(626) 521-5402Free Consultation
Covina is the mile square in the middle of two freeways. The 10 runs along its south edge with close to fourteen thousand trucks a day, the 210 is a mile north with even more, and the city’s own code sends every truck over three tons onto ten named streets to get between them: Azusa, Citrus, Grand, Arrow, Badillo, Barranca, San Bernardino Road and the rest. When one of those trucks hurts you, a Covina truck accident lawyer who is fifteen minutes away and answers his own phone matters. Francisco Morales handles the case himself, in English or Spanish, and there is no fee unless we win.
Inland Empire freight comes west on the 10 and the 210, and Covina sits in the gap between them. Trucks that need to get from one freeway to the other, or to the industrial strip along San Bernardino Road and Arrow Highway, use the city’s north-south arterials to do it. The result is a city with no freeway interchange of its own inside the limits, and truck traffic on nearly every major street.
The San Bernardino Freeway forms Covina’s southern boundary, and the Citrus, Barranca, Grand and Holt Avenue exits feed the city from the West Covina side. Caltrans counts close to 14,000 trucks a day here, and the eastbound side backs up from Grand Avenue to Azusa Avenue every afternoon. On May 25, 2026, a utility truck and two sedans collided on the eastbound 10 just west of the Grand Avenue off-ramp before dawn; one of the cars was crushed and its driver died at the scene. Rear-end crashes into stopped traffic, and trucks changing lanes late for the exit, are the freeway pattern. If the crash happened on the West Covina side of the 10, see our West Covina truck accident lawyer page.
Azusa Avenue is a state highway and a city truck route from the 10 north to the 210 and beyond. It is six lanes of trucks, buses and cars past shopping centers, apartments and Emanate Health’s Inter-Community Hospital a few blocks east. Left turns across three lanes at San Bernardino Road, Badillo and Arrow are where cars and tractor-trailers meet, and a semi rolling a red light rather than stopping a loaded trailer on a downgrade is a crash we see more than once a year on this corridor.
Citrus is the city’s main street and the road to the Metrolink station, the police station and downtown. Grand Avenue on the east side is the straight shot between the 10 and the 210 at Grand, where truck volume on the Foothill Freeway is the highest in the east valley. Both are designated truck routes for most of their length, and both narrow through commercial blocks with angled parking, pedestrians and buses. Delivery trucks double-parked on Citrus and semis running Grand at freeway speed are the two versions of the problem.
Covina’s industrial land sits along the rail line north of downtown, between San Bernardino Road and Arrow Highway. The Covina Industrial Park on West San Bernardino Road, the warehouses and contractors’ yards along Arrow, and the strip centers in between generate box trucks, flatbeds and tractor-trailers all day, and Arrow Highway is the regional surface route between the Irwindale gravel plants and San Dimas and Pomona. Trucks backing across the road into docks and pulling out of yards across two lanes are the hazards on this stretch.
Badillo from Azusa Avenue to Grand, Barranca from the south city limit to San Bernardino Road, Front Street, Second Avenue and Workman Street round out the ten streets the city code designates for trucks over three tons. When a truck is on a residential street off that list, the ordinance itself becomes evidence of negligence. Badillo runs past schools and Covina Park, and Barranca crosses the Metrolink tracks, so the truck route runs through the parts of town where people walk.
Covina Municipal Code chapter 10.44 limits vehicles over three tons to the designated routes except for direct pickups and deliveries, caps width at 96 inches and combination length at 60 feet. A tractor-trailer cutting through a neighborhood between Grand and Citrus to skip a signal is breaking a safety rule, and in California a safety-rule violation that causes a crash is negligence per se.
Two recent crashes on Covina’s edges show what these cases look like. On December 19, 2024, around 2 a.m., a vehicle collided with a semi-truck at Lark Ellen Avenue and Cypress Street in the unincorporated Vincent area at the city’s west side; one person was killed, the CHP investigated, and the streets stayed closed until about 7:30 that morning. On May 25, 2026, a three-vehicle crash involving a utility truck on the eastbound 10 just west of Grand Avenue killed a man and closed the eastbound lanes for more than three hours.
The defendant is a company with an insurer and a lawyer, the rules it broke are federal, and the proof of what happened is stored on its truck. Each of those changes how the case has to be built.
A carrier running freight across state lines, which describes most of the semis on the 10, must follow the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. Its driver gets eleven hours of driving inside a fourteen-hour day with a thirty-minute break, must be qualified under Part 391 and tested under Part 382, and the truck must be inspected and maintained under Part 396. When a violation of one of those rules caused the crash on Azusa Avenue or the 10, California treats it as negligence per se, and the trucking company has to explain the violation rather than you having to prove what a careful driver would have done.
