The 5 Most Dangerous Trucking Companies in the US… And 5 That You Can Trust

The East Coast is more densely populated than much of the country. As a result, the area’s highways are often congested, with more drivers on the road, meaning the likelihood of collisions is higher. When commercial trucks are involved in these accidents, the damage that results can be serious.

Thousands of people are injured in trucking accidents every year. Trucks have large trailers and carry heavy loads meaning there is higher potential for serious injuries. Trucking accidents have a higher potential to be life-threatening and because of the size of the trailers on the road and the potential for the cargo to spill onto driving lanes, trucking accidents are also a bit harder for safe drivers to avoid.

As dangerous as commercial trucking is, the unfortunate reality is that many trucking companies do not adhere to safety standards and good hiring practices. Thousands of Americans are injured every year as a result of these failings. The victims of trucking accidents suffer in a number of ways, from the physical pain to crushing medical debts that they may struggle to pay off. When you add the extra emotional toll that the accident and a potential inability to work create, many victims suffer.

Personal injury laws exist to help the victims of trucking accidents and other kinds of harm get the relief they need after an injury. An experienced personal injury lawyer can help victim’s hold the right entities responsible despite the complex liability laws they may try to use to shield themselves. At Richard Hollawell and Associates, we’ve handled countless trucking accident and personal injury cases. We’ll highlight some of the more dangerous trucking companies in recent years and some of the safer ones to give you a better idea of how dangerous trucking can be.

5 Most Dangerous Trucking Companies:

FedEx: Based out of Arizona, Fedex is a less-than-truckload shipping company. They have a roster of over 19,000 drivers. In recent years they were involved in nearly 1,000 crashes, resulting in nearly 30 deaths.

United Parcel Service: Also called UPS, United Parcel Service is perhaps the largest transportation company that deals with parcels. Based out of Atlanta, their fleet is large and they employ almost 100,000 drivers. UPS drivers were involved in over 2,000 crashes. The result of these crashes were nearly 800 injuries and over 50 deaths.

Swift: The Swift Transportation Co. is based out of Arizona. They’re a trucking company that focuses on freight that is truckload-sized. They have roughly 20,000 drivers on their roster, making them comparable in size to FedEx. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a whopping 15 percent of their vehicles had violations. These dangers carried onto the streets. Swift drivers were involved in almost 1,800 crashes. These crashes resulted in over 500 injuries and over 40 deaths.

Werner Enterprises: Based out of Omaha, Nebraska, Werner Enterprises is a logistics and transportation company that mostly focuses on shipping retail merchandise and other consumer goods. They have 10,000 drivers worldwide. Over a two year period, they have nearly 1000 reported crashes.

U.S. Xpress: This is a trucking company based out of Chattanooga, Tennessee. They focus mainly on truckload services. Their fleet consists of nearly 7,000 trucks, including several thousand provided by independent contractors. In the past two years their drivers were involved in nearly 1,500 reported crashes.

The Top 5 Safest Trucking Companies

The safest trucking companies are harder to quantify as you could use a lot of different metrics to decide what you consider safe. Sure, some may have fewer crashes, but maybe they’re smaller and drive fewer road miles. To address this problem, the Truckload Carriers Association divides companies into mileage divisions when announcing year-end safety awards. These awards are given to the company with the lowest accident frequency per million miles. The winners for each division were:

CFI out of Missouri (+100M miles)
May Trucking Co. out of Oregon (50-100M miles)
Central Oregon Trucking Company ( 25-50M miles),
Kottke Trucking from Minnesota (15-25M miles)
First Express from Tennessee (5-15M miles)
Carbon Express from New Jersey (5M miles)

Now that you have a better idea of how dangerous trucking accidents can be and which companies have a poor track record, hopefully you’ll know who to look out for on the road. If you’re involved in a trucking accident you should contact an experienced east coast trucking accident attorney as soon as possible. Call our specialized truck accident lawyers at 1-800-681-3550 or fill out our form to get a free consulation today.