Carroll Fulmer Logistics and When Lawsuits Matter More Than Markets
The freight recession has claimed its share of casualties, but there's a bigger monster lurking in the shadows that's systematically picking off America's trucking companies one nuclear verdict at a time. While everyone's focused on declining spot rates and too many trucks chasing too little freight, the real killer isn't market conditions; it's the litigation lottery that every highway accident has become. People don’t want to be made “whole” anymore; they want to be made rich.
Carroll Fulmer Logistics didn't close because they couldn't move freight. This Florida-based carrier had decades of solid operations under its belt. Davis Trucking wasn't some fly-by-night outfit that got caught with its pants down in a rate downturn. These were legitimate businesses that got destroyed by a legal system that sees every commercial truck as a rolling jackpot.
One accident involving your truck can cost you $10 million, $50 million, or even $100 million, and it doesn't matter if your driver did everything right. The verdicts keep getting bigger, the premiums and costs keep going up, and the lawyers keep getting better at extracting maximum cash from anyone with "Trucking" painted on their doors. It’s become the emotional extortion of juries and the public to vilainize the very people who deliver everything they consume.
Third-party litigation has turned into a sophisticated shakedown operation. These plaintiff attorneys have it down to a science; they know exactly how to paint your driver as the villain and your company as the deep-pocketed villain that needs to pay up. Doesn't matter if the four-wheeler ran the red light or the drunk driver crossed the median. If your truck's in the picture, you're going to get sued.
Insurance companies aren't stupid. They see these nuclear verdicts, and they're pricing accordingly. Commercial auto premiums have gone through the roof. We're talking double-digit increases that can wipe out your profit margins, which are already ridiculously slim or non-existent. Some fleets can't even get coverage at any price, which means they're rolling the dice with everything they've built. That means they close.
Most trucking companies are treating this like it's just another cost of doing business. They're playing defense when they should be playing offense. Every day you wait to get serious about litigation risk management is another day closer to becoming the next casualty.
Smart fleets are fighting back, and they're doing it the right way. First thing, get your accident reporting locked down. When something happens, you need to know about it immediately, not three hours later when your driver finally decides to call it in. Every minute that passes without proper documentation is money out of your pocket when the lawyers come calling.
Dashcams aren't optional anymore. Companies like Motive have made it easy to get eyes on every mile your drivers run. When that plaintiff attorney tries to paint your driver as a reckless cowboy, video evidence shuts that story down fast, but only if you've got the systems in place to capture it and manage it.
Your hiring process had better be bulletproof because one bad driver can sink your entire operation. You need comprehensive background checks, reference verification that actually means something, and ongoing monitoring that catches problems before they become lawsuits.
This isn't just about individual companies anymore, we're watching America's transportation infrastructure get dismantled by legal predators. When solid trucking companies close because of lawsuits instead of market forces, we lose capacity that took decades to build. And once it's gone, it's not coming back.
Everyone keeps talking about autonomous trucks like they're going to save the day. Maybe they will, eventually, but that's not today, and trucking companies are closing right now. By the time the robots are ready to haul freight, there might not be much of an industry left for them to replace.
The whole system is backwards. Juries hand out massive judgments against trucking companies while complaining about the cost of everything that gets delivered by truck. You can't have it both ways. Either transportation companies can afford to operate, or goods get more expensive and harder to find.
These plaintiff attorneys know exactly what they're doing. They actively hunt for accidents involving commercial vehicles because that's where the big payouts are. It's about finding the deepest pockets in the courtroom.
We need legislative fixes, but don't hold your breath waiting for politicians to stand up to the trial lawyers. Damage caps, expert testimony standards, joint liability reforms, all the stuff that would level the playing field, get killed by lobbying money.
So what do you do while the system's rigged against you? You take risk management seriously because your business depends on it. You implement systems that treat litigation defense as seriously as customer service or fuel efficiency. You document everything, train everyone, and prepare for war before the first lawsuit gets filed.
The carriers that survive this mess will be the ones that stopped treating nuclear verdicts like acts of God and started treating them like manageable business risks because that's what they are: expensive, dangerous, but ultimately manageable if you're willing to do the work.
The alternative is watching more good trucking companies disappear while lawyers get rich off the wreckage, and when the trucks are gone and the drivers have found other work, society will finally figure out what happens when you kill the golden goose.