Worker’s Compensation for Truckers: What to Do If I Got Injured On the Job?

Truck driver on the phone

In most states, employers should offer their employees worker’s compensation insurance to cover work-related injuries. For truckers, this could be injury from traffic accidents, or strains and falls due to exiting and entering cabs among many others.

Do note though that filing a claim for worker’s compensation is not a lawsuit against employers. It’s like filing an insurance claim and requesting benefits from your employer, explains one of the top lawyers at in Washington, specializing in trucking industry claims.

What Exactly is Worker’s Compensation?

Worker’s compensation laws were made to make certain that employees who sustain injuries while on the job would receive predetermined monetary awards without needing to file a lawsuit against employers. Majority of worker’s compensation laws likewise give colleagues and employers some protections. Employees are not allowed to sue their co-workers, and they could only recover a limited amount from their employers. Worker’s compensation doesn’t look at fault, so employees would still be able to recover monetary awards regardless of who’s at fault for the incident that led to their injuries.

Essentially, it’s considered an exclusive remedy from work-related injuries, unless an employee could point to a specific third party that directly contributed or caused the accident that injured him or her. For instance, if you got injured while driving a truck due to a defective component, you could also seek compensation for the truck’s manufacturer. In this scenario, your employee won’t be involved in the claim since it’s out of worker’s compensation coverage and would happen in civil court. In a majority of cases though, employers could recover payments of worker’s compensation from the compensation an employee receives from a third party claim.

Other Vital Things to Note

Worker’s compensation coverage for truckers significantly differs from one state to another. For instance, some states exempt specific employee categories from recovering from worker’s compensation, including independent contractors, domestic employees, and agricultural employees.

While other states only require employees to provide worker’s compensation benefits if they employ a minimum number of workers. Likewise, if you find that you’re not covered under worker’s compensation, you could consider filing claim against a third party and your employer.