You are looking for a trucking insurance provider, but you might not be confident about what coverage you need to seek. Especially if you're a new driver or someone starting a company, it can be a bit confusing. Newcomers to trucking insurance should talk with agents about these five forms of coverage.
Primary Liability Involving Third Parties
One of the main reasons to invest in trucking insurance is to protect against potential liability involving third parties. Suppose one of a fleet operator's rigs collides with a car on the highway. Worse, the police determine that the driver's conduct led to the accident.
An incident with a truck, even an unloaded one, can involve many tons of force. Consequently, the odds are high that a victim may suffer catastrophic injuries or even die. Also, trucking accidents often cause millions of dollars in damage to other vehicles and surrounding properties. Judgments and settlements in these cases can quickly rise into the millions of dollars, and that can almost instantly put an uninsured fleet operator out of business.
Physical Damage
Every truck also risks suffering damage in accidents where another driver is at fault. In an incident involving a car driver with minimal insurance, though, their coverage might not come close to knocking out the repair or replacement costs associated with a rig or its cargo. If you don't have trucking insurance, you may be on the hook for the balance of the repair bill.
General Liability
Like any vehicle out in the world, a truck can suffer from incidents involving random and dumb things. A heavy windstorm could blow a large branch into the cab of a rig that's just sitting in a parking lot. Kids might vandalize the truck's paint job. If you're not carrying general liability coverage, you'll have to pay these expenses out of pocket.
Bobtail
A truck without a load and not in a commercial capacity is sometimes called a bobtail. Unless your policy explicitly covers this condition, you may not be insured when driving the rig to and from jobs or the garage.
Cargo
The trucking industry exists to move loads from Point A to B. What happens if the load is damaged? As previously noted, damage from the actions of an at-fault third party may exceed their coverage. Similarly, the damage might happen if a stiff wind hits a trailer broadside and sends the cargo tumbling around. Absent the right trucking insurance policy provisions, there can be huge questions about who if anyone is on the hook for paying damages for the cargo.
For more information, contact a company like Red Ox Insurance Agency, LLC.
