Three things separate these collisions from other truck cases. The cargo is unbound tree length timber that behaves like nothing else on the road. The industry hauling it is among the most dangerous in the country according to federal data. And the crash usually happens a long way from help, on a road with no witnesses, which changes both how badly you are hurt and how much can ever be proved.
By Michael Mangione, Legal Research EditorLast reviewed August 1, 202627 min read
The load is not packaged freight Among the deadliest work in America Help is further away Small carriers, thin insurance No fee unless you recover Independent and attorney vetted The load is not packaged freight Among the deadliest work in America Help is further away Small carriers, thin insurance No fee unless you recover Independent and attorney vetted
The industry
44,300
People employed in logging in 2024. This counts forest work rather than truck driving, which federal data classes separately.
The hazard
The logs
Federal data attributes most logging deaths to contact with a machine or an object such as a log.
The location
Isolated
Federal descriptions of the work note that it happens outdoors and often in isolated areas.
The defendant
Often small
A high share of the workforce is self-employed, which affects what insurance sits behind the truck.
Key takeaways
The cargo is the danger, and it is not in a box. Tree length timber is heavy, round, and free to roll. A log that leaves the trailer does not behave like a pallet coming off a flatbed.
Distance changes the injury, not just the inconvenience. A crash an hour from a trauma center is a different medical event from the same crash in a city.
Who owns the truck matters more here than usual. A large share of this workforce is self-employed, so the entity behind the vehicle may be one person with minimum cover.
Do not assume the hours rules were suspended. Whether timber attracts the agricultural exemption is genuinely unclear, and section 07 explains why we will not tell you either way.
Editorial content, not legal advice
This guide is written and reviewed by our editorial team to be accurate and current. It is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Several figures below are the most recent federal data we could find and are older than we would like; each carries its date. State rules for timber haulage vary considerably. Confirm the position with a licensed attorney. If you are facing an emergency, call 911.
01 What this kind of lawyer does
Quick answer
A logging truck accident lawyer works on three fronts at once: establishing how the load was secured and whether it stayed on, finding out who actually owns and insures a vehicle that may belong to a one-person business, and reconstructing a collision that happened somewhere with no cameras and no bystanders.
The general mechanics of a commercial vehicle claim are covered in our truck accident guide. What is specific here is that all three of those problems are harder than usual, and they compound.
Tracing the ownership. Timber haulage runs through contractors and owner operators, so the name on the door may not be the entity worth pursuing.
Reconstructing without witnesses. Physical evidence on the road surface matters more when there is nobody to describe what happened.
The gist
These cases reward moving early and being thorough about ownership. We can help you find a lawyer when the facts support it, and say so plainly when they do not.
Bottom line: find out who owns and insures the truck before anything else. On this kind of case the answer is frequently not what the signage suggests.
02 What is actually on the truck
Quick answer
Tree length logs are round, extremely heavy, and not packaged in any way. They are held on by stakes, bunks and tiedowns rather than by walls or a container. If that arrangement fails, the cargo does not spill. It rolls, and it rolls with enormous momentum.
That is what makes a logging truck accident different from a collision with a van or a boxed freight trailer, and it is why the mechanism of injury tends to be so severe.
How a timber load differs from packaged freight
Feature of the load
Why it matters after a crash
Round and free to roll
A displaced log keeps moving after the vehicle has stopped, and can travel well beyond the crash site
Very long relative to the vehicle
A shifting load can intrude into a passing lane or into a passenger compartment lengthwise
Held by stakes and bunks, not walls
There is no enclosure. The restraint system is the only thing between the load and the road
Variable in weight and moisture
Loads are not uniform units, so how the vehicle was weighed and loaded becomes a live question
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
Federal cargo securement rules include a section written specifically for logs at 49 C.F.R. 393.116. We set out what the securement standard requires, and who answers when a load is wrong, in our tractor trailer guide rather than repeating it here. On this page the point is narrower: the restraint system is the entire safety case, because there is nothing else holding the cargo on.
Photograph the stakes and bunks, not just the damage
The parts of the truck that matter are the ones nobody photographs. The stakes at the sides, the bunks the logs sit in, and the tiedowns across the top are the restraint system. If any of it failed or was missing, that is visible in the wreckage and invisible in a repair invoice. Photograph the trailer itself from several angles before it is recovered, because once the vehicle is moved and the load is lifted off, that arrangement no longer exists.
The route
Forest road to mill, repeatedly.