A car in California can be insured for $30,000 per person, which does not cover the first day in a trauma unit. A truck over 10,001 pounds hauling general freight in interstate commerce must carry at least $750,000 under 49 CFR 387.9, and $5 million for certain hazardous loads. Most carriers add excess policies above that. The money is there to pay for a serious injury, and the insurer knows it, which is why the fight is over fault and not over the bills.
The driver works for a carrier that may lease its tractor from one company and pull a trailer owned by another. A broker in Ontario matched the load, a distribution center in Fontana loaded it, and an outside shop signed off on the brakes. Each of them can share fault and each has its own policy. In a Covina case involving a delivery contractor working the Arrow Highway strip, the company on the side of the truck is often not the company that employs the driver, and we sort that out on day one.
Federal rules only require a carrier to keep electronic driver logs for six months. The engine’s data can be overwritten when the truck goes back to work, and dash-cam video is deleted on a rolling schedule. The carrier’s insurer will have an investigator at the scene on the 10 the same day. We send a written preservation demand to the carrier, the broker and the insurer within days, so that if evidence goes missing afterward, the jury hears why.
The trucking company’s insurer usually has an adjuster and an accident reconstructionist on a serious crash the same day. This is what we go after to level that field.
The driver’s hours for the trip and the seven days before it. Fatigue is the most common cause nobody sees at the scene, and the log either proves it or was edited.
Speed, throttle, brake application and following distance in the seconds before impact. On a rear-end crash at the Grand Avenue backup, it settles the argument about whether the truck could have stopped.
Most fleets run cameras both ways. Video of a driver on a phone coming down Azusa Avenue changes a case in a single frame.
License history, medical card, prior crashes and citations, training records, and the background check the carrier was required to run before it hired this driver.
Federal rules require testing after a crash with a death, an injury treated away from the scene, or a tow. We confirm the test was done on time and get the result.
Brake and tire records, the pre-trip inspection report, the bill of lading and the weight ticket. For a gravel truck on Arrow Highway, the scale ticket alone can prove the load was illegal.
For speeding, tailgating, an unsafe lane change, running a signal on Azusa or Grand, driving off the designated truck route, distraction, fatigue or impairment. California also limits any vehicle with three or more axles or a trailer to 55 miles an hour and the right-hand lanes under Vehicle Code 22406.
The company whose USDOT number is on the door answers for its driver’s negligence and for its own: hiring a driver with a bad record, dispatching him past the hours limit, or skipping maintenance to keep the truck on the road. We check the carrier’s federal safety record before the first call with its adjuster.
A broker that hands loads to carriers with poor safety scores can be liable for negligent selection. A shipper or distribution center that loaded and sealed the trailer can be liable when a shifting or overweight load caused the crash.
The tractor and the trailer often have different owners, and a leasing company or a contract shop that signed off on worn brakes or a bad tire becomes a defendant with its own insurance.
Brake failures, tire blowouts and trailers without proper rear underride guards support product liability claims against the companies that built or sold them.
When a lane closure, a missing sign, a bad signal or a construction zone on the 10 or a city street contributed to the crash, a government claim must be filed within six months under Government Code 911.2. We calendar that deadline the day we open the file.
The companies responsible for the truck owe the full cost of what the crash did to you, not the part their adjuster offers in the first week. In a truck case that usually includes:
Under California’s pure comparative negligence rule, a share of fault reduces the recovery by that share; it does not bar the claim. Immigration status has no bearing on any of it.
Si un tráiler, un camión de carga o una camioneta de reparto lo lesionó en Covina, en la autopista 10, en Azusa Avenue, Citrus, Grand, Arrow Highway o San Bernardino Road, la compañía de transporte y su aseguradora ya están trabajando para pagarle lo menos posible. Usted tiene derecho a que cubran la sala de emergencias, el tratamiento, los salarios perdidos, el carro y el daño a su vida. El abogado Francisco Morales creció aquí al lado, en West Covina, y atiende su caso personalmente en español, sin intermediarios. La consulta es gratis y no paga honorarios si no recuperamos dinero para usted. Su estatus migratorio no cambia sus derechos. No dé una declaración grabada a la aseguradora del camión. Llámenos primero.
Search for a Covina truck accident attorney and most of what you find is downtown Los Angeles and out-of-town offices running a template for every city in the state. Morales Law Firm is on Bonita Avenue in San Dimas, fifteen minutes east on Arrow Highway or the 10. Francisco Morales grew up next door in West Covina, graduated from UCLA and Loyola Law School, and worked as a certified automotive service consultant before he became a lawyer, which is useful when the argument is about brakes, following distance and what a truck’s data actually shows. He is fully bilingual in English and Spanish, he answers his own phone, and he does not hand truck cases to a case manager. More about Francisco.
