Auto Liability
Auto liability is the one line a trucking company cannot run without. It pays the other driver, the injured pedestrian and the owner of the building you clipped. It is also the filing that keeps your operating authority active. Lose it for a day and your trucks stop.
This page is for carriers that run more than one kind of vehicle: a couple of tractors and a box truck, a hotshot rig and a service pickup, a fleet that grew one truck at a time. One policy can carry all of them, but each unit has its own legal minimum, its own price and its own way of slipping through the cracks. We compare many insurers for every auto liability quote.
When one of your vehicles causes a crash, auto liability pays for the harm done to everyone else. That means medical bills, lost wages and pain and suffering for the people hurt, repairs or replacement for the cars, guardrails and storefronts damaged, and the lawyers who defend you. On most trucking policies the defense costs sit outside the limit, so a long lawsuit does not eat the money set aside for the claim itself.
It does not pay for your own truck, your own trailer, the freight in the trailer or your own driver's injuries. Those are separate lines: physical damage for the equipment, cargo insurance for the load, and workers' compensation or occupational accident for the driver. Owners are often surprised how narrow auto liability is. It is built to protect the public from you, and it does that one job.
You will see the same coverage called primary liability, truckers liability or BIPD (bodily injury and property damage). Our truckers liability page covers the basics. The rest of this page is about the questions that only come up when a fleet runs different kinds of vehicles.
Three things set the limit, and the highest one wins.
Most trucking policies use a combined single limit: one number, such as $1,000,000, that covers injuries and property damage together for each accident. A mixed fleet almost always buys one limit for every unit, set by its strictest customer. Splitting limits by vehicle saves little and makes certificates confusing for every broker you work with.
Here is what the federal floor looks like for the vehicles a small fleet commonly runs together, and the first question an underwriter asks about each one. The floors apply to interstate for-hire work; your customers will usually want more.
| Vehicle | Weight class | Federal floor | What the underwriter asks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tractor pulling a dry van, reefer or flatbed | Well over 10,001 lbs | $750,000 for general freight hauled for hire across state lines | What do you haul, how far from home does it go, and who drives it? |
| 26-foot box truck | Usually 16,000 to 26,000 lbs GVWR | $750,000 when it hauls for hire interstate | Is it on a delivery contract, a dedicated route or spot loads? Local or regional? |
| Hotshot pickup with a gooseneck trailer | Truck alone may be light; truck plus trailer usually passes 10,001 lbs | $750,000 once the combination weight makes it a commercial motor vehicle | What is the combined weight rating, and does the driver hold a CDL if it needs one? |
| Cargo van or light pickup hauling for hire | Under 10,001 lbs GVWR | $300,000 for non-hazardous property | Is it a freight unit or a service vehicle that never carries a load? |
| Any unit carrying placarded hazardous materials | Any weight for the $5,000,000 classes; 10,001 lbs or more for $1,000,000 | $1,000,000 or $5,000,000, depending on the material and how it moves | Which hazard classes, in bulk or packages, and how often? |
The hotshot row trips up the most owners. A pickup on its own may weigh well under 10,001 pounds, but federal rules look at the combined weight rating of the truck and trailer together. Hook up a gooseneck and the rig usually becomes a commercial motor vehicle with the $750,000 floor. A carrier that only hauls its own goods and no hazardous materials sits outside the federal minimums entirely, though its state still requires coverage and its customers will still ask.
An auto liability price is built one vehicle at a time and then added up. Each unit carries its own rate, set mostly by these facts:
Here's the catch with a mixed fleet: not every insurer writes every vehicle type, and some cap the number of power units they take. A market that likes your tractors may refuse your box truck, or the other way round. That is why we shop the whole schedule and show you which markets took which units, instead of forcing a fleet into the first insurer that answers.
FMCSA will not activate a for-hire authority until an insurer files proof of liability coverage for it. That proof is the BMC-91 or BMC-91X, sent by the insurer straight to FMCSA. If the policy cancels, the insurer has to give FMCSA 30 days' notice, and when that notice runs out your authority is revoked unless a new filing replaces it. Carriers that also run inside certain states need a state filing as well, often called a Form E.
Attached to the policy is the MCS-90 endorsement. It is a promise to the public, not extra coverage for you. If someone wins a judgment against you up to the federal minimum, the insurer pays it even when the policy itself would not have covered the loss, such as a vehicle that was never added to the schedule. The insurer can then ask you to pay that money back. Owners who think the MCS-90 makes every truck covered find this out at the worst possible time.
Our free policy check shows which filings FMCSA has on record for your USDOT number today.
Many trucking policies cover only the vehicles listed on them. Buy a truck on Friday, send it out Monday, and it may have no coverage of its own until the insurer adds it. Send us the VIN before the first load. Selling or parking a unit works the same way in reverse: tell us, so you stop paying for it.
A rental box truck during a busy week, an employee running parts in their own pickup, a borrowed trailer. None of them are on your schedule. Hired and non-owned auto coverage fills that gap for your liability when a vehicle you do not own is used for your business.
Auto liability follows your tractor onto most trailers you hook up, but damage to a trailer you picked up under an interchange agreement is a separate question. Trailer interchange coverage handles that, and drop-and-hook freight usually requires it.
When an owner-operator runs under your authority, your auto liability is usually the policy that answers for their truck while it is on your dispatch. Off dispatch, the owner-operator needs non-trucking liability. Your lease should say who covers what, and your schedule should list every leased unit.
Six steps from your vehicle list to a policy that covers every unit.
Already insured? We send renewal submissions 90 days before your renewal date, so there is time to fix the schedule and collect loss runs before underwriters see it. Brand-new carriers start with our new authority insurance page, and the quote checklist lists every document a complete submission needs.
Little in practice. Auto liability, primary liability, truckers liability and BIPD all describe the same coverage on a trucking policy: it pays for injuries and damage your vehicles cause to other people. Auto liability is the name most insurers and contracts use.
Yes. Most small fleets carry all of their vehicles on one policy with one limit. Each vehicle is listed and rated on its own, so a heavy tractor and a light pickup carry very different shares of the total price.
It meets the federal floor for general freight in heavy trucks, but most shippers and freight brokers will not load a carrier below $1,000,000. Fleets with bigger contracts or heavy exposure often add an excess policy on top.
No. Auto liability pays for other people's injuries and property. Damage to your own vehicle is physical damage coverage, and the freight you carry is covered by cargo insurance.
No. The MCS-90 promises the public that a judgment up to the federal minimum gets paid, even when the policy itself would not cover the loss. If the insurer pays a claim the policy excludes, it can ask you to pay it back.
Your state almost certainly requires liability insurance on every registered vehicle. The federal minimum filing applies to for-hire carriers and to carriers of hazardous materials, so a private carrier hauling its own non-hazardous goods may have no federal filing, but its customers, landlords and lenders will still ask for proof of coverage.
On a policy that lists vehicles by name, an unlisted truck may have no coverage beyond what the MCS-90 forces the insurer to pay the public, and you would owe that money back. Tell us before the truck runs its first load.
Key federal requirements on this page, linked to the law they come from.
We check the limit every unit needs, shop the whole schedule with every market that fits, and show you each quote and decline side by side.