The last five years have signaled a change in the nature of truck accident litigation. There is, on average, a verdict against a trucking company in excess of $10 million every other month or so. Insurers are fleeing trucking by the droves. While it's not the end of the world, you can see it from here. These sort of developments in the industry are just not sustainable.
So where do we go from here? First, the industry needs to unite to pursue federal pre-emption. All of the industry players in trucking, up to now, have chosen to defend their version of pre-emption without any unity of action or strategy. In fact, many larger carriers oppose pre-emption because it provides them with a competitive advantage over smaller carriers in some segments. However, all of the larger carriers have logistics groups that utilize small carriers, and in the end, it will hit them, too. Federal pre-emption needs to be broad enough to include stamping out state law attempts to regulate labor and employment issues with interstate drivers, but it also needs to include "good enough for the FMCSA, good enough for me" on carrier selection issues.
Second, the industry needs to aggressively pursue tort reform in the states. This includes legislative changes to stop jury verdicts from looking like lottery awards. However, no reform is complete without judicial reform. The trucking industry needs to aggressively support pro-business judges and oppose judges who will not grant summary judgment to defendants in the proper case.
Shippers, intermediaries, and carriers all have an interest in seeing this trend of windfall tort verdicts come to an end and sanity restored.