Short answer: Get medical care first, make sure police document the crash, and photograph the truck's company name and DOT number if you safely can. Then move fast on the one step that separates truck cases from car cases: a written preservation demand to the motor carrier, before its driver logs and onboard data are overwritten.
1. Safety and medical care come first
Move out of traffic if you can and accept transport to the emergency room if paramedics recommend it. Truck crash forces produce injuries — internal bleeding, brain injury, spinal damage — that do not always announce themselves at the scene. Prompt care protects your health, and the medical record it creates becomes the foundation of any claim. A treatment gap is the first thing a trucking insurer will point to.
2. Get the crash documented by police
Serious truck crashes in Arizona are investigated at the scene, often with commercial-vehicle inspectors involved. Make sure a report is made, and later request the crash report from the agency that responded. If a driver violation or equipment defect is cited in a post-crash inspection, it will be in that paper trail.
3. Photograph the truck itself — not just the damage
If it is safe: the tractor's door placard with the carrier name and USDOT number, the trailer number, the license plates, and the positions of the vehicles. The USDOT number identifies the motor carrier — the company whose insurance and safety record your claim will actually run against, which is not always the name painted on the trailer.
4. Do not give a statement to the carrier's insurer
Trucking companies and their insurers dispatch rapid-response investigators within hours of a serious crash. You are not required to give their adjuster a recorded statement, and you should not — anything imprecise you say while injured and shaken will be used to build a comparative-fault argument against you under Arizona's system (A.R.S. § 12-2505). Refer them to your lawyer.
5. Send a preservation demand before the evidence cycles out
The truck's electronic logging device, engine control module data, dashcam footage, dispatch records and driver logs are the case. Some of that data is retained only briefly in the ordinary course of business. A spoliation (preservation) letter from your attorney puts the carrier on legal notice to keep all of it — which is why talking to a truck accident lawyer in the first days matters more here than in an ordinary car claim.
6. Know your deadlines
Most Arizona injury claims must be filed within two years (A.R.S. § 12-542). If a government vehicle or public entity is involved, you must serve a notice of claim within 180 days and file suit within one year (A.R.S. §§ 12-821.01, 12-821). Waiting also lets evidence disappear — the legal deadline is the outer limit, not the schedule.
What the carrier is doing while you recover
Within hours of a serious crash, most large carriers have an investigator, a defense attorney, or both working the scene — photographing, measuring, interviewing, and shaping the fault narrative before you have left the hospital. This is standard industry practice, not misconduct, but it means the evidence race starts immediately and only one side is running it unless you act. Everything the carrier's team collects serves its version of events; the preservation demand and your own early investigation are how the record stays honest.
Keep your own record
Start a file the first week: photographs of your injuries as they heal, every medical bill and receipt, mileage to appointments, missed work days, and a short daily note about pain and what you could not do. Damages in an Arizona injury claim include things only you can document — the insurer will have every bill, but not the record of what the injury actually took from your days. Contact information for witnesses matters just as much; people who stop at a crash scene are hard to find a year later.
Notify your own insurer — carefully
Your own policy requires prompt notice and cooperation, and uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage on your policy may matter if the liable parties' coverage falls short. Give your insurer the basic facts. But the trucking company's insurer is a different matter entirely: you owe them nothing, and their early friendliness is a collection technique for admissions. All communication with the carrier's side can and should run through your lawyer.
When to involve a lawyer — and what happens when you do
In a serious truck crash, the realistic answer is: within days, because the preservation window is that short. At Hirsch & Lyon the consultation is free, the fee is contingent — 25% if the case resolves without litigation, 30% in litigation — and the immediate work is concrete: the spoliation letter goes out, the crash report and inspection findings are pulled, witnesses are contacted, and the carrier's insurer is told to route everything through counsel. From that point the evidence race has two runners.
Should I see a doctor even if I feel fine?
Yes. Adrenaline masks symptoms, and some serious injuries develop over days. Being evaluated promptly protects your health and closes the treatment gap the insurer would otherwise use against your claim.
Can I still recover if I was partly at fault?
Usually yes. Arizona follows pure comparative fault: your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault rather than barred. Even a driver found mostly at fault may recover the remaining share — see how Arizona's comparative negligence law works.
What if the truck driver got a ticket?
A citation or post-crash inspection violation helps, but it is not the whole case. Civil liability is broader than the traffic code — hours-of-service violations, maintenance failures and negligent hiring often only surface in the carrier's own records during the claim.
How long do I have to file a truck accident claim in Arizona?
Two years for most claims under A.R.S. § 12-542 — but only 180 days to serve a notice of claim if a government entity is involved. The evidence timeline is much shorter than the legal one.
Talk to a board-certified specialist about your case — free, 24/7: (602) 535-1900 or request a free case review online. No fee unless you recover.
