Greensburg, PA Truck Accident Lawyers

A tractor-trailer crash on US-30 or near the New Stanton interchange leaves a family dealing with two problems at the same time. One is a catastrophic injury. The other is a motor carrier whose records of that day are already on a schedule to be destroyed.

John Caputo and Elizabeth Jenkins have spent many years representing seriously injured people and grieving families in Greensburg and throughout Westmoreland County. Commercial truck cases are not larger versions of car accident cases. A carrier operates under federal safety rules that generate a paper trail covering the driver’s hours, the condition of the tractor, and the decision to put that driver on the road. Much of it is only required to be kept for a matter of months.

Our firm accepts a limited number of catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases. When you call, you speak directly with a lawyer about what happened and what can still be recovered.

What Makes a Tractor-Trailer Case Different From a Car Accident Claim?

Commercial trucks accounted for roughly six percent of Pennsylvania crashes in 2025 but more than twelve percent of the fatal ones. The difference is not only mass. It is the layer of federal recordkeeping standing behind every motor carrier, and the short window before those records may lawfully be destroyed.

A loaded tractor-trailer weighs many times what a passenger vehicle weighs, and the injuries usually reflect that. PennDOT’s 2025 crash figures show heavy trucks involved in a little over six percent of reported crashes statewide, but in more than twice that share of fatal crashes.

The legal difference runs deeper than weight. A motor carrier is a regulated business, and federal rules govern who it may hire, how long that person may drive, and how often the equipment must be inspected. Every one of those requirements generates a record, and those records typically decide the case.

Where Do Most Truck Crashes Happen Around Greensburg?

Interstates get the attention, but state figures place most Pennsylvania heavy truck crashes on non-interstate state highways rather than on interstates. Around Greensburg that means roads like US-30 and US-119, which carry freight off the New Stanton interchange and through Hempfield toward local industrial parks.

Westmoreland County sits on one of the busiest freight junctions in Western Pennsylvania. At New Stanton, the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Interstate 70 meet US-119 and PA Toll 66, in an area that has grown into a regional employment center with several industrial parks and a rail-to-truck transload terminal.

All of that freight has to reach the interstate on something, and what it reaches it on is usually a state route. In 2025, more than half of Pennsylvania’s heavy truck crashes occurred on non-interstate state highways, against roughly a quarter on interstates.

Corridors that come up most often in Westmoreland County cases include:

• US-30, running through Greensburg and Hempfield toward Irwin
• US-119, between Greensburg and the New Stanton interchange
• The Pennsylvania Turnpike and I-70 at and around New Stanton
• PA Route 66 and the connectors serving Youngwood and Latrobe

PennDOT District 12 maintains much of this network, and long-running reconstruction along the I-70 corridor keeps conditions changing.

Who Can Be Held Responsible After a Commercial Truck Crash?

Responsibility in a commercial truck case rarely stops with the driver. Depending on the facts, the motor carrier, a company responsible for maintaining the equipment, and the broker that selected the carrier may each bear a share. Pennsylvania then apportions fault among those found liable rather than treating them alike.

A driver who was over hours is rarely the only problem in the file. The company that dispatched him set the schedule, reviewed his qualifications, and answered for the tractor’s condition.

Parties who may share responsibility, depending on what the records show:

• The driver
• The motor carrier that employed or contracted with the driver
• A separate company responsible for maintaining or inspecting the equipment
• The freight broker that selected the carrier
• A shipper or loader, where cargo securement is at issue

Broker claims were once difficult. Brokers argued that federal law preempted state negligence claims over their choice of carrier, and courts disagreed about it. In May 2026 the Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that such claims fall within the statute’s safety exception. That decision removed a defense. It did not make brokers automatically responsible, and such a claim still has to be proven on its own facts.

What Evidence Disappears First, and How Soon?

Federal rules set minimum retention periods, not maximums, and several are short. Driver vehicle inspection reports must be kept for three months. Records of duty status and their supporting documents, six. A carrier that follows the rules exactly can still have destroyed the most important records before a lawsuit is ever filed.

This is the part most people do not know, and it is why we ask families to call early.

