A truck accident case is decided by evidence the injured person does not own. The tractor, its computers, its cameras, the driver’s logs, the dispatch messages, the maintenance file and the driver’s qualification file all belong to the motor carrier, and the carrier decides — within the limits the law sets — what is kept and for how long. Some of it is overwritten in days. Some of it is required to be kept for months. None of it is required to be kept for the years a lawsuit takes unless someone puts the carrier on notice. This page is about that notice: what the carrier has, how long each piece survives, what the preservation letter has to say, and what Nebraska law does — and does not do — when a carrier lets evidence disappear anyway.
The Electronic Logging Device
Every commercial truck subject to the hours-of-service rules carries an electronic logging device wired to the engine. It records when the engine is on, when the truck is moving, the duty status the driver selected and every change to it, the location at each change and at intervals while driving, engine hours, and vehicle miles. It also records edits: who changed a log entry, when, and what it said before. The carrier is required to retain those records and the supporting documents for six months and to keep a back-up copy on a separate device. Six months sounds like time. It is not. Families in a serious crash are still in the hospital or the first months of grief when that window closes, and a carrier that has not received a preservation letter is entitled to purge the file on day 181.
What the ELD proves is often the whole case. It shows whether the driver was over hours. It shows a thirty-minute break logged at a location where the truck was, according to its own GPS, still moving. It shows a log edited by a dispatcher the morning after the crash. It shows unassigned driving time — miles the truck moved with no driver logged in — that a carrier assigned to nobody. And it does all of that with timestamps the carrier cannot argue with, because the carrier chose the device.
The Engine Control Module
The engine computer on a heavy truck records operating data continuously, and when it detects a hard-braking event or a sudden deceleration it freezes a snapshot: speed, throttle position, brake application, clutch, cruise control status and engine RPM for a window of seconds before and after the trigger. That snapshot is the closest thing to an objective witness a crash has. It answers whether the driver braked, when, and from what speed, and it does so without relying on anyone’s memory. Unlike the ELD, there is no federal rule requiring a carrier to preserve engine data after a crash. It can be overwritten by the next hard-braking event, lost when the module is replaced during repair, or erased when the truck is returned to service. The carrier’s own investigators typically download it within hours. The family’s side gets it only if the truck is preserved and an expert is allowed to image the module before it goes anywhere.
Cameras: Forward, Driver-Facing and the Rest
Most fleets now run forward-facing cameras, and many run driver-facing cameras as well, on systems that save clips around triggering events and upload them to the carrier or a vendor. The footage shows the road, the traffic, the other vehicle, and — from the inward camera — the driver’s eyes, hands and phone in the seconds before impact. It is also the evidence carriers are least eager to produce and the evidence with the shortest natural life: unsaved footage loops over on a schedule measured in days, and saved clips live on a vendor’s server under the carrier’s subscription. Beyond the truck, there are the cameras that do not belong to the carrier at all — traffic cameras, business security cameras along the route, dashcams in other vehicles, the shipper’s loading dock — and each has its own owner, its own retention cycle and its own letter.
The Paper: Dispatch, Maintenance, Qualification, Testing
The rest of the file is documentary, and each category has its own clock. Dispatch and communication records — load confirmations, messages between dispatch and the cab, the delivery schedule — show whether the run was legal when it was assigned and what the driver was told. Driver vehicle inspection reports, which the driver completes at the end of each day, are kept for three months. Maintenance and repair records establish whether the brakes, tires and lights were inspected and fixed on schedule. The driver qualification file — the application, the prior-employer inquiries, the motor vehicle records, the medical certificate, the annual reviews — is kept for the period of employment and three years afterward. The carrier’s accident register, listing every recordable crash, is kept for three years. Post-accident drug and alcohol test results, which must be obtained within eight hours for alcohol and thirty-two for drugs in a qualifying crash, are kept in the testing file, and if the test was not done, the carrier must keep a written record of why. The driver qualification and hours page explains what each of those documents proves; this page is about keeping them in existence long enough to read.
The Driver’s Phone and the Records Outside the Truck
Some of the most decisive evidence in a truck case never touches the carrier’s systems. The driver’s personal phone carries call logs, texts, app usage and location history for the minutes before the crash, and a driver who was on the phone is usually a driver whose carrier will say it had no way of knowing. Carrier records of the phone, the driver’s own account with the wireless provider, and the phone itself are three separate targets, and each needs its own preservation demand — the phone to the driver and carrier, the account records to the provider by subpoena once suit is filed. Weigh station and inspection records held by state enforcement, toll and fuel-card transactions that place the truck at a time and location, and the shipper’s and receiver’s dock logs that fix when the load was picked up and when it was due all live with third parties on their own retention schedules. None of them are covered by a letter to the carrier. A preservation plan in a truck case is a list of owners, not a single letter.
The Preservation Letter
The preservation letter, sometimes called a spoliation letter, is the document that converts the carrier’s discretion into a duty. It goes out by a method that proves delivery, to the carrier, its insurer, and where they are known, the broker, the shipper, the trailer owner and any maintenance contractor. It identifies the crash, the truck and the driver. And it names, specifically, every category of evidence to be preserved: the tractor and trailer in their post-crash condition, without repair or salvage, until inspected; the engine control module and every other onboard recorder, unmodified; the ELD data, edits and unassigned-driving records for the driver and the vehicle for a defined period before the crash; all camera footage and the vendor account it lives in; dispatch, load and communication records; the driver qualification file, the hours-of-service file and the testing file; maintenance, inspection and repair records for the vehicle; the carrier’s post-crash investigation materials; and the driver’s phone records for the day. A letter that says “preserve all evidence” is a letter a carrier can read narrowly. A letter that lists the categories, the devices and the time periods is a letter a court can enforce.
