How truckers can recoup lost income from downtime

You’ve been forced out of work as a trucker by something beyond your control.

Now what?

Downtime – the period when a vehicle is not operational due to maintenance, repairs or crashes – in trucking can mean no source of income as the expenses and bills continue to pile up.

Kelsea Eckert, an attorney specializing in downtime recovery and insurance claims, recently spoke with Land Line about how truckers can best navigate downtime and a return to work.

“What ends up happening for a lot of our clients is the other side is saying, ‘You didn’t mitigate your losses,’” Eckert said. “It’s so important to keep in writing everything that you do to get back up and going.”

Eckert explained that in cases when a crash involving a third party takes a trucker off the road, what’s addressed is fixing the truck and/or trailer.

But what about the driver?

“Insurance companies don’t often understand how to pay that downtime or what is called loss of use, lost profits or business interruptions,” Eckert said. “Those aren’t terms that are thrown around a whole lot unless someone is in that situation. A lot of people don’t even know they have a right to this compensation.”

Truckers in a crash scenario involving a third party have a right to pursue their lost income regardless of what state they are in, Eckert said.

However, insurance limits on car policies can create issues when seeking lost compensation from downtime.

“Often there’s not nearly enough money to pay for the towing, repairs, rentals and any other lost income,” Eckert said. “With so many four-wheel drivers with little-to-no insurance, it’s really important for truckers to consider protecting themselves. A lot of our clients have $25,000 to $50,000 in loss if they are down for two or three months.”

Knowing your rights is the first step, but how do drivers actually go about getting the compensation they’re owed?

“Focus on liability first. You as the victim must prove that the other side was at fault,” Eckert said. “If you can’t prove they are at fault, you may have $1 million in losses, but you aren’t going to get $1. You need to get the other party and their insurance company to admit that liability in writing.”

After liability has been established, drivers need to maintain records of everything they are doing in an effort to return to work.

“It can be on your computer, on your phone, I don’t care what it’s on as long as you have everything in writing,” Eckert said. “Our clients are small-business owners, and they’re not sitting around waiting for the world to fix their truck. They are doing what they need to do. I applaud that – but two or three years down the road, if a case goes to trial, they aren’t going to remember specifically what they were doing. That’s why it’s so important to keep a list.”

Eckert added her company’s perspective is that if it’s not in writing, it never happened.

Email can prove beneficial in that even if you are denied services requested, you will have written proof of that denial – which can be used as evidence, if necessary, to help mitigate losses.

Police reports are also helpful due to loopholes that exist within insurance policies, as is footage from dash cams, Eckert said.

She also advised that when calculating lost compensation, drivers do so in a way that is customized to their operation, as trucking is not a one-size-fits-all business.

“Looking back at a history of what they have been making and multiplying it by a number of days is typically how losses are calculated,” Eckert said. LL