USPS Contractor Crashes Have Killed 79 People Since 2020

USPS Contractor Crashes

For many years the United State Postal Service (USPS) has been hiring outside trucking companies to keep up with the competition of other postal delivery services. Some of these companies have a long history of unsafe driving and drivers. As a result, postal delivery contractors have been involved in 68 fatal commercial vehicle accidents in the past three years. These accidents have taken the lives of 79 people.

Over 50 trucking contractors delivering for the US Postal service have poor safety records, and under investigation, or currently on probation from the Department of Transportation (DOT).

Under pressure for years from falling revenue due to reduced volume of first-class mail while it simultaneously struggled to meet consumer demand for door-to-door package delivery, the Postal Service has slowed some deliveries and raised prices, among other cost-saving measures. It has also increasingly turned to private trucking to move mail between distribution centers.

USPS’s contracting manual’s only specific safety requirement is that trucking contractors must have a DOT safety rating that is better than “unsatisfactory.” At that rating, DOT bans a company from driving.

Recent investigative reports have found that the USPS contributed to recent fatal truck accidents by pushing for unrealistic delivery times, a lack of monitoring of DOT compliance and a failure to track serious accidents by its contractor trucking companies.

USPS Cutting-Costs

Many of the private trucking companies work exclusively for USPS, which spends about $5 billion annually on trucking contracts, making it one of the largest U.S. purchasers of shipping services. During the pandemic, the trucking industry was pummeled by a combination of rising e-commerce, a shortage of drivers and changes in the supply chain.

The postal service was forced to further stretch its network to keep packages moving. USPS spending on emergency and add-on trucking contracts more than doubled from 2019 to 2021.

Truck Driver Fatigue

The most common violation among the postal truck driver contractors were violations of DOT rules preventing truck driver fatigue by limiting how many hours truckers can drive. About 39% of trucking companies that hauled U.S. mail breaks those limits, compared with 13% of other for-hire trucking companies that were inspected during that time.

The USPS tolerated the violations and set unrealistic expectations for speedy deliveries for truck drivers that led the trucking contractors breaking the rules. Dozens of cross-country trips listed in postal contracts with deadlines that would require drivers to stay on the road longer than federal trucking safety rules allowed unless companies cut into their profits by using multiple drivers.

Safety Violations

The US Postal Service paid more than $115 million to a Tennessee-based trucking company in 2021, making it one of USPS’s largest trucking contractors. Two additional trucking companies in the group paid fines in 2017 over safety violations, including failing to ensure truck drivers complied with the 18 wheeler driving hour limits, which led DOT to put them on probation.

Between 2017 and December 2022, the trucking company was caught breaking the rules limiting truck drivers’ hours more than 200 times.

Fatal Truck Wreck – Denver 2022

In June 2022, an 18 wheeler operated by a Postal Service trucking contractor collided into a Ford Edge as the Ford slowed in traffic on Interstate 25 near Denver, killing five people including a baby. The contracted truck driver was distracted and lacked a valid commercial license. The trucking company had a history of DOT violations going back a decade of work with USPS.

Public inspection records, which cover routine checks, such as at weigh stations, and traffic stops, show the Colorado crash was at least the 16th time Contracted Commercial Truckers were caught without the necessary commercial driver’s licenses since 2017 and the second time that week.

The driver in the Colorado highway crash was charged with vehicular homicide and other crimes in December.

Limited Oversight

Large commercial shippers generally refuse to hire trucking companies with DOT’s probationary rating, called “conditional,” which is higher than unsatisfactory.

USPS’s inspector general in 2016 claims the agency employed only 18 contract officers to oversee its commercial trucking network, saying that allowed for just four hours of annual oversight work per trucking contract.

Pushing The Limit

The Postal Service requires contractors to fulfill schedules that veteran trucking company operators said would be seriously challenging considering DOT rules restricting driving hours.

Postal contractor companies sometimes try to arrange for drivers to tag-team on long trips, but relays can easily break down, for example if a driver is late to the relay point.

