What if I was hit by a company vehicle or delivery van?

Respondeat superior: the employer owns the crash

Texas law makes an employer liable for its employee's negligent driving when the driving served the employer's business, the delivery route, the service call, the run between job sites. The consequences are practical and large: commercial auto policies commonly carry limits of five hundred thousand to a million dollars or more, an order of magnitude beyond the 30/60/25 minimums, and corporate defendants answer to juries differently than individuals do. The predictable fight is course and scope, the company arguing its driver was on a personal errand, off the clock, outside the job. The answer lives in the company's own records: dispatch logs, delivery manifests, GPS and telematics, time records, and the phone that was probably running the route app at impact.

The company's own negligence

Beyond answering for the driver, the company can be liable for its own decisions: hiring a driver whose record showed suspensions and prior crashes, entrusting a vehicle to someone it knew or should have known was unfit, skipping the training its own manual required, tolerating schedules that made speeding the only way to finish the route. These direct claims matter because they open the company's files, driving records it pulled or failed to pull, prior complaints, safety policies honored in the breach, and because a company that put a dangerous driver on the road is a defendant a jury will hold to account. Preservation letters for the personnel file, telematics, and route data should go out immediately, before ordinary retention cycles do their quiet work.

The company behind the company

Modern delivery is built on layers: the van wears one brand, the driver's paycheck says another, and the contract between them says independent contractor in bold. National platforms route packages through nominally independent local service companies, and the brand's lawyers point at the subcontractor while the subcontractor's policy strains under a serious claim. The structure is not the end of the analysis. Contracts, control, routing software, training, and uniforms all bear on who really directed the work, additional insured provisions often lurk in the agreements, and unwinding the arrangement is standard discovery work in these cases, not an exotic project. The rule of thumb: never accept the smallest company in the stack as the only defendant until the contracts have been read.

Your first moves

Photograph the vehicle, its markings, unit numbers, and DOT numbers if any; identify the driver and the employer named on the exchange; and note what the driver said about where they were headed, because course-and-scope admissions evaporate. Then get the preservation demands moving. Silver Key Law handles company-vehicle cases as corporate cases from day one, because that is what they are, and the consultation is free.

Injured in Arizona? Some rules on this page are Texas-specific. Arizona differs on points that change outcomes, including pure comparative fault and government-claim deadlines. See our Arizona answers or call (888) 508-6967.

Related: How Truck Cases Differ · Rideshare Accidents · Submit Your Case · All Common Questions

This page is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes depend on facts; talk to a lawyer about yours.