USPS Mail Truck Accident Claims

Every other page in this library is about identifying a company. This one is about what happens when the answer is the federal government.

The Postal Service operated 262,740 vehicles at the end of fiscal year 2025, one of the largest civilian fleets in the world, and its trucks work the same residential streets where people walk, cycle, and back out of driveways. When one of those vehicles injures you, Congress has already decided who answers for it: under 39 U.S.C. 409(c), the Federal Tort Claims Act applies to tort claims arising out of activities of the Postal Service.

That statute does something unusual with the driver. For a motor vehicle operated by a government employee within the scope of employment, the remedy against the United States is exclusive of any other civil action against the employee personally. You do not have a choice between suing the carrier who was driving and suing the government. The government has substituted itself.

For you, that substitution cuts both ways. The defendant can always pay a judgment, which is never guaranteed with an individual driver or a thin local company. In exchange, the claim follows a procedure written by the defendant's own sovereign, and the procedure forgives nothing.

Under 28 U.S.C. 2675(a), an action shall not be instituted against the United States unless the claimant has first presented the claim to the appropriate federal agency and it has been finally denied. Filing a lawsuit first gets the lawsuit dismissed. The administrative claim is the case's front door.

Presenting a claim means something specific. Postal Service regulations provide that a claim is presented when the agency receives an executed Standard Form 95, or other written notification of the incident, accompanied by a claim for money damages in a sum certain. Claims are filed with the Tort Claims Coordinator for the district where the crash occurred, or with the USPS National Tort Center in St. Louis.

The phrase to take seriously is sum certain. You must state a specific dollar figure, and under 28 U.S.C. 2675(b), a later lawsuit generally cannot seek more than the amount presented to the agency. The exception for newly discovered evidence is narrow. A number written in week three of a serious injury, before anyone knows whether surgery is coming, can quietly become the ceiling on the whole case.

This is why the form deserves more respect than its two pages suggest. It looks like an insurance document. It functions as the outer boundary of a federal lawsuit.

The deadline statute, 28 U.S.C. 2401(b), contains two separate ways to lose. A tort claim against the United States is forever barred unless it is presented in writing to the agency within two years after it accrues, and forever barred again unless suit is begun within six months after the agency mails its final denial. The statute's own phrase is "forever barred," and courts enforce it.

So the clock you probably know from state law is the wrong clock. What matters first is presenting the administrative claim within two years of the crash. What matters second is the six-month window that opens when the Postal Service mails a denial by certified or registered mail.

If the agency fails to make a final disposition within six months of filing, section 2675(a) lets you treat that silence as a final denial at your option and proceed to court. A pending request for reconsideration restarts the agency's six-month period before that option accrues, which is worth knowing before you ask for one.

Keep in mind that these deadlines sit on top of the ordinary work of a serious injury claim. Treatment, records, and valuation all take time, and the sum certain requirement means the number should be as informed as the calendar allows.

An FTCA case is tried differently from the case you would bring against a private trucking company, and you should know the differences before the claim is framed.

There is no jury. Under 28 U.S.C. 2402, actions against the United States under section 1346 are tried by the court. A federal judge decides liability and decides what the injury is worth.

There are no punitive damages. Section 2674 makes the United States liable in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances, while excluding punitive damages and interest before judgment. Compensation is the full measure available.

What you keep is the substance of state law. Under 28 U.S.C. 1346(b)(1), the United States answers where a private person would be liable in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred. A crash in Illinois is judged by Illinois negligence law; a crash in Florida by Florida's. The federal statute supplies the procedure, and your state supplies the standard of care, the damages categories, and the comparative fault rules.

The agency can also settle. Section 2672 authorizes each federal agency to consider, adjust, and settle FTCA claims, and many postal vehicle claims resolve at the administrative stage without a complaint ever being filed. Accepting a settlement releases the claim completely, so the decision deserves the same care as a courtroom one.

Here is where this page connects to every other page on this site: a substantial amount of what looks like postal delivery is performed by private companies under contract, and the analysis above does not apply to them.

The Federal Tort Claims Act defines the government narrowly. Under 28 U.S.C. 2671, the term federal agency expressly does not include any contractor with the United States. The Postal Service's own Inspector General describes Contract Delivery Service suppliers as independent contractors who deliver on routes its own carriers do not serve, with more than 7,900 active CDS contracts in fiscal year 2020. Mail also moves between facilities on highway contract routes — competitive fixed-price contracts with private transport companies, and at roughly 8,200 contracts in fiscal year 2015 the largest single group of contracts in the Postal Service.

When a contractor's vehicle causes the crash, the claim runs against the contracting company under ordinary state tort law. No Standard Form 95, no administrative exhaustion, no bench trial requirement, and the ordinary limitation period of the state where it happened. The company's insurance responds the way any commercial defendant's does, and the theories available against any motor carrier — negligent hiring, training, supervision, and maintenance among them — are available here.

Which defendant you have is a fact question, and it is answerable. Contract Delivery Service routes sit where the Postal Service's own carriers do not serve, and contract carriers frequently run their own vehicles. The government's substitution of itself extends only to its own employees, so the markings on the vehicle settle less than people assume — in either direction.

Your first week determines more in this claim than in most, and it has four jobs.

Establish whose vehicle it was before anything else. Employee or contractor determines the defendant, the form of the claim, the deadline structure, and whether a jury exists. The crash report, the vehicle, and the route records answer it.

Calendar both federal clocks on day one. Two years to present the claim, then six months from a mailed denial to file suit. If the operator turns out to be a contractor, the state clock governs — and if there is any chance a public entity is involved elsewhere in the case, note that Illinois compresses public-entity deadlines to one year.

Treat the Standard Form 95 number as a decision, and make it late rather than early. The sum certain generally caps the suit. It should be set when the medical picture is understood, within the two-year boundary.

Keep every piece of paper about the route. Contractor arrangements are documented, and the difference between an employee route and a CDS route is provable from records the Postal Service and its contractors keep.

If the deadline analysis above has you worried about dates, a conversation with a lawyer should happen sooner than feels necessary.