Insurance quote, is that WAY too much?

You only need 100,000 cargo insurance. 250,00 way too much.

 

Only get enough cargo ins. for what you can carry. I haul office furn. & I cannot fit more that $30,000 worth of furn. in my trailer, so that is all the cargo I need.

Check out Southwest Truck Ins. Group. I pay about $5,500 per year with full coverage for an '01 Volvo 770, liability only for '93 Kentucky trailer with $30,000 cargo ins. and $1000 deductable.

 

6wheeler, depending on how many cars he loads on his trailer $250,000 may not even cover him. I run local lease turn into the auction 7 or 8 at a time with each car having an ACV (insurance term for actual cash value) of about $20,000 I have $160,000 in cars on my trailer every day and that is just the average, sometimes I have a single car worth 200k or more.

DriverLLC, you said you have 5 years experience, but is that hauling cars or just general truck driving? Without some car haul experience you will pay a lot more as it is easy to make a simple mistake that costs several thousand dollars in damage to the car and it isn't unusual to have to pay for the entire car if the damage is high enough to affect resale value after the repair. We have 3 trucks, 1 trailer and 2 flatbeds and our insurance is $18,000 a year with zero losses in the last 12 years, but we are just outside the NYC metro area so we are rated very high compared to someone in the midwest.

As for OOIDA, they do write car haulers BUT they will not cover the cars if you take them off the truck in mid route, I asked about this trying to get a better rate this year and they wouldn't cover dropping them in my yard or the auction parking lot to rearrange the load or hold them to build a full load going in the same direction. They also did not cover the whole spectrum of coverages our transport company needed, just cargo and general liability. They couldn't cover professional liability, umbrella coverages, or storage facility/garage keepers liability (which is important if you have a storage lot where customers or other carriers come to drop or load cars), and the biggest no for OOIDA was they would not cover inoperable cars, which I get a lot of from repo yards.

Lastly, if you can afford to put away $5,000 or more then you can get a much lower premium if you raise your deductible, we have a $5,000 deductible and if the damage were to be lower than that we would pay it out of pocket to avoid the loss run report. The last "claim" I had was for a few scratches on the hood of a 2014 Focus that I had tucked a little too far under the car above it, $350 to have Manheim Auction bodyshop refinish the hood, much cheaper to pay out of pocket than go thru a claim.

Good luck with your new adventure.

 

Progressive is not competitive in this industry AT ALL! Call OOIDA

 

OOIDA doesn't do auto cargo coverage. As an auto transporter, they don't go by how long you've driven, they go by how long you've been in business as an auto transporter.

Auto transport insurance is some of the highest insurance out there and it's getting tougher to find underwriters for it.


I love how all of you guys in here who AREN'T in the auto transport business are in here giving advise when you have NO IDEA of what you're talking about. Brian is the only one in here so far that does know how it works for auto transporters.

The minimum you need for most brokers is $100k for a 3 car and it goes up from there. That $250k he's looking at isn't out of line, if he had 5 new F150s, he'd be bumping the $250K limit. I carry $500K for the vehicles I carry.

 

Most of the insurance companies are raising rates, even for those of us with many years experience, good mvr's, no claims and excellent safety records. Cars are high risk for insurers and more companies are moving away from carhaulers. Progressive has always quoted me high rates, sometimes double what others have quoted. I have a good agent who shops my business with several insurance companies. You may check with Northland, Lancer, Sentry and Carolina. Those are some of the larger insurance companies who come to mind. Premiums can vary according to the underwriter who looks at your history. Several years ago I moved my business to a different agent and save over $1,000, but stayed with the same insurance company. Find an agent who will spend the time to shop around for you.

 

Where you live matters for quotes.

Personally cannot wait until Flo is fired, so please do not give them one penny to keep that annoying ***** employed.

Northland in the post above has issues with classic cars, so they are a no go.

Look for a small agent & ask who or what companies they work with specifically for auto transport. If they stall & stutter, it means they have zero experience & keep dialing for another agent.
There are a ton of companies you have never heard of that cover auto transport, but will require an agent who knows this business.

Just out of curiosity, why are you switching to auto transport when your experience is elsewhere?

 

I dumped Northland too, they won't insure older cars, tell me one car hauler that won't haul a classic car of some type????

Try Alexander and Alexander in Kentucky and Peoples Insurance in Iowa, those are the two I work with.