Trucking Insurance FAQs
Where did the concept of insurance originate?
It is difficult to say with certainty, but both the ancient Chinese and the Babylonians practiced insurance amongst their merchant and nobility classes. You see, the nobles had enough money to cover any of the merchant’s caravans. The merchants on the other hand had most of their wealth tied up every time they started a trade route. If the caravan were attacked or lost to natural disaster, the merchant would be wiped out. So the merchant would pay the noble a nominal fee to transfer the responsibility for the loss from the merchant to the noble.
How does that translate into the insurance industry we see today?
Simply put, as the ages passed, the nobility found that they could insure all sorts of things. Guilds in the middle ages collected life insurance fees and then took care of burying the dead. Shipping brought about an entirely new form of transport which also needed to be insured. Our modern insurance practices grew out of the simple concepts of insuring life and property. Now we not only insure life, we insure health (for a nominal fee). We also insure almost any kind of property out there, from renter’s insurance, to car insurance, to home owner’s insurance.
Why do truckers need to worry about insuring their cargo?
The average trucker doesn’t need to worry about insuring his cargo. His company will take care of details like that for him. However if you want to be an owner operator you have to take on all the responsibilities that management would have handled for you as a route driver. That means having your loads insured so that your customers don’t come after you in the event of an accident. It may cut into your bottom line a little bit, but it’s nothing like the hit you would take if you lost a shipment.
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