Frequently Asked Questions for Trucker Insurance Claims

Downtime is that time when your equipment is down and not making money. Downtime, Lost Revenue, Loss of Revenue, Loss of Use, Lost Income, and Business Interruption Losses are terms often intermingled within the industry. When rolling assets are not moving, no income is produced. Owner operators don’t make income while equipment is sitting still. However, businesses continue to have fixed expenses (insurance, truck payment, office expenses, etc). Owner-operators and motor carriers who lose the use of their trucks following an accident are stripped of their income-making capacity, playing havoc with their livelihood and bottom line. Large losses of revenue add up quickly.

In order to speak with an attorney about your case, please call, email, or complete the “Get Started” questionnaire. We will review your information and get back with you as quickly as possible. The consultation is usually free of charge.

Documents vary depending on the case. Has the adverse party admitted wrongdoing and accepted liability? If not, we will need the documents and evidence proving they were at fault. If they have agreed they were at fault, we will need documents and evidence proving the financial loss your business had because of the accident. We will provide you with a list of the documents needed. We will request a breakdown of your income and expenses. If the accident occurred during a high-income time of the year, we will want the data which proves these higher-than-normal figures. We will calculate lost profit on a daily basis and multiply this loss by the number of working days down to arrive at your lost income figure.

There is no charge to talk with an attorney. Once we take your case, we work on a contingency fee basis. This means we take a percentage of the settlement at the end of the case. The amount of the contingency fee depends on the size and facts of the case. Many law firms handle these matters only on an hourly basis — with a hefty retainer. We are a positive alternative to this scenario. We strive to recover lost profits for owner operators from negligent third parties.

1. You have a free initial consultation with a lawyer.
2. You sign the contract, complete the forms and submit your evidence to our office.
3. We set up a file and send you an Acknowledgement Letter.
4. We review the file and contact you for any additional documents and evidence needed.
5. Once all information is analyzed, we prepare and send a demand letter with attachments to the adverse party or their insurance company.
6. We call the adverse party or their insurance company if they don’t call us.
7. If the adverse agrees they were at fault, we discuss and negotiate the amount of the loss and provide whatever documents they need to settle the case .
8. With each offer, our staff contacts you to let you decide if it is an offer worth accepting.
9. If we can come to an agreement and resolve the case, the adverse will often send us a release for you to sign.
10. Once the release is signed, the adverse will send us a check.
11. Once that check has cleared our trust account, we will remit your settlement, less our fee, to you.
12. If we cannot come to terms with the adverse on settlement, we will ask you for court costs to refer the file out to a local attorney to file suit.

We provide our clients with a packet to complete. We use various methods to calculate your losses and will discuss which method is best for your case. We invite you to contact us to learn more about how we can help you recover your claim.

Every state is different. Drivers may be able to pursue their lost income. We will make that determination once we have discussed the matter with you.

Eckert & Associates, P.A.’s goal is to negotiate a settlement for you that is acceptable without the necessity of litigation. If you are not satisfied with the offers from the adverse party, we will look for a local lawyer in the proper jurisdiction to file the case.

Most of our cases settle without going to trial. Whether you go to court is for you and your local attorney to discuss; and the local judge to ultimately decide.

Typically, we suggesting filing suit in the county and state in which the accident occurred. However, each case is different and an actual legal opinion will be necessary to determine proper venue.

Eckert & Associates, P.A. has a fine network of referral attorneys around the nation who we refer cases to for litigation. We are not licensed in most states, so it will be necessary to partner with a local lawyer for litigation proceedings. We will monitor the file throughout the litigation and keep you abreast of the proceedings.

Whether you can proceed will depend on the type of release that you signed and language written on the check. If you have signed a release or cashed any check from the adverse party or their insurance company, be sure to let us know. We will look at these documents and give you our opinion.

Whether or not you can pursue these expenses depends on the state law governing the case. Once we determine the proper state for venue, we can better advise you on whether we can pursue these expenses.

Contact our office as soon as possible to discuss your injuries and options for representation.

In many jurisdictions, you still have the right to collecting your lost revenue. This will depend on state law. The amount of time for which you can be compensated is often a reasonableness standard, but again, this varies by state law.

This must be answered on a case by case and state by state basis. We will be happy to discuss this with you.

Yes. We handle property damage claims on a daily basis. We will be happy to look at your entire claim and discuss with you the best manner to proceed.

Some adverse insurance companies require you to provide tax returns. Others do not. If they don’t ask for your taxes, we certainly don’t suggest providing them. However, some adverse companies’ policies require a copy of your tax returns in order to move forward with any type of settlement. In most cases, we argue that providing tax returns is not necessary. Determining the difference between net operating income and net taxable income is typically more important. We educate adverse parties on this on a regular basis.

Each case has a Statute of Limitation (SOL), which is the date by which you must file your action or be completely barred from ever doing so. Our goal is to resolve your case long before the SOL is an issue. However, where the claim is close to the SOL, we will suggest filing suit to protect the case. We recommend that in order to protect the statute of limitation, you contact an attorney at your earliest convenience.