Types Of Commercial Truck Insurance: What You Actually Need

If You’re Leased On To A Carrier

If you’re leased to a motor carrier, their policy covers you while you’re under dispatch, and not otherwise. The gaps are real and they’re yours to fill. Buying a full primary liability policy when you needed bobtail is one of the most common and expensive mistakes in trucking insurance.

• Bobtail And Non-Trucking Liability Insurance — covers you when you’re driving without a load and off dispatch
• Occupational Accident Insurance — medical and disability for owner-operators who aren’t employees and therefore aren’t covered by the carrier’s workers’ comp
• Truckers Workers Compensation — required in most states once you have employees

Protecting The Business, Not Just The Truck

• Commercial Fleet Insurance — once you’re past a handful of trucks, fleet rating usually beats individually-rated units
• General Liability Insurance — covers you off the truck: premises, operations, completed work
• Garage Keepers Liability Insurance — if customer vehicles are in your care, custody or control
• Warehouse Insurance — stored goods, which your cargo policy stops covering once the freight is off the truck
• Inland Marine Insurance — equipment and property in transit that isn’t the truck or the freight
• Freight Broker Insurance — contingent cargo and broker bonds if you’re arranging loads as well as hauling them
• Errors And Omissions Insurance — professional liability for brokers and logistics operations
• Key Man Insurance For Truckers — for a business that would struggle to continue without one specific person
• Life Insurance For Truck Drivers — standard life underwriting treats trucking as elevated risk, so the market differs
• Captive Insurance — for larger fleets with the loss history and volume to self-insure a layer

Cost, Credit And Situational Coverage

• Average Semi Truck Insurance Cost — what operations like yours actually pay
• High Risk Truck Insurance — after claims, violations, or a declination
• No Down Payment Truck Insurance — what’s realistic, and what it costs you over the term
• Short Term Truck Insurance — for seasonal or single-project operations
• Truck Roadside Assistance — commercial roadside is a different product from a consumer auto club
• Roadside Masters
• Farmers Truck Insurance Exchange

Which Coverages Do You Actually Need?

Four common situations, and what each one needs.

New Authority, One Truck, Dry Van

Primary liability at $1 million, motor truck cargo at $100,000, and physical damage if there’s a loan on the truck. That’s the floor, and it’s what a broker will ask to see before giving you a load. General liability is usually added because shippers request it.

Expect to pay materially more in year one than you will in year three — new authority with no loss history is priced on the risk that you’re an unknown, not on anything you’ve done wrong.

See Average Costs → · High Risk Options →

Leased On To A Carrier

You need bobtail / non-trucking liability and usually occupational accident. You do not need your own primary liability — the carrier’s policy covers you under dispatch — and buying it anyway is money spent on a duplicate.

Read your lease. It will specify what the carrier carries and what you’re expected to hold, and those terms vary between carriers.

Hauling For Amazon Relay Or Running Intermodal

Your contract sets the bar, not FMCSA. Amazon publishes its own requirements, and the UIIA has trailer interchange requirements you can’t pull containers without. Both exceed the federal minimums. Buy to the contract, not the regulation.

A Fleet Of Five Or More

You’ve outgrown per-unit shopping. Fleet rating prices on your loss history, safety program and telematics data rather than on each truck individually, and it usually wins. General liability and workers’ compensation stop being optional once you have employees and a yard.