A company driver backed over my semi in line 6/10/2026. Can I be compensated for lost income?

Yes. You likely are. Review the case J&D Towing, LLC v. American Alternative Insurance Corp., 478 S.W.3d 649 (Tex. 2016): The Texas Supreme Court established that the owner of personal property used for business can recover loss-of-use damages—measured either by lost net profits or the reasonable cost of renting a substitute commercial vehicle—regardless of whether the vehicle is repairable or a total loss.

I'm sorry you're in this spot. Before you accept "you're on the hook for everything," there's one question that should come before any other: is Uber's adjuster's account of the coverage gap actually accurate, or convenient for them? Adjusters aren't there to volunteer coverage that costs their company money, and TNC coverage periods are exactly the kind of thing that gets misstated or oversimplified in a phone call. That needs to be verified from the actual policy, not taken on faith.

Texas law (the Transportation Network Companies Act, Tex. Occ. Code Ch. 2402, paired with Tex. Ins. Code Ch. 1954) doesn't leave a true zero-coverage gap for drivers who are logged into the app and available but haven't been matched with a ride — what the industry calls Period 1. TNCs are required to carry at least $50,000 per person / $100,000 per incident in bodily injury coverage and $25,000 in property damage coverage during that period, either as primary coverage or as excess over a driver's personal policy. That's smaller than the $1 million policy that applies once a ride is accepted or a passenger is aboard, but it's not nothing, and it directly contradicts a flat "no coverage while waiting" statement. Don't rely on what you were told verbally — request the actual Period 1 policy declarations from Uber (or its insurer) in writing, and pull your own trip/app status logs from that day, since the exact second-by-second timing of your status (waiting vs. just matched) is often disputed and Uber's own data is the best evidence of which period you were actually in.

Second source to check: the rental itself. Since you rented specifically through Uber's in-app rental program rather than a personal leisure rental, that agreement may include its own supplemental liability coverage bundled into the rental fee, separate from Uber's TNC policy — that's common with rideshare-specific rental programs. Pull the actual rental contract and ask the rental company directly what liability coverage, if any, was included or purchased, rather than assuming it tracks Uber's answer.

Third, your own personal auto policy, if you have one — though don't expect much there. Most personal auto policies contain a livery or rideshare exclusion that kicks out coverage the moment you're logged into a driving app for hire, regardless of which period you were in, so your own carrier may deny the claim entirely on that basis. Worth confirming the exact exclusion language rather than assuming, but this is usually a dead end. And on the debit card: card-issued rental protections (the kind that come bundled with some Visa/Mastercard accounts) generally require paying with an eligible credit card to trigger, and even then they typically only cover damage to the rental car itself, not liability to a third party — so that's unlikely to help here, but check your specific card's terms to be sure.

The other driver's no-insurance citation doesn't reduce what you owe them — that citation is about their own separate legal exposure, not yours, and since you were found at fault, it doesn't matter to your liability that they were uninsured. It does mean there's no other insurer in the mix to share any of this, which is exactly why nailing down every one of your own possible coverage sources matters so much here.

If it turns out after all of that there genuinely is no applicable coverage — a real Period 1 denial in writing, no rental-included coverage, and a confirmed personal-policy exclusion — you are looking at real personal exposure for both your own bills and the other driver's, and at that point the conversation shifts to an attorney negotiating down what's owed (especially medical liens, which are often negotiable even without insurance behind them) and structuring how any personal exposure gets handled, rather than just chasing a coverage source that doesn't exist.

This is general information under Texas law, not legal advice for your specific policies and facts, and this is genuinely not a situation to sort out alone based on one phone call with an adjuster. Our firm, Varghese Summersett, handles personal injury and liability matters across Texas (Fort Worth, Dallas, Southlake, and Houston) and would be glad to pull the actual policies and rental agreement and tell you where you really stand, at no cost to look.

A company driver backed over my semi in line 6/10/2026. Can I be compensated for lost income?

Yes — lost income is recoverable in a Texas commercial vehicle case like this, but whether you actually get paid for it comes down almost entirely to documentation, not the legal theory. Insurance adjusters routinely push back hard on lost-income claims from owner-operators and treat them as speculative unless they're backed up with real records, so that's the piece to get right from the start.

On liability: a driver backing into a parked or stopped semi in a line is a classic negligence scenario, and if he was on the job, his employer is very likely on the hook too under respondeat superior — which is good news here, since commercial trucking companies are required to carry substantially higher liability limits than a personal auto policy (often $750,000 to $1 million or more under federal motor carrier requirements), so there's usually a real, well-funded source to pay a legitimate claim.

For the lost-income piece specifically, Texas requires you to prove the loss with "reasonable certainty" — you can't just assert a number. What that looks like in practice for an owner-operator: your average income before the incident (tax returns, 1099s, settlement statements, or profit-and-loss records), the specific loads or dispatch you had to turn down or lost while the truck was down, your ELD/dispatch logs showing the truck was out of service, and the repair shop's timeline for how long it actually took. If you rented or leased a substitute truck to keep working, that rental cost itself is also recoverable — either instead of, or as evidence supporting, the lost-income number. If you didn't get a substitute, you can typically claim the reasonable value of the truck's use for the downtime period as an alternative measure. versustexas.com/blog/lost-wages-after-a-car-accident/

Also make sure you're not leaving other categories on the table: repair costs or diminished value if the truck was repaired but is now worth less, any cargo damage if you were loaded at the time, and your deductible if your own policy covered the repair in the meantime pending reimbursement from the other side.

Keep the accident/incident report, photos of both vehicles, the repair invoice and timeline, and your income and dispatch records together now — the earlier this gets documented, the less room there is for the other side to argue the loss is speculative. Texas generally gives you two years to bring a claim like this.