Everyone is quite aware of what kind of insurance you need to drive a car since you need general liability insurance just to drive on the road. However, insurance for commercial vehicles is not treated the same way. Here are some key differences when getting commercial trucking insurance.
Coverage Differences
It's important to know that you cannot get standard car insurance for a large commercial truck. While standard car insurance will cover a very large SUV, specialized commercial trucking insurance is required for commercial vehicles and semi-trucks. This is good to know if you ever get into an accident with a commercial truck, as they won't have the same type of car insurance as you do.
Commercial trucking insurance is still going to have a lot of coverage that you have with a standard vehicle, such as property damage, medpay, and uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage. Things get a bit different with coverage for things like trailers. A trailer is considered a different part of the vehicle than the truck itself, and additional coverage is required to cover that vehicle.
Liability Differences
You can expect liability limits to be much higher for commercial trucking vehicles. This is because it is more dangerous to drive a commercial truck, and it's possible that they cause a lot more damage to the people in any vehicle they get into an accident with while the trucker is well protected. Commercial trucks can also more easily cause multi-car accidents that will involve many more insurance claims than two standard vehicles.
Cargo Coverage Differences
The items that are damaged in your car when making an auto insurance claim are going to fall under your home insurance policy. However, a commercial truck needs special cargo insurance. This gives them coverage if the items in their vehicle are damaged during an accident, which as you can imagine, can be very expensive based on the cargo they are carrying. It's why cargo insurance is going to be a large part of the premium paid for commercial trucking insurance.
Regulatory Differences
The trucking industry is going to have many more regulatory differences than a standard vehicle, especially when it comes to record keeping. This is due to how there are limits in place on how many hours a driver can work per day and per week. Going over these limits can cause a big problem if an accident happens during that time, which is why there are very strict guidelines for keeping driving logs.
Share31 January 2023