Federal regulations require motor carriers to keep safety records for set minimum periods. Several are shorter than the time an injured person generally has to file suit in Pennsylvania. Under the hours-of-service rules and the related inspection and driver qualification requirements:

1. Driver vehicle inspection reports, with certifications of repair, must generally be kept for three months from the date the report was prepared.
2. Records of duty status and their supporting documents, including electronic logging device data, must generally be kept for at least six months from receipt.
3. Vehicle maintenance records must generally be kept for a year, and for six months after the vehicle leaves the carrier’s control.
4. A driver qualification file must generally be kept for as long as the driver is employed, and for three years after that.

Nothing improper has to happen for those records to be gone. Routine compliance runs the clock down on its own, and a tractor that is sold or comes off lease can take its maintenance history with it.

A preservation letter sent early changes that. Once a carrier is on notice that a claim is reasonably anticipated, continuing to destroy relevant records becomes a very different matter.

What Do Federal and Pennsylvania Rules Require of a Motor Carrier?

Motor carriers operating in Pennsylvania answer to federal safety regulations covering driver qualification, hours of service, and vehicle inspection and maintenance. Pennsylvania adopts much of that same federal framework for carriers operating only within the state, reaching vehicles well below the size of a full tractor-trailer.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations cover the areas that usually matter after a serious crash:

• Driver qualification, and the file a carrier must maintain on every driver
• Hours of service, and the electronic logging of driving time
• Safe operation requirements for the driver on the road
• Inspection, repair, and maintenance of the tractor and trailer

Pennsylvania incorporates much of that framework into its own code for carriers operating only inside the state, applying it to vehicles rated at 17,001 pounds or more. That reaches much of the local traffic around Greensburg, including dump trucks and delivery vehicles running out of the industrial parks near New Stanton.

Equipment failures appear regularly in the state’s heavy truck data, with tire and brake problems leading the list. The question in a case is rarely whether the part failed. It is what the maintenance records show about whether someone should have caught it.

Can You Still Recover If You Were Partly at Fault?

Pennsylvania reduces an injured person’s recovery in proportion to their own share of fault, and bars recovery once that share is greater than the combined fault of the parties they are suing. Fault percentages are contested hard in truck cases, which is one reason the carrier’s records matter.

Pennsylvania follows a modified comparative negligence rule. An injured person whose own negligence is not greater than that of the parties they are suing may still recover, with the award reduced by their percentage of fault. Once that share is greater, recovery is generally barred.

That threshold is why defense efforts so often focus on the injured driver’s conduct rather than the carrier’s. Hours-of-service data, inspection records, and the tractor’s electronic data usually tell a fuller story than a roadside diagram.

What Compensation May Be Available in a Pennsylvania Truck Case?

Pennsylvania’s constitution prevents the legislature from limiting what an injured person may recover in compensatory damages. Those damages cover economic losses such as medical care, lost earnings, and future care needs, along with non-economic losses. What any particular case supports depends on the evidence and the injuries involved.

Catastrophic truck injuries produce losses that continue for decades, and the damages analysis has to account for that.

Economic damages may include:

• Emergency, surgical, and rehabilitative medical care
• Future medical treatment and attendant care
• Lost wages and reduced earning capacity
• Home modification, adaptive equipment, and assistive technology

Non-economic damages may include:

• Physical pain and suffering
• Loss of life’s pleasures
• Loss of consortium for a spouse

Where an injury is permanent, a life care plan prepared with treating physicians and rehabilitation professionals usually forms the backbone of the economic claim. No responsible attorney can give you a number on a first phone call.

How Long Do You Have to Bring a Truck Accident Claim?

Pennsylvania generally allows two years from the date of injury to bring a negligence claim, though exceptions can apply depending on the circumstances. The practical deadline is often much earlier, because the federal records that show what a motor carrier did may be gone within months.

Where a crash results in death, Pennsylvania recognizes both a wrongful death claim, brought for the family’s losses, and a survival action brought on behalf of the estate.

The filing deadline is rarely the real constraint in a trucking case. The records that prove what happened have shorter clocks than the lawsuit does.