DOT flagged 466 Postal Service trucking contractors for high rates of violations related to driving hours which the agency uses to prioritize investigations.

The Postal Service’s own fleet, which includes mail-delivery vehicles, bigger box trucks and tractor trailers operated by its own employees, are excluded from DOT’s safety regulations. That means the overall safety of that portion of its operation cannot be evaluated using DOT’s records.

Miller Weisbrod Olesky’s Commercial Vehicle Accident Attorneys

If you were injured in an accident caused by an 18-wheeler, tractor-trailer, semi-truck, big rig, or any other commercial or municipal vehicle, we invite you to contact our offices today to schedule a free consultation with an experienced trial lawyer.

Immediate investigation and swift legal action may be necessary to protect your rights. Miller Weisbrod Olesky represents commercial vehicle accident victims across the United States. To discuss your case in a free consultation, please call our offices toll free at 888.987.0005 or contact us by e-mail today.

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Sleep Deprived Truckers

Companies often force their drivers to work shifts with little or no sleep. Risking their lives on the job.

On average, trucks serving the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach operated 470 times a day without the required break. Those trucks were involved in at least 189 crashes within a day of an extended period on the clock. Federal crash records do not indicate who was at fault. With some exceptions, federal rules say commercial truckers must take a 10hour break every 14 hours.

In August 2013, a Container Intermodal Transport trucker barreled into stopped traffic at 55 mph. A teenager was tragically killed, and seven people were sent to the hospital. Seven months later, a Pacific 9 Transportation driver had just finished his 45th hour on the clock in three days when he ran over and killed a woman crossing the street. A Gold Point Transportation truck was moving containers for 15 hours in one day when it crashed in Long Beach, California, injuring four.

Jose Juan Rodriguez, who drove for Morgan Southern for five years, said he sometimes worked 16-hour shifts for days at a time, a claim the company denied. He kept a bucket of ice water by his seat to splash on his face when he felt himself nodding off. More than once, he said, he found himself hallucinating, a side effect of extreme sleep deprivation. “There are some days when you can’t think right anymore,” he said. “You can’t tell if you’re driving or not. You just have to continue working.”

Recognizing a public health threat, the federal government began limiting commercial truckers’ driving hours in 1938, holding them to 60 hours a week. Decades of study led to more stringent rules as researchers concluded sleep-deprived drivers become exponentially more hazardous the longer they spend on the road.

Even so, the tools used to flag truckers who stay on the road too long haven’t changed much. Inspectors still rely heavily on paper logs maintained by the drivers themselves. The first federal mandate to install electronic log machines in commercial trucks took effect in late December, although questions remain about how quickly companies will comply.

Law enforcement officials and experts say companies are legally responsible for knowing their workers’ hours. It can be a federal crime if managers routinely encourage or pressure truckers to stay on the road past the limit. “Companies that force exhausted truck drivers to stay behind the wheel are gambling with the lives of everyone on the road,” California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a statement.

In the absence of an accurate tracking system, the USA TODAY Network used publicly available records to build a database noting each time a truck entered or exited the ports of Long Beach or Los Angeles. The data offer a rough sketch of how thousands of trucks operated each day from 2013 through 2016. They show 580,000 instances when trucks spent at least 14 hours on the road without a 10-hour break. Those would be violations if a truck was operated by just one driver.

The activity amounts to about 8.3% of port traffic but represents a substantial amount of time on the road. Assuming drivers picked up a new load each time they went in and out of a gate, those trucks moved 1.6 million shipping containers along Los Angeles area highways over four years.

If you were hurt or a loved one was severely injured or died in a trucking accident, immediate investigation and concerted legal action may be necessary to protect your right to seek maximum recovery. Contact us today for a free consultation.

At Miller Weisbrod, our clients are not statistics — they are real people in need of proactive, aggressive representation to defend their rights. Our Dallas truck accident attorneys are absolutely prepared to take on even the biggest trucking companies and commercial transportation operations across the United States. For more information, contact our offices in Dallas at 214.987.0005 to schedule an appointment.

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