FORT WORTH, Texas — The owner and operator of the North Texas Express TEXpress tollway has reached a settlement with the family of a young mother who died when her vehicle was crushed by an 18-wheeler in a multi-vehicle pileup on Interstate 35W during a February 2021 ice storm.
The massive crash, which involved more than 130 vehicles on an icy Texas interstate, left six people dead and dozens injured on Feb. 11, 2021 amid a winter storm that dropped freezing rain, sleet and snow on parts of the U.S.
At the scene of the crash on Interstate 35 near downtown Fort Worth, a tangle of semitrailers, cars and trucks had smashed into each other and had turned every which way, with some vehicles on top of others.
“There were multiple people that were trapped within the confines of their vehicles and requiring the use of hydraulic rescue equipment to successfully extricate them,” said Fort Worth Fire Chief Jim Davis.
At least 65 people were treated at hospitals; 36 of them were taken by ambulance from the crash site, including three with critical injuries, said Matt Zavadsky, spokesman for MedStar, which provides the ambulance service for the area. Numerous others were treated at the scene and released.
The April 15, 2025, confidential settlement by Cintra US and its subsidiaries and related parties clears the way for a July 21, 2025, trial involving FedEx Corp. and other trucking and transportation industry defendants. According to the lawsuit, their actions placed an untrained driver behind the wheel of an unauthorized tractor-trailer that plowed into the pileup at highway speed.
The settlement was announced by Fort Worth attorney Jason Stephens of Stephens Law, who is a leader of the consolidated lawsuits related to the pileup. Stephens represents the family of Tiffany Gerred, who died when her vehicle was crushed by a FedEx truck as she tried to escape from the wreckage. The July 21 trial will be the first to be heard by a jury.
FedEx Trial
“The Gerred family and I are very pleased to have resolved this part of the case,” Stephens said. “While we believe the Toll Road certainly played a part in this tragedy, there is no question that the 18-wheeler is what killed Tiffany. Six people died that day and all six were hit by 18-wheelers who simply should not have been on the road and were certainly traveling too fast for the icy conditions.”
According to Stephens, the family’s position is that Gerred could have survived the accident had she not been rear-ended by the 18-wheeler as she exited her own vehicle.
The lawsuit is aimed at a trucking industry practice known as double-brokering in which one trucking company contracts to haul a load and then subcontracts the load to another motor carrier. According to Stephens, this “prohibited practice often results in unvetted, unsafe motor carriers and unqualified drivers hauling the loads.”
Deposition Testimony on the Crash
Sworn deposition testimony included:
- FedEx allegedly lacked procedures to verify whether a truck driver picking up a load was authorized and approved by FedEx, whether the vehicle had a valid DOT number, or whether the driver was a safe driver or even had a legitimate commercial driver’s license. A security manager for FedEx’s Hub where the trip originated testified that the company’s lack of oversight poses not just a public safety risk but a national security threat.
- The truck driver, a Haitian national, had crashed another 18-wheeler in icy conditions just two months earlier. He worked for Simon Express, a carrier allegedly linked to a Russian-speaking Uzbekistani and operated remotely from Uzbekistan allegedly using fake names on legal documents. The company allegedly falsified the driver’s road test and logs and had been recently warned by the FMCSA for unsafe driving.
- The driver of the 18-wheeler was allegedly traveling more than 65 mph after ignoring five billboard-sized signs warning that “Icy Conditions Exist” in the 5 miles prior to slamming into Gerred’s small passenger car.
Dana Guthrie is an award-winning journalist who has been featured in multiple newspapers, books and magazines across the globe. She is currently based in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
Is this a story of “men in suits” who have never even been in a big rig? Just wondering.