Salt Lake City Big Rig Accident Attorneys

Are You Looking for Skilled Big Rig Accident Attorneys in Salt Lake City?

Interstate 15 climbs out of Salt Lake City and drops sharply at Point of the Mountain before leveling into Utah Valley, a grade that has caught more than one big rig driver speeding down. Out west, Interstate 80 stretches in a flat, featureless line across the Tooele and Wendover desert, the kind of road that lulls a driver into losing focus over long, monotonous stretches.

Big rig crashes on these roads are rarely simple fender benders, and sorting out what happened often takes a team that understands the mechanics behind them. Contact Swenson Shelley Law to get an idea of how we can help you.

Why Big Rig Crashes Are So Different From Other Wrecks

A fully loaded big rig can weigh over 80,000 pounds, roughly twenty times what a typical passenger car weighs. That difference in mass and height changes how a crash unfolds and what an investigation needs to examine.

Big rigs move through the valley constantly, hauling freight between distribution centers along the west side and warehouses lining the industrial corridors near North Temple, and any one of those routes can produce a crash that looks nothing like an ordinary two-car collision.

Three crash mechanics show up again and again in the cases our office has handled: rollovers, underride and override collisions, and jackknifing.

Rollovers: When a High Center of Gravity Meets a Utah Curve

A big rig’s cargo sits high off the road, which raises its center of gravity and makes it prone to tipping when a driver takes a curve too fast, swerves suddenly, or is caught by a gust of wind on an exposed stretch like the Point of the Mountain grade or the interchanges along Bangerter Highway.

Rollover crashes often involve cargo shifting mid-turn, which can make the trailer tip even at speeds that would be safe for an empty truck.

Investigating a rollover means pulling the truck’s speed data, checking how the cargo was loaded and secured, and reviewing whether the driver’s route or schedule pushed them to take a curve faster than conditions allowed. A Salt Lake City big rig accident lawyer who understands these mechanics knows exactly which records to request before they disappear.

Underride and Override Collisions: A Preventable and Devastating Outcome

An underride crash happens when a passenger vehicle slides underneath a trailer, often because the trailer’s rear or side sits several feet off the ground, well above the height of most cars.

Rear underride guards have been federally required since 1996 and were strengthened in 2022 under updated federal safety standards, but side underride guards are still not federally mandated, even though most underride fatalities happen along the side of a trailer rather than the rear.

That regulatory gap does not protect a trucking company from liability. If a trailer lacked adequate side protection, was missing a required rear guard, or had a guard that failed to meet federal standards, that failure becomes part of the case.

Big rig accident lawyers in Salt Lake City routinely inspect the guard itself, not just the police report, because a defective or missing guard can point to a maintenance or manufacturing failure separate from anything the driver did.

Jackknifing: When the Trailer Takes Over

Jackknifing happens when a trailer swings out relative to the cab, usually during hard braking on a wet or icy road, folding the rig into a shape that can span multiple lanes in seconds. Utah winters bring exactly the conditions that cause this: black ice on I-80 through the canyons, sudden snow squalls, and slick on-ramps that catch drivers following too closely or braking too hard for the load they carry.

A jackknife crash investigation closely examines the truck’s speed, following distance, brake maintenance records, and whether the driver adjusted for road conditions a reasonably careful driver would have noticed. These records often exist only in the days immediately following a crash, which is why acting quickly matters.

What a Big Rig Claim Can Cover

Every case is different, but the losses tend to fall into familiar categories: emergency treatment and ongoing rehabilitation, lost income during recovery and reduced earning capacity if an injury is permanent, and the pain and disruption a serious crash causes to your daily life and your family.

Because trucking companies typically carry substantial insurance coverage, the investigation and evidence gathered early in a case often determine how seriously an insurer takes a claim.

Common injuries in these crashes include:

• Traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord damage from the force of a rollover or underride collision
• Crush injuries to the chest, pelvis, and limbs
• Severe lacerations or amputation-level injuries in underride crashes where a vehicle’s cabin is compromised
• Whiplash and soft tissue injuries that surface days after a jackknife-related collision

What Utah Law Means for Your Case

Utah gives most injury victims four years from the date of a crash to file a lawsuit, under Utah Code section 78B-2-307, though the records tied to a rollover, underride, or jackknife crash are often lost or overwritten long before that deadline arrives.

Utah also follows a modified comparative negligence rule under Utah Code section 78B-5-818, which allows you to recover damages as long as you were less than 50 percent at fault, with your recovery reduced by your share of responsibility.

Insurance adjusters sometimes lean on this rule to shift blame toward the injured driver, particularly in rollover cases where a passenger vehicle’s position at the moment of impact can be misread without a careful reconstruction of the crash.

How Our Firm Approaches These Cases

Our first conversation focuses on what happened and what you need right now. From there, we move to secure the evidence specific to the crash mechanics involved, whether that means the trailer’s underride guard, the truck’s speed and braking data, or the cargo manifest showing how a load was secured.

We handle communication with insurance adjusters directly and prepare every case as though it may need to go before a judge, because that preparation is often what leads to a fair settlement in the first place.

Steps we typically take early in a case include:

• Sending a preservation letter to stop the trucking company from repairing or discarding the trailer, cab, or underride guard
• Requesting the truck’s electronic control module data to establish speed and braking at the moment of the crash
• Reviewing cargo manifests and loading records where a rollover or shifting load may be involved
• Consulting with accident reconstruction professionals to model how the crash unfolded

Talk to Our Salt Lake City Big Rig Accident Lawyer

A big rig crash caused by a rollover, an underride collision, or a jackknifing trailer is rarely simple, and it shouldn’t be handled without someone who understands the mechanics behind it.

Contact our big rig accident attorneys from Swenson Shelley Law, families have relied on for years, and let our big rig accident lawyers Salt Lake City residents trust walk you through what comes next.