Pretty standard stuff. My own experience with trucking companies is that you file a claim, they deny the claim, and then when you try to press the issue they'll point to some fine print in the tariff that says they'll only pay this many cents per pound, unless you buy additional insurance.

I had a shipment of fire fighting equipment get banged up by Yellow Freight some years ago, and went through the process described above. Since the value was less than $10K, I filed a suit in small claims court. Since nobody from Yellow showed up, I got a default judgment. I mailed a copy of the judgment to Yellow and got a check in the mail a couple of weeks later. My supposition is that they play the odds that very few people will actually follow through on a threat to sue, and below a certain dollar amount it's not worth the time and trouble to send an employee out to appear in court to respond to a suit they're likely to lose.