Financial Recovery After a Truck Accident: Practical Tips for Business Owners

Truck accidents often strain critical resources for small transportation businesses – not just immediately, but often for years afterward – between repairs, legal actions, higher ongoing costs and lost income. And so you may suddenly find yourself scrambling to not only get your truck back on the road but also wondering how to recover financially from accident-related expenses.

Here are tips that will come in handy.

Assessing the Damage From the Accident

After a truck crash, you need to fully assess your losses. This step is crucial before filing insurance claims, seeking legal counsel, or making any other financial decisions. Some key areas to examine include:

Truck Repairs – Depending on what your truck needs, the costs can add up quickly.
Cargo Damage – You’ll need to thoroughly document proof of exactly what cargo was on board and its total value.
Income Loss – With your truck off the roads during repairs for what could be weeks or months, comprehensively track how much revenue gets lost daily, weekly and monthly.
Legal Costs – If injuries, casualties or major property damage occurred, you likely face lawsuits, especially if negligence contributed to the crash. Though insurance covers some legal fees and expenses, there still may be expenses your policy deductibles or limits don’t sufficiently address if you lose cases.
Increased Insurance Rates – After an accident claim gets filed, your premiums will rise significantly at policy renewal time – from between 25-40% higher. Calculate precisely how much more you’ll pay monthly and annually. Also, account for potential higher deductibles or reduced coverage limits insurers impose after big claims.

Exploring Legal Action

Who bears primary responsibility for the accident often guides what financial recovery options exist beyond insurance:

Your Driver Caused the Crash

Even with insurance, if your employee/driver acted negligently, you may still have considerable out-of-pocket expenses that insurance won’t sufficiently cover. And so you should definitely call a local accident lawyer near you and ask them about the chances of recovering costs like higher premiums for multiple policy renewal cycles or expenses from litigation brought against your company.

Other Motorist Caused the Accident

If the independent investigation report shows the negligent actions of the other motorist caused the collision, your attorney can more aggressively seek maximum financial compensation for your injuries.

Handling Cash Flow Crises After Accidents

With lost income, costs of repairs, legal expenditures, higher premiums and potentially uncovered portions of large settlements, cash flow problems are likely to emerge. Here are tips to ease your financial burden:

Petition insurers early about partial advance policy settlements.
Explore specialized commercial vehicle crash bridge loans.
Communicate urgently with vendors/creditors.

Don’t let unpaid invoices stack up into a disastrous backlog that may spiral out of control.

Revisiting Contracts With Carriers

If you hired an outside trucking company that got into an accident, immediately examine what rights and recourse you possess per your contracts.

Here are two key legal and insurance provisions to urgently address when outsourcing transportation:

Require all contracted carriers to provide you annually updated written proof of valid, enforced commercial trucking insurance policies. Don’t just take their word – verify details to ensure sufficiency. Standards change, and policies lapse.
Have an attorney draw up stringent accident liability clauses obligating contracted carriers to specifically cover all your expenses related to any incidents traceable to their provable negligence.

By proactively working these precise financial responsibility and liability provisions into any carrier contracts, you’ve established clear parameters for who accepts primary responsibility for all monetary accident damages should you need to pursue legal action after a crash involving that company’s truck or driver’s negligence. This protects your business.

Lisbeth Mora, California Business Journal