You prove it with the truck’s own paperwork and with what the weight did on the road. Weight records show what the truck was carrying. Physical evidence shows what that load did to it: a longer skid, a failed brake, a blown tire, a trailer on its side. A San Luis Obispo truck accident lawyer puts those two things side by side. That work starts in the first weeks after a crash.
Being hit by a big rig is frightening. Most people have no idea the proof is sitting in someone else’s filing cabinet. It is, and it doesn’t sit there long.
What counts as an overloaded truck in California?
California’s weight limits are in the Vehicle Code. One axle can carry 20,000 pounds. A pair of tandem axles can carry 34,000, and a fully loaded big rig tops out at 80,000 pounds. Go over any of those numbers, and the load is illegal, whatever the shipper told the driver.
A truck can also be overloaded for its own rating. Every rig has a weight the maker says it can safely handle. Pass that, and the brakes and tires are doing a job they were never built for.
What evidence shows the truck was too heavy?
Four records do most of the work.
- The bill of lading and the cargo manifest say what was loaded and what it should have weighed.
- Weigh station and scale tickets say what the truck really weighed on the road that day.
- Maintenance and inspection records show whether the brakes and tires were already under strain.
- The CHP report may give a weight taken at the scene, if the truck was weighed there.
How does extra weight cause a crash?
Weight changes how long a truck needs to stop. At 55 miles per hour in good conditions, a legally loaded tractor-trailer needs about 196 feet to stop. A car needs about 133. Add weight above the legal limit, and that gap grows.
Heat does the rest. Overloaded brakes run hotter than they were built to run, and tires carry more than they were rated for. A heavy or uneven load also makes a trailer easier to roll. The same failures show up whenever semi-trucks are overloaded, and they leave marks in the wreckage.
How fast does the evidence disappear?
Faster than most people expect. A truck’s electronic logging device keeps only the current day and the seven days before it. After that, the oldest day drops off. The carrier has to keep its own copies of those duty records for six months. That only helps if someone asks for them in time.
A lawyer sends a preservation letter early for that reason. The letter puts the carrier on notice of a duty it already has. If the records go missing anyway, the letter sets up consequences in court.
California gives you two years from the crash to file an injury claim. The records work happens long before that.
Talk to a San Luis Obispo truck accident lawyer
If an overloaded truck hit you, the weight records are key to the case. They are much easier to get in week one than in month six. Ernst Law Group handles truck crashes across the Central Coast, and founding attorney Don Ernst is a past president of the Consumer Attorneys of California. We work on a contingency fee basis, and you pay no attorney’s fees unless compensation is recovered.
You don’t need to know what any of this paperwork is called. Call (805) 541-0300 for a free consultation, or contact us online.