03 Do you need a lawyer?
Quick answer
Anyone injured in one of these should get advice quickly. Three features make it hard to handle alone: the ownership behind the truck is often layered, the evidence is physical and remote rather than digital, and the available insurance may be far thinner than the harm.
Plenty of these resolve without a lawyer, and an honest firm will say so on the first call. The list below sorts the two situations quickly.
Legal help almost certainly matters if
Anyone was injured seriously enough to need hospital care.
A log left the vehicle, whether or not it struck you.
The crash happened on a rural road with no witnesses.
You are being told the driver owns the truck personally.
An early offer has arrived that looks like a policy limit.
It may be simpler than you think if
There were no injuries and only minor vehicle damage.
The insurer has accepted responsibility in writing and paid in full.
Your costs are fully covered and nothing is being disputed.
You were not involved and suffered no loss.
Illustrative example
A driver is seriously hurt when a log comes off a trailer on a two-lane road. An adjuster offers what turns out to be the full limit of a small policy and calls it generous. Nobody has looked at who the timber was being hauled for, whether that company directed the work, or whether any other cover sits behind the operation.
Ownership and insurance take time to trace. A review takes minutes.
You can start a free case review whenever you are ready. There is no cost, no obligation, and if your situation does not call for a lawyer we will tell you that directly.
04 What the occupational data shows
Quick answer
Federal labor statistics place logging among the most fatal occupations in the country, and attribute most of those deaths to contact with machinery or with an object such as a log. One thing to be clear about before relying on any of it: that occupation is forest work, not truck driving. The figures describe the operation the load comes from, not the person at the wheel.
This is not a claim about any particular carrier. It is the background against which a carrier's own safety choices get judged.
These figures are about loggers, not about log truck drivers
The federal occupation called logging workers covers fallers, logging equipment operators, and log graders and scalers. People who drive the loaded truck away are classified separately, among heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers, and they are not counted in the figures below. We are setting out this data because it describes the hazard environment the haulage operation sits inside and because it shows those hazards are long documented. It does not establish that driving a log truck is among the most dangerous jobs in the country, and you should be skeptical of any page that uses it that way.
The current federal description
Among the highest fatality rates of any occupation
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Logging Workers
Describing the occupation of logging work rather than haulage, the handbook states that logging workers experience one of the highest rates of occupational fatalities of all occupations, and that most fatalities occur through contact with a machine or an object, such as a log. It records that logging workers held about 44,300 jobs in 2024, and describes the working conditions plainly: workers spend all of their time outdoors, sometimes in poor weather and often in isolated areas. Those last words are not incidental to a legal claim, as section 05 explains. Read the BLS handbook
The precise rates we can cite are old, and we are saying so
The most specific federal figures we could find are dated. An archived page from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reports that in 2010 the logging industry employed 95,000 workers and accounted for 70 deaths, a rate of 73.7 per 100,000 workers, over 21 times the overall United States rate of 3.4 per 100,000 that year. A Bureau of Labor Statistics article covering 1992 to 1997 found that of 772 fatal injuries to loggers in that period, 70 percent resulted directly from contact with trees and logs. We give both with their dates attached rather than presenting decade-old numbers as current. The qualitative position in the handbook above is current; these specific rates are not.
05 Distance changes everything
Quick answer
These collisions happen where logging happens, which federal descriptions of the work call isolated. Distance affects how quickly you are treated, whether anyone saw what occurred, whether cameras exist, and how long the scene sits before anybody official arrives to record it.
Most guidance about truck crashes quietly assumes a populated road. Almost none of that holds here.
Treatment starts later. The interval between injury and definitive care is a medical variable, not an administrative one, and it can affect outcome as well as the record.
There may be no witnesses at all. Which puts the weight on physical evidence: marks on the road, the resting positions, and where the logs ended up.
There are usually no cameras. No junction cameras, no shopfronts, no passing dashcams. Whatever the truck itself recorded may be the only footage in existence.
The scene is cleared by people who are not investigators. On a working forest road, the priority is reopening the route, and that happens quickly.
Locating the site later is genuinely hard. Unnamed roads and forestry tracks are difficult to identify afterwards, which is why recording coordinates at the time is worth so much.
Record where you are, precisely, as early as you can
On a rural or forest road, saying where you are is a real problem. If you or somebody with you can open a phone map and note the coordinates, or drop a pin, do it before anything else moves. It helps emergency services reach you faster, and months later it is the difference between an investigator standing in the right place and standing somewhere approximately similar. Photographs taken with location data attached serve the same purpose.
