Amazon, FedEx, and UPS Truck Accidents: Can You Sue the Company?

America’s roads have more traffic than ever before in history. You’ve got Amazon Flex drivers, FedEx Ground contractors, and UPS package delivery vehicles in every lane, on every road, in every city. These delivery vehicles share lanes with commuter traffic, and that means collision numbers are higher than ever as delivery volume reaches record highs.

Getting into an accident with a commercial vehicle is very different from a simple auto collision, as these vehicles have huge companies behind them, with insurance plans in the millions to cover liability for all those vehicles, drivers and potential risk. 

You would think we get asked about blame in our office, but actually the most common questions we get are if it’s possible to sue a company like Amazon, FedEx or UPS (when they all use third party contractors) and, more importantly, is winning the case affordable if the corporation throws a bunch of expensive lawyers at you for even challenging them in a court of law?

The short answer is Yes, Yes, and Yes. The medium answer is it depends on how the delivery company is structured to determine what you can pursue. And the long answer is coming up in this article.

Why Delivery Truck Wrecks Are Rising Across Utah

Just because the pandemic ended, e-commerce didn’t slow down. In fact, it sped up. People got a taste of all delivery, all the time, and going to malls, stores and finding the time took second place to paying a little more and just having things show up at the front door. Delivery fleets grew to meet the need, hiring more and more third party vendors to satiate the demand. And, with all these box trucks, vans and big rigs on the road, you see more exposure at intersections, in parking lots, and on residential streets where ordinary drivers get cut off by a driver making an unexpected U-turn or stop without warning in the middle of the road to run a delivery in. These drivers are meeting crazy tight quotas, checking routing apps on their phones (often while driving), and probably getting a little delirious from all the stop and go required to finish their shift. It all raises the probability of an accident. 

Take Utah’s rapid population growth along the Wasatch Front. These neighbourhoods went from the occasional postal vehicle or FedEx truck to a non-stop stream of delivery vehicles, even dozens every day. The modern infrastructure just wasn’t built to accommodate all this flow through on top of residential vehicles. Federal crash data has shown a steady increase in large truck and delivery vehicle crashes nationwide over the past several years. 

The increase in accidents shapes how judges, juries, and insurance adjusters view these. They aren’t freak accidents anymore, they are foreseeable, ongoing, costs of doing business at scale with overworked and underpaid humans likely being rewarded for cutting corners.

Who’s Actually Liable: The Company or the Driver?

To answer this question, we have to look at Amazon, FedEx and UPS uniquely.

UPS, for the most part, hires their own drivers directly. That means that if you were to get into an accident with a UPS truck, the legal doctrine of respondeat superior applies in a fairly straightforward way. The doctrine says that an employer is generally liable for the negligent acts of an employee who was acting within the scope of their job duties at the time of the accident. If that UPS driver was to run a red light or back into a pedestrian, UPS (the company) is the defendant. As such, they carry substantial commercial insurance to match that exposure.

FedEx Ground is a bit messier than UPS. That’s because they use a ton of independent contractors to do the local delivery. These aren’t direct employees, they are a third party. Sure, they use the FedEx logo on their vehicle, have a FedEx uniform, etc., but they are technically not FedEx employees, so the case has to be built differently. Fortunately, cases have been successfully tried that show that these contractors look, act, and operate in a way that is indistinguishable from a third party, and that they are controlled very closely by FedEx in how they operate, making them de facto employees. Because FedEx dictates routes, uniforms, vehicle appearance, and timing for delivery supports the argument that the contractor functions as an agent of FedEx.

Then we have Amazon. Their structure makes FedEx look easy in comparison. Amazon rarely owns the vans that deliver, and doesn’t even brand some of them. Many have different logos and their own logistics. Amazon relies on their Delivery Service Partner program, which consists of a small network of different small delivery companies that otherwise follow the Amazon program as an independent business responsible for hiring and managing their own drivers. Amazon also relies on Amazon Flex, which is a program that is centered around gig workers who use their own personal vehicles to make deliveries. This removes them even further from corporate responsibility, and this seems to be by design. 

As more and more cases go before the courts, there is a more and more scrutiny about how much control Amazon actually has through their delivery apps, driver scorecards, route assignments, and performance metrics. This has resulted in more and more cases going for the plaintiff when holding the corporate defendant to account.

What This Means for Your Truck Injury Claim

Immediately following a collision with a commercial vehicle, make sure you start a proper investigation with a lawyer who will be able to determine who actually owns the vehicle and whether the driver was a direct employee, a delivery service partner’s employee, or a gig worker. They can then use that information to determine the insurance policies that exist and whether the parent companies’ internal logistics, such as GPS tracking, delivery apps, and quotas on delivery timing are aligned enough to hold the parent company responsible.

Working with a specialist who understands these kinds of accidents will make sure to cover the nuances to make sure that you get full compensation backed by a major corporation’s deep pockets versus a small fraction of your medical bills and a lifetime of pain.

Making Sure You Are Made Whole

What you do in the hours and days after your delivery truck accident will shape your entire case. You need to first get medical care, even if you think you’re alright. You will need that early documentation so you can connect whatever injuries show up with the timing of the accident. Having a chronic issue months later is nearly impossible to pin down and connect to the accident itself.

You’ll want to make sure you photograph both vehicles before you leave the scene of the accident. Capture the plates, company logos or any distinct markings, and the overall scene of the accident to make your case decisive months later if and when it finally goes to court. Remember, delivery vehicles are maintained and rotated often, so the one in your accident may get pulled from the rotation and detailed before you even file your claim against them. 

It’s worth asking the driver who they work for, because that answer is not usually the logo on the vehicle. And we don’t recommend giving a recorded statement without a lawyer present, especially to a firm representing Amazon, Fed Ex, or UPS. Anything you say on record can and will be used against you to minimize your claim. 

Finally, make sure you formally get the other driver to preserve the evidence. Delivery companies often maintain internal telematics data and dash cam footage that can be overwritten or deleted within days or weeks if a formal preservation request isn’t sent out right away, so even more reason to get a lawyer immediately after you go to the hospital to get your injuries on record.

Your Attorney Needs to Understand Corporate Structures

It should be clear by now that delivery truck cases are not your typical car crash. Getting to the bottom of responsibility and ability to compensate requires pulling apart corporate ownership structures, subpoenaing contracts between parent companies and their delivery partners, and knowing the ins and outs of federal motor carrier regulations. That’s what we at Kramer do. It’s what we’re known for. The insurance companies that represent Amazon, Fed Ex, and UPS know that complexity and confusion work to their advantage, and they use that layered structure of outsourced labor to try and cloud their liability. 

If you or someone you know was injured by a delivery vehicle, take pictures of the vehicle and scene, get to the hospital, then call a specialised lawyer who knows how to win and has a track record of going up against and succeeding at getting fair compensation.