Most people think of personal auto insurance policies when they think about auto insurance. These policies are for the vehicles people drive during their personal lives, whether it’s to get to work or drive their kids to school.
More people are starting to drive vehicles for their job, though. From being a delivery driver to driving a semi-truck for a company, personal auto insurance policies don’t cover getting into an accident while driving on the job. This means you need a commercial auto insurance policy. A commercial auto policy is usually paid for by the employer.
If you run a company, though, and it requires many drivers to make everything work, you should consider getting commercial fleet insurance. These policies cover all the vehicles you own for your business. You can usually add more vehicles to your fleet policy for an extra price. Let’s do a rundown of all the factors that affect your decision to get fleet insurance.
Do You Employ Many Drivers?
Getting fleet insurance usually depends on whether you are a company employing many drivers. For example, Amazon is a massive corporation that employs thousands of drivers in every region they deliver to. Driving is a huge part of their business model and delivery season.
It would not be smart to get a commercial insurance policy for every vehicle they use. Getting commercial auto insurance for every vehicle in a company’s possession would be a hassle because there are too many insurance policies to track.
If your business is delivering goods in many different vehicles you own, you should look into getting a fleet insurance policy. Fleet insurance covers all your business vehicles. The policy will usually go up about $1,000 annually for every additional car or SUV and $1,500 annually for every additional truck.
If you run an online business, you can often ship your products to customers through UPS, FedEx, or the U.S. Postal Service. This would help avoid the need to buy many vehicles for deliveries and also avoid the added cost of getting fleet insurance.
If you have a manufacturing business delivering products to other companies, you will likely have many vehicles rented or bought for this purpose. You would need fleet insurance in this scenario.
The individuals who drive these vehicles for your company don’t have to pay for the insurance policies because the vehicles belong to the company, not the employees.
There are still ways the employees can impact the insurance rates you get on your fleet policy, though. It’s important for companies to look into the history of their drivers before hiring them, as it can have a negative impact on their fleet insurance otherwise.
Does a Driver’s Ability Affect Your Fleet Insurance Costs?
Just like with a personal auto insurance policy, a driving record affects the cost of your commercial and fleet insurance. Companies should do a background check and scanning of their drivers’ records before hiring them to deliver goods.
Every driver needs to be entered on your fleet insurance policy application. If you have drivers in your company who have gotten into accidents in the past, even if they are incidents that happened off the job, this could present risks for an insurance company.
Businesses can go a step further and monitor their drivers’ habits with dash cams and other recording devices to make sure they are staying alert and safe behind the wheel. This will also show drivers that businesses care about safety. Companies that don’t care whether you get into an accident are not to be trusted.
To get insurance discounts on fleet insurance, you will need to get involved in safe-driving programs that install GPS and other monitoring in the vehicles you own. Insurance companies will give discounts on insurance sometimes for doing this.
What Other Factors Increase Fleet Insurance?
Educate yourself on the types of things fleet insurance covers. Unlike personal auto insurance policies, most fleet insurance is only going to cover damage to your vehicles when they crash. It’s not going to cover the damages that occur to products in your vehicles.
So if you want to protect your merchandise or possessions with fleet insurance, ask if there are any more expansive policies. They will cover more for your business for an increased cost. It’s worth it, though, not to have to replace hundreds of packages that are sprawled over the road after an accident.
If you want a general rule of thumb to determine whether you need fleet insurance, it all has to do with the number of vehicles you are in possession of and using for your company. A couple of cars for delivering pizza is only going to require commercial insurance; a whole fleet of semi-trucks to deliver products to different vendors is going to require fleet insurance.
