Truck accident settlement amounts in Massachusetts

Massachusetts logged 128,769 reported crashes statewide in 2025, and the city of Boston recorded 451 in April 2026 alone.¹² Most of those were low-speed collisions between passenger cars. A crash with a loaded tractor-trailer is a different event, and the money that changes hands afterward follows different rules.

There's no single "average" truck settlement in Massachusetts, and any site that quotes one is guessing. What a case is worth depends on the injuries, who was at fault, and how much insurance sits behind the truck. The last two are where state and federal law do most of the work, and where a truck claim pulls away from an ordinary car claim.

Why the numbers run higher than a car case

Start with insurance, because the available policy is usually the real ceiling on a settlement. A private car in Massachusetts only has to carry $25,000 per person and $50,000 per crash in bodily injury liability for policies issued or renewed on or after July 1, 2025, up from the old $20,000 and $40,000 floor.³⁴ A commercial truck answers to a federal schedule that sits far above that. Under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's financial responsibility rules, a for-hire carrier hauling ordinary freight in a vehicle rated over 10,001 pounds has to carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage.⁵⁶ The required minimum climbs with the cargo:

• $300,000 for a for-hire, non-hazardous vehicle under 10,001 pounds
• $750,000 for ordinary freight at or above 10,001 pounds
• $1,000,000 for certain hazardous materials
• $5,000,000 for explosives, poison gas, radioactive loads, and hazardous materials carried in bulk⁵⁶

A truck crash also tends to put more than one name on the claim. The driver is one defendant, the motor carrier that employed the driver is usually another, and a freight broker can be in the mix too, since brokers have to post a $75,000 surety bond of their own.⁵ More defendants and more insurance mean more room to make an injured person whole.

No-fault, and the door you have to open first

Massachusetts is a no-fault state. After a crash your own Personal Injury Protection (PIP) pays the first $8,000 of medical bills and lost wages regardless of who caused it, and the insurer has to begin paying, or send a written denial, within ten days of getting the bill from your treating physician.⁷ PIP is a floor, not a settlement.

To reach the truck's liability insurer for pain and suffering, you first have to clear the tort threshold in G.L. c. 231, section 6D. Your reasonable medical expenses have to top $2,000, unless the injury caused death, a fracture, permanent and serious disfigurement, loss of a body member, or loss of sight or hearing.⁸ In a serious truck collision that bar is usually met without argument. A single fracture clears it no matter what the bills add up to.⁸

How fault changes the check

Massachusetts follows modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar under G.L. c. 231, section 85.⁹ If you were partly to blame, your recovery is cut by your share of the fault. If you're found more at fault than everyone else combined, meaning 51% or more, you recover nothing.⁹ Carriers and their insurers know this rule cold, so a real part of any truck case is the fight over how blame gets divided.

What Massachusetts does not cap

Massachusetts puts no dollar cap on compensatory damages in a motor vehicle case, whether the loss is economic (medical bills, lost income, future care) or noneconomic (pain, disability, disfigurement). The $500,000 cap people sometimes hear about is a medical-malpractice rule and doesn't reach car or truck claims.

Punitive damages are the narrow exception, and they're rarely on the table. Massachusetts generally won't allow them in a negligence case unless someone died. The wrongful death statute, G.L. c. 229, section 2, allows punitive damages of at least $5,000 when the death was caused by gross negligence or by willful, wanton, or reckless conduct.¹⁰ A drunk or fatigued trucker who kills someone can hand the carrier that added exposure on top of the compensatory award.¹⁰

When the truck's coverage runs short

Even $750,000 can fall short when a truck crash leaves a permanent injury or a death. Massachusetts requires every auto policy to include uninsured motorist coverage at the same 25/50 limits as bodily injury liability, and insurers have to offer underinsured motorist coverage, which a driver can turn down only in writing.¹¹ If the at-fault vehicle turns out to be underinsured, which is more likely with a small intrastate rig than a national fleet, your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage can fill part of the gap.¹¹

Federal safety rules turn into evidence

Trucking runs on federal rules, and breaking them turns into proof. Property-carrying drivers are held to 11 hours of driving after 10 hours off duty, may not drive past a 14-hour on-duty window, have to take a 30-minute break once they've driven 8 hours, and are capped at 60 hours in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 (49 CFR 395.3).¹² Electronic logging devices record every minute of it. When a tired driver runs past those limits, the logs, the dispatch records, and the carrier's hiring file become the spine of a larger claim against the company itself, not just the person behind the wheel.

Nationally, large trucks were involved in crashes that killed 5,472 people in 2023, and about 70% of the dead were people in other vehicles rather than the truck's occupants.¹³ Massachusetts is safe by comparison, with the lowest traffic fatality rate in the country in 2023 at 0.56 deaths per 100 million miles driven.¹⁴ The physics of an 80,000-pound truck meeting a 4,000-pound car don't soften at the state line.

The deadline and the paper behind the claim

You have three years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit in Massachusetts under G.L. c. 260, section 2A, and the same three-year clock runs on damage to your vehicle.¹⁵ A wrongful death claim carries its own three-year limit, measured from the date of death.¹⁰ Miss the deadline and the claim is gone, whatever it might have been worth.

The number a case settles for is only as strong as the evidence under it, and that starts with the police report. You can pull the report tied to your collision through the Massachusetts crash reports page. If the truck totaled your vehicle or knocked down its resale value, the diminished value claim in Massachusetts is separate from your injury case and follows its own rules.

Truck settlements in Massachusetts get complicated quickly, with a commercial carrier, its insurer, and sometimes a broker all working to keep the figure down. If you're weighing a claim, an attorney who handles trucking cases can read the policy stack and the driver's logs before that evidence is overwritten. You can start by finding an attorney.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. thatcarhitme.com, Massachusetts statewide year-over-year crash report, 2025. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/massachusetts/statewide/2025-annual-report

2. thatcarhitme.com, Boston, MA crash report, April 2026. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/massachusetts/boston/april-2026-report

3. Acts of 2024, c. 275 (amending M.G.L. c. 90, section 34A), Massachusetts minimum motor vehicle liability limits. https://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2024/Chapter275

4. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts law about auto insurance. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massachusetts-law-about-auto-insurance

5. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Insurance Filing Requirements (49 CFR 387.303, 387.307, 387.15). https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/registration/insurance-filing-requirements

6. 49 CFR 387.9, Minimum levels of financial responsibility for motor carriers of property (Cornell Legal Information Institute). https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/387.9

7. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 90, section 34M (Personal Injury Protection). https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXIV/Chapter90/Section34M

8. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 231, section 6D (tort threshold for pain and suffering). https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIII/TitleII/Chapter231/Section6D

9. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 231, section 85 (comparative negligence). https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIII/TitleII/Chapter231/Section85

10. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 229, section 2 (wrongful death; punitive damages; three-year limit). https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIII/TitleII/Chapter229/Section2

11. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 175, section 113L (uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage). https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXII/Chapter175/Section113L

12. 49 CFR 395.3, Maximum driving time for property-carrying vehicles (Cornell Legal Information Institute). https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/395.3

13. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Traffic Safety Facts, Large Trucks: 2023 Data (DOT HS 813 717). https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813717.pdf

14. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, State Traffic Data: 2023 Data (DOT HS 813 743). https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813743.pdf

15. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 260, section 2A (three-year statute of limitations). https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIII/TitleV/Chapter260/Section2A