct was, which in a trucking case puts everything on what the carrier knew and did.

The claim must also be brought by the personal representative of the estate rather than by family members individually, which means opening an estate through probate court first.

How Long Do I Have to File a Truck Accident Claim?

Alabama generally gives you two years from the date of the crash to file a truck accident lawsuit under the state’s statute of limitations. Missing that deadline typically ends the claim regardless of how strong it was.

Federal record retention periods run shorter, and the evidence a case depends on can be lawfully destroyed long before two years have passed:

Driver logs and supporting documents are subject to retention periods measured in months
Electronic control module data can be overwritten as the truck continues in service
The truck itself is usually repaired and back on the road within weeks
Dashcam and surveillance footage is frequently erased on a rolling cycle

A claim brought at twenty-two months is a fundamentally weaker version of the same claim brought at two weeks. That is not a sales argument. It is how federal retention rules work.

Different deadlines apply in some situations, including wrongful death and claims involving a government entity. If you are unsure which applies to you, one conversation with our legal team will answer it.

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Going Up Against a Trucking Company

The company that owns the truck has done this before. You have not.

Motor carriers facing serious claims have commercial insurance with limits far above a personal auto policy, in-house claims operations, and defense firms that handle trucking cases exclusively. Many have a protocol that activates the day of a crash, sending investigators to the scene while the vehicles are still there.

Matching that takes resources and speed. Getting preservation letters out before records are purged. Inspecting the truck before it is repaired. Retaining reconstruction engineers, and where an injury will last a lifetime, medical and economic experts who can establish what that lifetime will cost. Being genuinely prepared to try the case, because a carrier that believes a firm will not go to trial has little reason to pay fairly.

We advance the cost of that work rather than asking clients to fund it. Our published truck results range from the mid six figures to $6,500,000, across cases in Alabama and Louisiana.

If a commercial truck injured you and you have been told your case is too complicated to pursue, we will look at it. We advance what these cases cost to build, and you owe nothing unless we win.

Serving Truck Accident Victims in Alabama and Beyond

Long & Long represents people injured by commercial trucks throughout Alabama, from offices in Mobile and Orange Beach.

Our Mobile office is at 3600 Springhill Memorial Dr N, with a second office in Orange Beach. Being local matters in a truck case for a specific reason. Someone can get to a scene or an impound lot while the vehicle is still there, and that window is measured in days.

Trucking claims also cross state lines more than any other kind of case we handle. A crash on I-10 can involve a carrier headquartered three states away, a driver who lives somewhere else entirely, and a load that originated in another region. Our attorneys are licensed in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and our published truck results include a $6,500,000 recovery in Louisiana and $1,000,000 in Florida.

We handle claims across Mobile County and Baldwin County and take cases arising anywhere in Alabama. We also accept referrals from attorneys on trucking matters requiring expert resources a general practice is not set up to advance.

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Mobile Truck Accident FAQs

What if the truck driver was an independent contractor?

That label does not necessarily protect the trucking company. Federal regulations hold motor carriers responsible for vehicles operating under their authority regardless of how a driver is classified on paper. If you were told the company is not responsible because the driver was a contractor, that is worth a second look.

Can I sue the company that loaded the cargo?

Sometimes. Improperly secured cargo changes how a truck handles and is a recognized cause of jackknife and rollover crashes. Where a shipper or loading company created that condition, they may share responsibility even though they never operated the vehicle. Bills of lading and securement records establish who did the loading, and our attorneys request them early.

What if the truck was based in another state?

It rarely changes whether you have a claim, though it can affect where it is filed and how it proceeds. Interstate carriers are subject to federal regulation regardless of where they are headquartered, and a crash that happened in Alabama is generally governed by Alabama law.

Does a trucking company’s insurance work differently?

Yes, in ways that usually help you. Federal law requires interstate carriers to maintain minimum liability coverage far above what a personal auto policy carries, and coverage amounts scale with the cargo being hauled. Larger policies also mean more aggressive defense, which is why these claims are contested harder than ordinary car accident cases despite the higher limits.

What if I was hit by a delivery truck rather than an 18-wheeler?

You may still have a commercial vehicle claim. Delivery vans, box trucks, dump trucks, and utility vehicles are all commercial vehicles, and the employer is generally responsible when a driver causes a crash while working. Whether federal trucking regulations apply depends on the vehicle weight and whether it operates in interstate commerce, but the employer liability question is often the same either way.

What happens if the driver was cited or arrested?

It helps, but it does not decide your claim. A citation is evidence of what happened and can support your case, though a traffic court outcome does not control a civil claim, which uses a different standard of proof. Where a driver was arrested, particularly for impairment, that conduct may also support punitive damages. Either way, your civil claim proceeds separately and should not wait on the criminal matter to conclude.

How long will it take to resolve my truck accident case?

Longer than a typical car accident claim, usually for good reasons. These cases involve federal records, expert analysis, and discovery of documents carriers resist producing, and rushing that work generally means settling for less than the case is worth. Some resolve within a year. Cases involving catastrophic injuries or heading toward trial take longer. We would rather tell you that honestly than promise a timeline nobody controls.