Distance
No cameras, no witnesses.
06 Who you can actually recover from
Quick answer
Possibly several parties, and identifying them is the most valuable early work on this kind of case. The driver, the entity that owns the truck, the logging contractor, the timber company the wood was being hauled for, and the landowner can all sit at different points in the chain with different insurance behind them.
A federal analysis of the industry found that about one third of logging workers are self-employed, a far higher proportion than in most occupations. That statistic comes from a 1998 Bureau of Labor Statistics article, so treat the exact share as historic, but the structural point it describes has not gone away: a great deal of this work is done by very small operators.
The registered owner of the vehicle. Which may be an individual rather than a company, with correspondingly modest cover.
The logging contractor. The business that undertook the harvesting operation, which may or may not be the same as the trucking entity.
The company the timber was going to. Depending on how much it directed the operation, it may carry responsibility and it will usually carry the deepest insurance.
Whoever loaded the truck. Loading is frequently done at the harvest site by a different operator from the one who drives it away.
Your own uninsured or underinsured cover. Worth checking early, because on this kind of case it is sometimes the largest pot available.
07 The exemption question, left open
Quick answer
Federal hours of service rules contain an exemption for agricultural commodities within 150 air miles of the source. Whether timber counts as an agricultural commodity for that purpose is a question we could not answer from the sources we read, and we are not going to guess at it, because the answer changes what the driver was allowed to do.
This matters practically. If the exemption applied, hours limits and electronic logging may not have applied either, and a fatigue argument looks very different. If it did not apply, the ordinary rules and the ordinary records exist.
What the agency actually says
The listed commodities do not include timber
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, ELD Hours of Service and Agriculture Exemptions
The agency states that 49 CFR 395.1(k) provides exemptions from the HOS rules, during planting and harvesting periods as determined by the State, for the transportation of agricultural commodities (including livestock, bees, horses, fish used for food, and other commodities that meet the definition of "agricultural commodity" under 395.2) within a 150 air-mile radius from the source of the commodities. Timber is not among the examples given, and the operative test is the definition at 395.2, which we did not retrieve. So the honest answer is that this depends on a definition we have not read. Read the FMCSA guidance
You may find pages that state confidently that log haulers are exempt, and others that state the opposite. Treat both as claims to verify. The question a lawyer should be asking is not what the internet says but what this carrier actually did: whether logs were kept, whether an electronic logging device was fitted and used, and what exemption if any was being relied on at the time.
08 What to do after the collision
Quick answer
Get help coming and give a precise location. Then: photograph the trailer's restraint system and where the logs came to rest, record every business name you can see, get the report number, decline recorded statements, and get preservation demands out for the vehicle and any onboard recording.
The first step is different from every other page on this site, because on a forest road the hardest part of getting help is explaining where you are.
1
Call for help and give coordinates if you can
On an unnamed rural or forestry road, a description will not locate you. If a phone is available, read out the coordinates from a map application or share your location directly. This is a medical priority before it is ever a legal one.
2
Get medical attention, and mention the delay
Tell clinicians how long it took to reach you. Time to treatment is clinically relevant, and it is also part of the record if the distance affected your outcome.
3
Photograph the restraint system and the logs
The stakes, the bunks, the tiedowns, and where each log finished up. This is the evidence that disappears first, because recovering the vehicle means lifting the load off and taking the trailer away.
4
Record every name and number visible
The name on the door, the USDOT number, any mill or timber company markings, and the plate of both units. Ownership here is layered and each name is a thread worth pulling.
5
Decline recorded statements
You are not required to give one. With an owner operator, a contractor and possibly a timber company all involved, early accounts get used to narrow the claim later.
6
Demand the records in writing
Naming the vehicle and trailer for inspection, any onboard camera or telematics data, the driver's duty records and whatever exemption was being relied on, and the loading records from the harvest site.
Timing
The trailer is recovered fast.
09 Deadlines and vanishing evidence
Quick answer
The statute of limitations is set by state law and is commonly two years, though some states are shorter. Well before that, the trailer is repaired and back at work, the harvest site is finished and closed, and the road surface evidence is gone with the next rain.
The harvest site is the item unique to this page. A logging operation is temporary by design, and when it moves on the physical context of the crash goes with it.
