[New Study] America’s Most Dangerous Delivery Fleets: Which Carriers Crash the Most? (2026)

Quick Answer: FedEx Ground Package System has the highest crash rate of any major U.S. delivery carrier, with 75 crashes per 100 registered vehicles over the past 24 months — more than 12 times the rate of the next-worst fleet, J.B. Hunt (5.86), and roughly 30 times the rate of UPS, Amazon Logistics or FedEx Express. DHL Express has the highest fatal-crash rate in the group at 0.21 per 100 vehicles. The findings come from a 2026 analysis of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) SAFER records by Steven M. Sweat, Personal Injury Lawyers.

Article summary

• Americans now receive more than 60 million packages a day, and the trucks and vans delivering them are involved in thousands of crashes every year.
• Our analysis of 24 months of FMCSA SAFER data (through August 2026) ranks eight major delivery carriers by crashes per 100 power units.
• FedEx Ground ranks worst (75 crashes per 100 vehicles; 19% of inspected trucks ordered out of service), followed by J.B. Hunt, OnTrac, Spee-Dee and Amazon Logistics.
• By raw volume, FedEx Express (3,110 crashes) and UPS (2,234 crashes) lead the country — together accounting for roughly three-quarters of all crashes in the dataset.
• Contractor-based delivery models make it harder to see the full safety picture and harder for injured people to identify who is legally responsible.

Why we looked at delivery fleet safety

Home delivery has become a permanent part of American life. By some estimates, U.S. households now receive more than 60 million parcels every single day, and that volume keeps climbing with each holiday season. Every one of those packages travels the last mile in a truck or van that shares the road with commuters, cyclists and pedestrians — often on tight residential streets, on a clock, with a driver being measured on how fast the route gets finished.

Yet very little public reporting compares the safety records of the companies doing the delivering. Federal crash data exists, but it is scattered across individual carrier registrations and never presented as a like-for-like comparison.

So we pulled it together. Our firm has represented people injured in delivery truck accidents in Los Angeles for over 30 years, and the question clients ask most often is simple: how common is this? This study is our attempt to answer it with federal data rather than anecdotes.

Methodology

We collected records from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s SAFER system for eight major U.S. delivery carriers, using each company’s primary USDOT registration. For each carrier we recorded:

• Power units — the number of registered trucks, vans and tractors
• Total crashes reported to FMCSA over the trailing 24 months (period ending August 2026)
• Injury crashes and fatal crashes within that total
• Vehicle and driver out-of-service rates from federal roadside inspections

Because the fleets range from a few dozen vehicles to well over 100,000, raw crash counts alone would simply reward the smallest companies. To make the comparison fair, we calculated crashes per 100 power units and used that rate to produce the final ranking. Injury and fatal crashes were normalized the same way.

One important limitation, which we discuss in detail below: several of these brands deliver most of their packages through independent contractors who hold their own USDOT numbers. The figures here reflect each company’s own registration, not the entire network of contractors operating under its logo.

The rankings: America’s most crash-prone delivery fleets

Source: FMCSA SAFER, 24-month period ending August 2026. Analysis by Steven M. Sweat, Personal Injury Lawyers, APC.

Across all eight registrations combined, that is roughly 292,000 registered vehicles and 7,226 reported crashes in two years — an average of about 2.5 crashes per 100 trucks, or nearly ten reported crashes every day involving just these carriers’ directly registered fleets.

Key findings

1. FedEx Ground has by far the worst crash rate

For every 100 vehicles on FedEx Ground Package System’s registration, 75 were involved in a reported crash in the past two years, and 37.5 were involved in a crash that injured someone. No other carrier in the dataset comes within a factor of ten.

FedEx Ground’s roadside inspection record raises the same flag. Nearly one in five FedEx Ground trucks (19%) pulled over by federal inspectors were declared too unsafe to continue driving and ordered out of service on the spot.

The context matters here. FedEx Ground’s own USDOT registration lists only 32 power units because the division delivers almost entirely through contracted “independent service providers” who register their own vehicles separately. That means the 24 crashes on this registration are a small window into a much larger network — but it also means the vehicles FedEx Ground does directly register are crashing at a rate that should concern anyone sharing the road with them.

