What is a preservation letter in a truck accident case?

What a preservation letter is

A preservation letter — also called a spoliation letter or a litigation hold letter — is formal written notice to a company that a claim is coming, and that it must keep every piece of evidence related to the crash. In a truck case it goes to the motor carrier, and often to the trailer owner, the shipper, the broker and anyone who maintained the equipment.

It is not a lawsuit, and it does not accuse anyone of anything. It is a list, and the value is in how specific the list is.

What it asks the company to keep

A good letter names the evidence category by category, because a vague demand to “keep all records” is easy to satisfy on paper and ignore in practice:

The tractor and trailer themselves, unrepaired, until a joint inspection has happened.

Engine control module and airbag or brake data, which record speed, braking and throttle before the crash.

Electronic logging device records and supporting documents: fuel receipts, toll records, dispatch messages, bills of lading.

Dashcam and driver-facing video, and GPS or telematics history.

The driver’s qualification file, drug and alcohol test records, and training records.

Maintenance, inspection and repair records for the vehicle.

Phone records for the time of the crash, and internal crash reports and photographs.

Why it matters: the clock runs faster than the deadline

You have two years to file suit in Texas. Much of the evidence in a truck case does not last anywhere near that long. Federal rules require a carrier to keep drivers’ duty-status records for only six months. Camera systems commonly record over themselves in days. Engine data can be overwritten when the truck is repaired and driven again. No federal safety regulation requires a carrier to keep dashcam video at all.

Until a duty to preserve clearly attaches, a company will discard much of that on its ordinary schedule. The preservation letter is what takes away the ordinary schedule.

What Texas law does if they destroy it anyway

The Texas Supreme Court has held that a party has a duty to preserve evidence once it knows, or reasonably should know, that there is a substantial chance a claim will be filed and that the evidence is relevant to it. A serious truck crash can create that duty on its own. A specific preservation letter removes any argument that the company did not know.

Texas does not treat destroying evidence as a separate lawsuit. The remedy happens inside your injury case, and the court decides it. It can range from lesser sanctions to, in serious cases, a spoliation instruction, which tells the jury it may presume the missing evidence would have hurt the company that destroyed it. That instruction is reserved for intentional destruction, or for careless loss so serious that it leaves the injured person without a meaningful way to prove the case. Either way, the letter is what builds the record for it.

Inspecting the truck

After a serious crash, the question is often not just whether the truck is kept, but how it is examined. The standard practice is a joint inspection: both sides’ experts present, the engine data downloaded under an agreed protocol, and nothing taken apart until everyone has documented it. A carrier that repairs a tractor, or sells it, before that inspection is taking a serious risk. If a company refuses to cooperate, a court can order the evidence preserved and inspected.

The same rules apply to you

Preservation cuts both ways. The defense will ask for your evidence too, and Texas courts apply the same duty to injured people. Keep your car until it has been documented, even if the insurer wants to move it to salvage. Keep every photo and video on your phone. Do not delete social media posts about the crash — just stop posting. Deleting something now, even something harmless, can be used against you later.

Authority: Brookshire Bros. v. Aldridge, 438 S.W.3d 9 (Tex. 2014) · 49 CFR 395.8 (records of duty status; retention) · 49 CFR 396.3 (maintenance records)