Days 1 to 14
Preservation demands should land
Naming the tractor and trailer, the restraint hardware, any onboard recording, and the loading records. A small operator may not preserve anything absent a written demand.
Weeks 1 to 8
The trailer returns to work
Small operations cannot leave equipment standing. The stakes and bunks get repaired or replaced, and the arrangement that failed no longer exists to inspect.
Months 1 to 6
The harvest site closes
The operation moves to another tract. Loading practices, site access and the route itself become matters of recollection rather than observation.
Year 1 to 2
The filing deadline arrives
Two years is the most common period, and some states are shorter. Where a public forestry body or road authority is involved, a much shorter notice deadline may apply.
Bottom line: get a written preservation demand to the vehicle owner in the first two weeks. With small operators, nothing is kept by default.
10 How state law changes the answer
Quick answer
Timber states regulate log haulage in their own ways. Weight allowances, permitted configurations, seasonal road restrictions and rules about hauling on public roads from private forest land all differ, as do the ordinary civil questions of shared fault and filing deadlines.
We have not named particular states here for the same reason we give in the sources block: the state-specific material we found was second hand.
Weight allowances and tolerances. Several timber-producing states operate their own arrangements for forest products. Whether the vehicle was legally loaded is therefore a local question.
Seasonal road restrictions. Frost laws and wet weather limits affect when heavy vehicles may use certain roads at all.
Effect of a regulatory breach. Some states treat violation of a safety rule as establishing negligence directly. Others treat it as evidence for a jury to weigh.
Employment status of the driver. Whether an owner operator is treated as an employee of the contractor affects who is liable, and states differ on the test.
Shared fault. Most states reduce recovery by your share. A minority bar it entirely once that share crosses a threshold.
Choosing counsel
Ask who owns the truck.
11 How to choose a logging truck accident lawyer
Quick answer
Look for a firm that asks who owns and insures the truck in the first conversation, will send an investigator to a remote location rather than working from photographs, knows the local rules for timber haulage, and checks your own underinsured cover early rather than late.
The quickest test is whether they treat the ownership chain as work to be done. A firm that accepts the first name it is given may stop at a policy that does not cover your losses.
They chase the ownership chain. Driver, vehicle owner, contractor, timber company, landowner, and who directed whom.
They will go to the scene. Remote sites need someone physically there, early, before the road and the harvest site change.
They know the local haulage rules. Weight arrangements and seasonal restrictions are state and sometimes county level.
They check your own policy early. Underinsured motorist cover can be the largest available fund in a small carrier case.
An active, clean license. Verified good standing with the state bar and no unresolved discipline. You can check this yourself.
12 Questions to ask, and red flags
Quick answer
Ask who owns and insures the truck and how they will confirm it, whether anyone is going to the scene, what has been demanded in writing and when, whether your own underinsured cover has been checked, what exemption the carrier claims applied, and exactly what the fee agreement says about costs if you lose.
You are interviewing them as much as they are assessing you. Vague answers to specific questions tell you a great deal.
Who owns the truck and the trailer, and who insures each?
Who was the timber being hauled for, and did they direct the work?
Is someone going to the scene, and when?
Has the trailer been preserved for inspection, restraint hardware included?
Have you checked my own underinsured motorist cover?
What hours of service position is the carrier taking, and on what basis?
What is your contingency percentage, and who pays costs if we lose?
What are the genuine weaknesses in my case?
Walk away if you hear
Acceptance of the first insurer named. The ownership chain is the case. No plan to visit the scene. Remote evidence does not photograph itself. Certainty about the agricultural exemption. Nobody should be certain without reading the definition. Silence on your own policy. Underinsured cover is often the biggest fund available here. A promised number. Nobody can value this before the parties and the cover are established.
How we vet every lawyer
We do not connect people with just anyone. Before we do, the attorney has to clear a checklist built for rural and commercial vehicle cases. Every one of these has to be true.
Active, discipline-free license
Verified good standing with the state bar, with no unresolved discipline on record.
Commercial and rural case experience
A documented record against carriers and contractors, including cases where the evidence sat in a remote location.
Moves fast on physical evidence
Preservation demands and a site visit in the first days, before the trailer and the harvest site change.
Clear contingency terms
Fees and case costs put in writing up front, so you know exactly how it works before signing.
Tell us what happened and we will only match you when a case genuinely fits.
Go deeper
Where to read next: the mechanics of a commercial claim, and what actually moves the final figure.