2. J.B. Hunt: the highest crash rate among the mega-fleets

J.B. Hunt is second overall, with 5.86 crashes per 100 vehicles — but unlike FedEx Ground, it reaches that rate across a fleet of more than 25,000 trucks covering over 1.6 billion miles a year. Over the study period, J.B. Hunt vehicles were involved in 1,482 crashes, including 495 injury crashes and 46 fatal crashes. Its fatal-crash rate (0.182 per 100 units) is the second-highest in the ranking and more than four times that of UPS.

3. OnTrac’s trucks fail inspections, even though its drivers don’t

Regional West Coast carrier OnTrac ranks third at 3.33 crashes per 100 vehicles, based on a single crash across a small direct registration. The more telling number is its inspection record: federal officials pulled 3 of every 15 OnTrac vehicles inspected (20%) off the road for safety violations — well above what clean-record carriers typically post. Its drivers, by contrast, passed all 18 driver inspections with zero violations, suggesting the problem is equipment and maintenance rather than driver conduct.

4. Spee-Dee: a regional carrier with a driver problem

Spee-Dee Delivery, which runs Midwest routes with about 560 vehicles and more than 1.4 billion annual miles, recorded 17 crashes, five of them involving injuries. Its driver out-of-service rate was among the highest in the ranking — meaning that when inspectors stopped a Spee-Dee driver, they were unusually likely to find a violation serious enough to end that driver’s shift.

5. Amazon Logistics rounds out the top five

Amazon’s directly registered fleet — roughly 15,000 vehicles and more than 42,000 drivers — was involved in 349 crashes in two years, including 124 injury crashes and 6 fatal crashes, for a rate of 2.29 per 100 units. As with FedEx Ground, this captures only part of the picture: thousands of Amazon Delivery Service Partners (DSPs) operate the familiar blue vans under their own separate USDOT registrations and are not included in this figure. We cover how that structure affects injury claims on our Amazon delivery accident page.

6. By sheer volume, FedEx Express and UPS dominate

Rates tell one story; raw numbers tell another. Federal Express Corp. (the FedEx Express air-and-ground division) reported 3,110 crashes in 24 months — including roughly 1,066 injury crashes and 79 fatal crashes — across the largest fleet in the study. UPS was close behind with 2,234 crashes, roughly 786 involving injuries and 49 fatal. Between them, these two carriers account for about 74% of every crash in the dataset. Their per-vehicle rates (2.25 and 1.99) are middle-of-the-pack, but that is small comfort to the thousands of people involved in those collisions each year.

7. DHL has the lowest crash rate — and the highest fatal-crash rate

DHL Express (USA) posted the best overall crash rate in the group at 1.87 per 100 vehicles. But among its nine reported crashes, one was fatal, giving DHL’s small U.S. fleet a fatal-crash rate of 0.208 per 100 units — the highest in the ranking and roughly five times the fatal-crash rate of UPS, Amazon Logistics and FedEx Express. With a fleet of fewer than 500 vehicles, a single fatality moves that rate dramatically, but the outcome for the family involved is the same regardless of fleet size.

The contractor problem: why the real numbers are almost certainly worse

The most important caveat in this study is also its most important finding. Three of the biggest brands on the list — FedEx Ground, Amazon and, to a lesser extent, UPS through its surge contractors — deliver most of their packages through vehicles that are not on the parent company’s federal registration.

FedEx Ground contracts with thousands of independent service providers. Amazon’s DSP program comprises thousands of small delivery companies, each with its own USDOT number. When one of those vans causes a crash, the collision is logged under the contractor’s registration, not the brand’s. The result is that the safety record of the vehicle with the corporate logo on the side is spread across a scattered set of small carriers that no consumer, regulator or journalist can easily add up.

Steven M. Sweat, founding attorney of Steven M. Sweat, Personal Injury Lawyers, APC, commented on the findings:

“A lot of these big delivery brands don’t directly employ most of their drivers. They use contracted service providers who operate their own trucks under separate registrations. That makes it harder to track the full safety picture, and it also splits accountability. However, one area where responsibility can’t be shared is that these companies put delivery drivers under enormous time pressure every day. Routes are planned around speed, and drivers know they’ll be evaluated on how fast they complete them. That kind of pressure raises risk on the road.”