Where Would a Greensburg Truck Accident Case Be Filed?

A case arising from a crash in Westmoreland County is typically filed in the Westmoreland County Court of Common Pleas, at the courthouse on North Main Street in Greensburg. Where a case may properly be brought depends on the parties involved and where those companies regularly conduct business.

Most Westmoreland County truck cases are filed in the Court of Common Pleas at 2 North Main Street in Greensburg, where civil motions are generally heard on Friday mornings before the assigned judge.

Venue is not automatic. With corporate defendants, where a case may properly be brought turns in part on where those companies regularly do business, and national carriers often operate in more than one county.

John Caputo and Elizabeth Jenkins have tried cases across Western Pennsylvania, including in Allegheny, Butler, Armstrong, Westmoreland, Washington, Beaver, and Erie counties.

Why Do These Cases Call for a Catastrophic Injury Practice?

A serious truck crash in Westmoreland County produces a medical record split across providers and counties within hours, as patients are stabilized locally and moved on for trauma care. Reading that record alongside a motor carrier’s federal compliance file is the work these cases usually require.

Someone badly hurt on US-30 is typically stabilized close to home, often at Westmoreland Hospital in Greensburg, and then transferred for definitive trauma care. AHN Forbes in Monroeville, an adult Level II trauma center, serves eastern Allegheny and Westmoreland counties, and the most severe cases usually go on to Level I centers in Pittsburgh.

By the end of the first day, there may be an EMS run sheet, a local emergency record, a transport record, and a trauma admission, all held by different institutions.

Our practice was built on reading records like that. John Caputo and Elizabeth Jenkins handle medical negligence and catastrophic injury cases, and the same work applies here:

• Reconstructing a treatment timeline from records held by several systems
• Working with medical and trucking safety professionals who testify at trial
• Preparing a case to be tried, not simply positioned

We take a limited number of cases so each one gets that attention, and our attorneys have earned recognition from prestigious legal organizations.

Talk With a Greensburg Truck Accident Lawyer

If you or someone in your family was seriously hurt by a tractor-trailer in Greensburg or anywhere in Westmoreland County, the sooner a preservation letter goes out, the more of the carrier’s record is likely to still exist.

Call John A. Caputo & Associates, P.C. at 412-391-4990 for a free consultation. When you call, you speak directly with an attorney. John Caputo and Elizabeth Jenkins personally review every potential case.

We handle these cases on a contingency fee basis. You pay nothing unless we recover compensation for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

The crash was months ago. Is it too late to do anything?

Probably not, though some of the carrier’s records may already be gone and more will go each month. Pennsylvania generally allows two years to file a negligence claim, but the records showing what a driver and a company actually did have much shorter retention periods. Call and let us check the dates.

The crash report seems to blame me. Does that end it?

No. A crash report reflects an officer’s assessment at the scene, usually made before anyone has seen the truck’s electronic data or the carrier’s records, and those materials frequently change the picture. Pennsylvania also allows recovery where an injured person bears some responsibility, so long as their share of fault is not the greater one.

The truck was from out of state. Does that change our case?

It can. Pennsylvania drivers who selected the limited tort option generally keep full tort rights when the person at fault was operating a vehicle registered in another state, which is common in interstate trucking. Whether it applies depends on how that tractor was registered, and we check that early rather than assume it.

My husband was killed. Is that a different kind of claim?

Yes. Pennsylvania recognizes a wrongful death claim, brought for the family’s losses, and a survival action brought on behalf of the estate. They cover different losses and are usually pursued together. We are sorry for your loss, and we can walk you through both whenever you are ready.

Someone from the trucking company has been calling. What should we do?

Speak with a lawyer before giving a recorded statement or signing anything, including a medical authorization. Early contact after a serious crash is routine. Your own account becomes evidence, and it is worth knowing what the records show first.

What does it cost to have you look at this?

Nothing. Consultations are free, and we handle these cases on a contingency fee basis, so there are no fees unless we recover compensation for you. The fee is agreed to before any work begins.

By John A. Caputo and Elizabeth L. Jenkins, John A. Caputo & Associates, P.C.

Last updated: August 2026