MVA Lawyer Network is a nationwide guide. Wherever the collision happened, we can connect you with an independent attorney licensed in that state.
Northeast Southeast Midwest Southwest West Coast Mountain West Gulf States Timber producing regions
Timber haulage is regulated locally as well as federally. Weight allowances for forest products, permitted vehicle configurations, seasonal road restrictions, how an owner operator's employment status is decided, whether breach of a safety rule establishes negligence, and the filing deadline known as the statute of limitations are all state questions. You can start a free case review and a local, state-licensed attorney will sort this out at no cost to you.
Sources and authorities
Every figure links to the federal document we read to get it, and each carries the date of the data rather than the date we read it.
Current federal description of the occupation
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Logging Workers. Source of the statements in section 04 that logging workers experience one of the highest rates of occupational fatalities of all occupations, that most fatalities involve contact with a machine or an object such as a log, that about 44,300 people held these jobs in 2024, and that the work happens outdoors and often in isolated areas. BLS.
Older federal figures, dated in the text
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Logging Safety, archived page. Source of the 2010 figures in section 04: 95,000 workers, 70 deaths, 73.7 per 100,000, against an overall United States rate of 3.4 per 100,000. This is a 2010 snapshot on an archived page and section 04 says so. NIOSH, archived.
E. Sygnatur, Logging is Perilous Work, Compensation and Working Conditions, US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Source of the finding quoted in section 04 that 70 percent of 772 logger fatalities between 1992 and 1997 came from contact with trees and logs, and of the observation in section 06 about self-employment in the industry. Published in 1998; both are labeled as historic where they appear. BLS.
Hours of service
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, ELD Hours of Service and Agriculture Exemptions. Quoted in section 07 for the terms of the 49 C.F.R. 395.1(k) exemption. Note what it does not say: timber is not among the listed commodities. FMCSA.
Cited by section only
49 C.F.R. 393.116, the federal securement rule written specifically for logs. Referenced in section 02 to identify where the obligation sits. We do not restate its contents on this page.
Why the numbers are old. The specific fatality rates above date from 2010 and from a study of 1992 to 1997. We looked for current equivalents and did not find figures we could attribute confidently. Rather than presenting a decade-old rate as though it described this year, we have printed the dates alongside the numbers and relied on the current handbook for the qualitative position. If you are reading this some time after publication, the underlying federal series are updated annually and worth checking directly.
Why we name no states. Weight allowances and haulage rules for forest products genuinely do differ between timber states, and that variation matters to a case. The state-level material we found was second hand rather than statutory, and on a question that determines whether a vehicle was legally loaded we would rather point you to the right question than give you a confident answer resting on somebody's summary.
Our editorial standards
How we keep this guide accurate and worth trusting.
01
Dates travel with the data
Where the best figure we could find is from 2010, the page says 2010 rather than implying it is current.
02
Open questions stay open
Section 07 declines to resolve the agricultural exemption because the operative definition was not something we read.
03
Editorial, not legal advice
This is general information to help you make decisions, not advice about a specific case in a specific state.
04
Honest about how we operate
We are an independent referral service, not a law firm, and we may be paid a referral fee by the attorney if you hire through us.
Michael Mangione Verified editor
Legal Research Editor · Founder, The Mangione Group, Inc.
MVA Lawyer Network is edited by Michael Mangione, who has spent more than twelve years working inside contingency-based law firms, building intake departments, designing qualification frameworks, and studying how claims are screened and pursued from the first call through resolution. He built this site to turn dense regulatory material into guidance people can actually use, then connect them with a lawyer worth their time. Michael is not a practicing attorney and does not give legal advice. Sources are linked so readers can check the current position themselves.
General information, not legal advice. Weight rules for forest products and the effect of a federal breach on a civil claim both differ by state, so talk to a licensed attorney about your own situation.
Why is a collision with a log truck so much worse?
Because of what is on it and where it happens. Tree length logs are round, very heavy and unpackaged, held on by stakes, bunks and tiedowns rather than by walls. If that fails the load rolls rather than spills. Add a rural location where treatment arrives later, and the same impact produces a worse outcome than it would in a city.
Is logging really one of the most dangerous jobs?
By federal reckoning yes, but read the category carefully. The occupation is forest work, not haulage: drivers are counted separately among heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers. Of logging workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook states that they experience one of the highest rates of occupational fatalities of all occupations, and that most fatalities involve contact with a machine or an object such as a log. The specific rates we can cite are older: an archived NIOSH page gives 73.7 deaths per 100,000 workers for 2010, more than 21 times the overall national rate that year.