We handle truck and big rig crashes throughout the San Gabriel Valley and the Inland Empire, along with car accidents in Covina, 10 Freeway collisions, motorcycle crashes, pedestrian injuries, wrongful death and uninsured motorist claims, and we come to you in Covina when that is easier.
Send a few details and an attorney, not a screener, will call you back in English or Spanish. No cost, no obligation, and no fee unless we recover money for you. Phones are answered 24 hours a day.
Cuéntenos qué pasó. Sin costo, sin obligación. Su información es privada.
If it happened on the 10, the 210 or the 57, the California Highway Patrol handles it out of the Baldwin Park Area office at 14039 Francisquito Ave. The CHP also covers the unincorporated pockets around the city, like Charter Oak and Vincent. On Azusa Avenue, Citrus, Grand, Arrow Highway or any other city street, it is the Covina Police Department at 444 N. Citrus Ave. We get the report either way, and on a serious freeway crash we find out whether the CHP’s Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team responded, because its file has measurements the standard report does not.
Nothing up front. We work on a contingency fee, a percentage of the recovery that is paid only when the case resolves. If there is no recovery there is no attorney’s fee. We advance the cost of accident reconstruction, engineers, medical witnesses, records and depositions while the case is open, and the first consultation is free. The trucking company’s insurer handles truck claims every day and you are handling one once, so make the call before you give a recorded statement.
Covina is in the East District of the Los Angeles Superior Court, so a serious injury case is filed as an unlimited civil case at the Pomona Courthouse South, 400 Civic Center Plaza. Unlimited cases can also be filed downtown at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse. Small claims for Covina addresses go to the West Covina Courthouse on West Covina Parkway. If the trucking company is based out of state, it may move the case to federal court in Los Angeles, and we plan for that from the start.
About six miles, fifteen minutes. From downtown Covina take Badillo or Arrow Highway east through Charter Oak to San Dimas Avenue, or the 10 east to the 57 north and the Bonita Avenue exit. We are on Bonita Avenue in downtown San Dimas with free parking. Francisco also meets Covina clients at home or at the hospital when driving is not an option.
Sí. El abogado Francisco Morales es completamente bilingüe y maneja su caso de accidente de camión en español de principio a fin: la consulta, las negociaciones con la aseguradora del camión, los documentos y el acuerdo final. Usted habla directamente con el abogado, no con un asistente.
Two years from the crash to file a lawsuit for injuries or wrongful death under Code of Civil Procedure 335.1. If Caltrans, the City of Covina or another public entity contributed to the crash, a government claim is due within six months under Government Code 911.2. The useful deadline is much shorter than either, because the carrier only has to keep the driver’s logs for six months and the truck’s data can be gone in days.
The weight, the rules, the money and the evidence. An 80,000-pound rig does damage a car cannot, so the injuries are worse. The company that runs the truck must follow federal hours, drug testing, hiring and maintenance rules, and breaking one is negligence per se. It carries at least $750,000 in coverage and usually far more. And it holds the log, the engine data and the video that show what happened, and sends investigators to the scene the same day. The case is won by getting that evidence early.
Yes. Covina Municipal Code chapter 10.44 restricts trucks over three tons to ten designated streets, including Azusa, Citrus, Grand, Arrow, Badillo, Barranca and San Bernardino Road, with an exception only for a direct pickup or delivery. A semi cutting through a neighborhood to skip a signal is violating a safety ordinance, and in California a safety-rule violation that causes a crash is negligence per se. We also look at whether the carrier’s dispatch or delivery schedule pushed the driver onto that street.
That is the standard defense, and the truck’s own equipment usually answers it. The forward camera, the engine control module and the electronic log show the truck’s speed, braking and following distance in the seconds before impact. If the rig was over the 55 mile-an-hour truck limit on the 10 or was tailgating on Azusa Avenue, the picture changes. California follows pure comparative negligence, so even if you carry part of the fault, your recovery is reduced by that share rather than eliminated.
Yes. Go to Inter-Community on San Bernardino Road or Queen of the Valley in West Covina right after the crash, or to Pomona Valley Hospital for a serious injury. After that we arrange treatment with orthopedists, physical therapists, chiropractors and imaging centers in the San Gabriel Valley who treat on a lien and are paid from the settlement. Immigration status does not affect your right to treatment or to a recovery.
Morales Law Firm
151 W. Bonita Ave., San Dimas, CA 91773
(626) 521-5402
Free consultation, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No fee unless we win. The truck’s data and the driver’s logs do not wait, and neither should the preservation demand.