Greenville Truck Accident Lawyer

By Tom Conits · Greenville personal injury attorney · August 1, 2026

Why an 18-Wheeler Wreck Is a Different Kind of Case

A loaded tractor-trailer can outweigh your car by twenty times or more. That physics gap is why truck crash injuries run so much worse than car crash injuries — and it's only the first difference. The ones that decide cases are legal and practical:

• The defendant is a business, and it responds like one. Many carriers and their insurers dispatch rapid-response investigators — sometimes the same day — to photograph the scene, secure the truck, and start building the defense while you're still in the ER.
• The rulebook is federal, not just state. Interstate trucking runs under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations — rules on driving hours, maintenance, drug and alcohol testing, and driver qualification. A violation isn't a technicality; it's often the heart of the liability case.
• The best evidence belongs to the other side. Electronic driving logs, engine data, dashcam video, dispatch and maintenance records — the carrier holds all of it, and much of it is lawfully destroyed on a schedule unless someone puts them on notice.
• There is usually more insurance — and more resistance. Federal law requires most interstate carriers hauling general freight to maintain at least $750,000 in liability coverage (49 C.F.R. § 387.9). Larger coverage means the insurer fights harder over every fact.

I'm Tom Conits. I worked for several of South Carolina's top personal injury firms before opening my own practice in Greenville, and the lesson I took from the trucking files I saw there is simple: these cases are won or lost in the first weeks. That's why, when a truck case comes in, the preservation letter goes out before almost anything else — and why, if you can't come to me, I get in my car and come to you.

The Federal Safety Rules That Decide Truck Cases

Interstate trucking is governed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), and its regulations set the standard of care a carrier and driver owe everyone else on the road. The ones that come up again and again in injury cases:

• Hours of service. A property-carrying driver generally may drive at most 11 hours, within a 14-hour on-duty window, after 10 consecutive hours off — with a required 30-minute break after 8 hours of driving, and weekly caps of 60 or 70 on-duty hours (49 C.F.R. Part 395). These limits exist because tired drivers in 80,000-pound vehicles kill people. When a crash file shows a driver at hour 13 of the window, that's not context — that's the case.
• Electronic logging devices (ELDs). Since the federal ELD mandate took effect, most commercial trucks must automatically record driving time. Logs are far harder to falsify than the old paper books — but carriers are only required to retain ELD records for six months. After that, deletion is legal unless a preservation demand is on file.
• Driver qualification and testing. Carriers must vet, license, and drug-and-alcohol-test their drivers. A carrier that put an unqualified or impaired driver behind the wheel has its own negligence problem, separate from the driver's.
• Inspection and maintenance. Brakes, tires, lights, coupling systems — carriers must systematically inspect and repair them and keep records. Maintenance shortcuts show up in those records, when you get them.
• Minimum insurance. Most interstate carriers hauling non-hazardous freight must maintain at least $750,000 in liability coverage (49 C.F.R. § 387.9); hazardous cargo requires more. The coverage usually exists — the fight is over proof and value.

Proving a violation takes the carrier's own records. Getting those records — completely, and before they age out — is the core craft of this work.

Who's Liable in a South Carolina Truck Accident?

In a car wreck there's usually one defendant and one policy. In a truck wreck, responsibility can spread across a chain of companies, each with its own insurer:

• The driver, for the driving itself — speeding, following too close, drifting, fatigue, impairment, distraction.
• The motor carrier, both for its driver's on-the-job negligence and for its own decisions: who it hired, how it trained and supervised, what schedules it pressured drivers to meet, how it maintained its fleet.
• The owner of the tractor or trailer, when equipment is leased — common in trucking, and a source of finger-pointing between companies.
• A cargo loader or shipper, when shifting or overweight cargo caused or worsened the crash.
• A maintenance contractor, when outsourced brake or tire work failed.
• A parts or vehicle manufacturer, when a component defect contributed.

Sorting out that chain matters for a practical reason: it determines how much insurance is actually available for your recovery. It also matters strategically, because multiple defendants pointing at each other can either strengthen your case or stall it — depending on whether your lawyer forces the question early. South Carolina's comparative negligence rules apply here as in any crash case: if the defense pins 51% or more of the fault on you, you recover nothing, so expect the carrier's team to work that angle from day one.

Deadlines

The lawsuit deadline is generally three years from the crash (S.C. Code § 15-3-530(5)), and generally two years when a government entity is involved, under the South Carolina Tort Claims Act. But as the evidence section above should make clear, the real deadline in a truck case is measured in days: the window to preserve logs, video, and the truck itself closes long before the statute of limitations does.

Damages in Truck Accident Cases

Because the injuries run severe, truck cases lean heavily on future damages — the part unrepresented claimants almost always undervalue:

• Medical expenses, past and future — including surgeries, rehabilitation, home modifications, and long-term care where injuries are permanent.
• Lost income and lost earning capacity — what the injury took from your working life, not just your last few paychecks.
• Pain, suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life — the daily weight of a serious injury, presented concretely, not as a formula.
• Property damage — your vehicle and belongings.
• Punitive damages where conduct was reckless — a carrier that kept an impaired driver on the road, for example.

When a truck crash takes a life, the claim becomes a wrongful death action brought for the family — a different legal structure with its own rules, covered on my wrongful death page. I will say here only that I handle those cases with the seriousness they deserve, and I come to the family; the family does not come to me.