Who is responsible if a log fell off and hit my car?
Potentially the driver, the entity owning the truck, whoever loaded it at the harvest site, the logging contractor, and sometimes the company the timber was going to. Loading is often done by a different operator from the one who drives away, so establishing who actually secured the load is early and important work. Federal securement rules include a section written specifically for logs, which gives a written standard to measure conduct against.
The driver says he owns the truck himself. Is that the end of it?
No, though it is a warning sign about available insurance. A high proportion of this workforce is self-employed, but an owner operator usually hauls for somebody: a logging contractor, a mill, or a timber company. Whether that business directed the work closely enough to carry responsibility is a question of fact and of state law, and it is where the meaningful insurance usually sits.
Are log truck drivers exempt from hours of service rules?
We do not know, and we would rather say so. The federal agricultural exemption at 49 CFR 395.1(k) covers agricultural commodities within 150 air miles of the source, and FMCSA's examples are livestock, bees, horses and fish used for food. Timber is not listed, and whether it meets the definition at 395.2 is something we did not verify. Ask your lawyer to establish what exemption the carrier actually claims and whether records exist.
There were no witnesses. Can the case still be proved?
Often yes, but it depends on physical evidence rather than testimony. Marks on the road, resting positions, where the logs finished up, damage patterns and any onboard recording all carry more weight when nobody saw it. That is why photographs taken before the scene is cleared matter so much here, and why a lawyer sending someone to the location quickly is worth more on this kind of case than on most.
What should I photograph if I am able to?
The restraint system above everything else: the stakes at the sides of the trailer, the bunks the logs sit in, and the tiedowns. Then where each log came to rest, the road surface, both vehicles, and every business name, plate and USDOT number visible. Add your location coordinates if you can. Recovering the vehicle destroys the restraint arrangement, so those frames cannot be recreated.
Does it matter that help took a long time to arrive?
Clinically it can matter a great deal, and it is worth telling your treating team how long you waited. Whether delay affects the legal claim depends on the facts and on your state, but the interval belongs in the medical record either way. Federal descriptions of logging work note that it happens in isolated areas, so distance is a normal feature of these collisions rather than bad luck.
What if my own insurance is the only real cover?
It happens on these cases more than most, and it is worth checking your own underinsured motorist cover early rather than after the other policy is exhausted. Notice requirements and consent-to-settle terms vary, and settling with the truck's insurer without following your own policy's procedure can jeopardize the underinsured claim. Raise it in the first conversation with a lawyer.
Is a logging truck accident treated differently from other truck crashes?
Legally the framework is the same, but three practical features change how the case runs: the load is unpackaged and rolls, the operation is frequently very small so the insurance is thinner, and the location is remote so the evidence is physical and perishable. States also regulate forest product haulage in their own ways, including weight allowances and seasonal road restrictions.
How quickly do I need to act?
Faster than the filing deadline suggests. A small operator cannot leave a damaged trailer standing, so the restraint hardware is repaired within weeks. The harvest site closes and moves on within months. Road surface evidence goes with the next rain. The statute of limitations is commonly two years depending on your state, but nearly everything useful will have gone well before then.
What does a lawyer cost?
These cases are handled on a contingency fee, commonly 33 to 40 percent of what is recovered, set out in the written agreement. You pay nothing up front and no hourly rate, and the firm advances case costs, which here can include sending an investigator a long way. Ask what happens to those advanced costs if the case is lost, and ask whether the firm has pursued a timber company or contractor rather than only the driver.
Is what I tell you private?
Yes. What you share in a case review is kept private and is used only to match you with an attorney who fits your situation. One distinction is worth understanding: true legal confidentiality, called attorney-client privilege, only attaches once you actually have an attorney-client relationship with a lawyer. Submitting a form to a referral service is not the same thing. If that matters to you, raise it directly with the attorney.
What does it cost to use MVA Lawyer Network?
Nothing. We are a free, independent referral service, not a law firm, and we do not give legal advice. Requesting a case review costs you nothing and puts you under no obligation. When a situation fits, we connect you with an independent logging truck accident lawyer who reviews it directly, and we may be paid a referral fee by that attorney. That fee does not add anything on top of their contingency percentage. You can read more about how we operate.
Find out who owns and insures the truck. Everything else follows.
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