What this means if you’re hit by a delivery vehicle in California

Delivery vehicle crashes are not like ordinary car accidents, for three reasons.

1. Identifying the right defendant is the first fight. Under California law, an employer is generally liable for an employee’s negligence committed within the scope of employment (the doctrine of respondeat superior). But when the driver works for a contractor, the delivery giant will argue it is not the employer at all. Whether a brand can be held responsible depends on the degree of control it exercised over the driver’s routes, schedules, vehicle and performance metrics — exactly the “time pressure” issues this study highlights. Claims may also be brought for negligent selection or retention of a contractor, or under federal motor carrier regulations that apply regardless of the label on the paperwork.

2. Federal safety rules create evidence. Because these fleets are regulated by the FMCSA, there is a paper trail that does not exist in a typical fender-bender: inspection reports, out-of-service orders, hours-of-service logs, telematics and route-timing data. An experienced truck accident attorney will send preservation demands for this evidence immediately, because delivery companies routinely overwrite it within weeks.

3. Comparative fault will be raised. California follows pure comparative negligence under Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, which means the carrier’s insurer will look for any way to shift a percentage of blame onto the injured person to reduce what it pays. Your recovery is reduced by your share of fault but not eliminated, even if you are found mostly at fault.

If you’ve been injured by a FedEx, UPS, Amazon or any other delivery vehicle in Southern California, you can reach our office 24 hours a day at 866-966-5240 for a free consultation. We handle every case on a contingency fee basis, in English or Spanish.

Frequently asked questions

Which delivery company has the most accidents?

By raw count, FedEx Express (Federal Express Corp.) had the most reported crashes of any U.S. delivery carrier — 3,110 over the 24 months ending August 2026 — followed by UPS with 2,234. By crash rate, FedEx Ground Package System was the worst at 75 crashes per 100 registered vehicles.

Is Amazon or UPS safer?

On a per-vehicle basis, UPS (1.99 crashes per 100 units) had a modestly lower crash rate than Amazon Logistics (2.29) over the study period. UPS also had a slightly lower injury-crash rate (0.70 vs. 0.81) but a slightly higher fatal-crash rate (0.044 vs. 0.039). Both figures exclude contractor fleets, which make up a large share of Amazon’s delivery network.

Why does FedEx Ground only have 32 vehicles in federal records?

FedEx Ground delivers primarily through independent service providers who register their own vehicles with the FMCSA under their own USDOT numbers. The 32 power units on FedEx Ground Package System’s registration represent only the vehicles the division registers directly. The crash rate for those vehicles is the highest in our study.

Who is liable if I’m hit by a delivery van driven by a contractor?

Potentially several parties: the driver, the contractor company that employs the driver, and in some circumstances the delivery brand itself if it controlled the work, negligently selected the contractor, or is otherwise responsible under federal motor carrier regulations. Determining this quickly is critical, because each party has its own insurer and its own defense strategy.

Where does this crash data come from?

All crash, fleet size and inspection figures come from the FMCSA’s SAFER (Safety and Fitness Electronic Records) system, which publishes federally reported crash and inspection data for every registered motor carrier. We used a 24-month window ending August 2026.

Use this data

Journalists, researchers and safety advocates are welcome to use the findings, tables and charts from this study. When doing so, please credit Steven M. Sweat, Personal Injury Lawyers and link to https://www.victimslawyer.com. For the underlying data, interviews or a state-level breakdown, contact our office at 866-966-5240.

Related research from our firm:

• Hit-and-Run Fatality Rankings by U.S. City (2020–2023)
• Truck Accident Attorneys Near Me: Legal Guide 2026

Steven M. Sweat, Personal Injury Lawyers, APC is a plaintiff-side personal injury firm in West Los Angeles with over 30 years of experience representing people injured in commercial vehicle and delivery truck crashes throughout California. Recognized by Super Lawyers continuously since 2012. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.