Timing is everything. The letter should go out the week of the crash — before the truck is repaired, before the camera loop cycles, before the six-month ELD window becomes an excuse. In a catastrophic case, the letter is followed within days by a request to inspect the truck with an expert, and where the carrier will not agree, by a lawsuit and a motion asking the court to order the inspection and the preservation. The rapid-response post describes what the carrier’s side is doing during that same week; the letter is how the family’s side keeps pace.
What Nebraska Law Does When the Evidence Is Gone
Nebraska’s rule on spoliation is narrower than injured people expect, and it is the reason the preservation letter matters so much. The Nebraska Supreme Court applies an intent-based standard: a party asking the jury to infer that destroyed evidence would have been unfavorable to the party that destroyed it must show that the destruction reflected fraud and a desire to suppress the truth, not merely carelessness. The court has said that because the inference rests on the idea that intentional destruction amounts to an admission that one’s case is weak, the inference does not arise where the evidence was destroyed as a matter of routine without fraudulent intent. Nebraska has not recognized a separate tort of spoliation; the remedy lives inside the case, in the form of discovery sanctions and the adverse-inference instruction, and only when the intent standard is met.
Put those rules together and the practical consequence is stark. A carrier that overwrites its camera footage on the normal fourteen-day cycle, with no letter in hand, has destroyed nothing “routinely” in the eyes of Nebraska law — it has done exactly what it always does, and the family gets no inference from it. The same carrier that overwrites the same footage after receiving a letter that named it, in a case it knew was coming, is a carrier that has to explain to a judge why the routine continued. The letter is what turns routine into intent. It does not guarantee an inference — the carrier will still argue the loss was innocent — but without it, the argument is over before it starts.
When the Case Is in Federal Court
Many Nebraska truck cases end up in federal court, because out-of-state carriers remove them. The federal rules on lost electronic evidence have their own structure: where electronically stored information that should have been preserved is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps, and it cannot be restored or replaced, a court may order measures to cure the prejudice — and only on a finding that the party acted with intent to deprive the other side of the information may the court instruct the jury to presume the evidence was unfavorable, or enter judgment against the spoliating party. The intent threshold is similar to Nebraska’s; the cure-the-prejudice tier is somewhat broader. In both systems, the same fact controls: whether the carrier was on notice that the evidence mattered when it let the evidence go.
Evidence the Family Controls
Not everything belongs to the carrier. The family’s own vehicle has an event data recorder that records speed, braking and seatbelt use, and it should be preserved and downloaded rather than released to a salvage yard because the insurer wants the lot fee stopped. Phones hold photographs, location history and the texts that establish who was doing what. Medical records document the injury from the first hour. Witness names from the scene go stale within days. The carrier’s lawyers will send their own preservation letter to the family, and an injured person who let their own car be crushed will hear about it at trial. Preservation is a duty in both directions, and I tell clients on the first call what to keep and what not to touch.
How I Run the First Two Weeks
The letter goes out the day I am retained. The request to inspect the truck follows. An accident reconstructionist is engaged to image the engine module, photograph and measure the vehicles and the scene, and pull the data before repair. Public-records requests go to the responding agencies for the crash report, the 911 audio and any body-camera footage. Letters go to businesses along the route for their security video. The family’s vehicle is secured. By the time the carrier’s insurer calls with its first offer, the evidence that decides the case is in a form no one can overwrite. If a truck hurt you or someone in your family anywhere in Nebraska or western Iowa, call (402) 378-9208 this week — not because the case will be filed this week, but because the camera loop does not wait for the funeral. The consultation is free, and there is no fee unless I recover for you.
Your Attorney
Frank Younes
Every page on this site is written by Frank Younes, a Nebraska trial attorney with a published record of verdicts and settlements, selection to the National Trial Lawyers Top 100, and a practice that covers every county in Nebraska and Iowa. No case is handed to an associate — the lawyer you read here is the lawyer who works your case.
More about Frank → · Free consultation: (402) 378-9208
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does a trucking company have to keep the driver’s electronic logs?
Six months, with a back-up copy on a separate device. After that, absent a preservation letter or a lawsuit, the carrier may lawfully discard them.
Is the truck’s “black box” data required to be preserved after a crash?
No federal rule requires it. Engine control module data can be overwritten by later events or lost in repair, which is why the truck itself has to be preserved and imaged by an expert early.
What if the carrier already erased the dashcam footage?
Nebraska only lets a jury infer the footage was unfavorable if the destruction reflected fraud and a desire to suppress the truth — not routine overwriting. Whether the carrier had received a preservation letter is usually what decides that question.
Can I sue the trucking company for destroying evidence?
Not as a separate lawsuit in Nebraska. The remedy is inside the injury case: discovery sanctions and, where intent is shown, an instruction that the jury may presume the evidence was unfavorable.
What should a preservation letter say?
It should name each category — the vehicles, the engine module, ELD data and edits, camera footage and the vendor account, dispatch and communication records, the qualification, hours and testing files, maintenance records and the carrier’s own investigation — with time periods, and go by a method that proves delivery to every potentially responsible company.
Do I have to preserve my own car?
Yes. Its event data recorder and physical condition are evidence, and the carrier’s lawyers will send you a preservation letter of their own. Do not release it to salvage until it has been documented and downloaded.
More on Truck Cases
The rest of the truck series, and the statewide practice page behind it.
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