Driver insurance

You are on your own. Literally.

Whatever happens to the truck is company's problem. Whatever happens to YOU will be fixed at the ER or Trauma care at some point given enough time and resources. It will be BILLED TO YOU.

You do however have Workman's Compensation. You let them know what happened on the road with the big truck and how bad you got hurt etc. Then the system will roll on. I have been hurt several times, carted away by ambulance a few. What usually happened was either Maryland's WC people got involved and took care of my losses, hospitals billed me which was covered by my own Blue Cross insurance etc at the time or straight cash payment on demand by the hospital billing office.

One time I got injured on Grand Union Property near Albany because someone failed to mop up water. They not only made my hospital bill go away but paid me a small sum for my trouble in addition to unloading those eggs. That took a little bit of time to resolve. But earned my loyalty to keep delivering eggs to there.

There is a 1986 law, which still stands today. Anyone presented to a ER or Trauma must receive sufficient care to be made stable. Whatever that care may be. If I were you, I will carry medical insurance for yourself. A heart attack workup starts at 25 grand, a head scan in a MRI machine exceeds 15000 dollars to start and so on. A week in trauma will run you about 100,000 for the works such as hyperbaric as happened to a friend when another knifed him. Missed killing him by about a quarter inch. But they fixed it.

Never mind the #### truck, be prepared to answer the first question dispatch will demand of you, what happened to the *&^% truck. Not you personally. You don't really matter.

 

Are you employed? Working under a W-2? You should be covered under workers comp.

 

I'm assuming this must be a 1099 operation where you would be a "contractor driver" [as opposed to an employee paid on a W-2]. At least that what it sounds like based on what is being relayed to us here. I'd steer clear.

 

Indeedy. I would also steer clear. If you own that tractor and you break it, it's all yours. My first post is strictly a employee or company driver point of view. I actually once bought a tractor myself and one of my problems was securing some kind of insurance enough to defend the truck against problems and a second insurance for medical for myself at that time. Plus insurance for the freight (Which was handled by the facility which was engaged in a business of building owner operators out of company drivers via which we were engaged in buying a truck at all in the beginning.) Sometimes those things don't work out well, I don't stress about it because if one door is kept shut, another opens.

 

I myself have never seen any trucking company cover anything that happens to a driver or you personally. The future pay is lost should that driver be too hurt to work a while. If that driver had sufficient injury to be disabled then the application process for SSdI will be started. It will be about a year prior to approval.

Companies are in the business of trucking for profit, to make money. If a employee is willingly engaged in such work for wages, with all the risk, danger and so on then there is no problem. This is not a slavery economy nor is it a indentured service economy. Employment is at will. If the driver is overcome by the say the vastness of Nevada's empty spaces and cannot handle it, that driver will not be in employment there that long.

You cannot run a company that also runs a nursery for injured drivers. It is on them individually to do the best they can if they get hurt. Sometimes they get hurt bad enough to be either DOA or dead shortly after. You wont find companies spending 10K on burial. Those days have passed since prior to world war two.

Sometimes a person ends up in a medical facility and is deemed unfit and or unable to live independantly if they are hurt bad enough in any of a thousand ways. They are shipped to a nursing home or assisted living at thier own expense. The Law requires in our Country to care for those who cannot care for themselves. The employer will be engaged in hiring a replacement driver and that will be the extent of the costs and trouble they will go to. And a new truck if necessary. The new truck will go to the senior hand within the driver pool and the oldest will be given to the new hire. And that will be the end of it.

Im not certain, but I might be thinking you are somewhat insecure. Life can be very small for those who lived sheltered lives in a single room or a house never doing anything. Or... it can be very big for those like me who has been all over the United States and have difficulty living in a small space because of it. What a country, good and bad things all together. I have been so lucky in this life. But at the same time... death reached out for me and mine as well as total strangers who got in the way of my rig. That is where it's time to save lives, either myself, my wife or the stranger. That happened a number of times. I have said in the past in trucking or my future out of trucking I will be killed by something I don't see coming. Everything else will become a workaround and a story to tell. Like that one evening in Fort Collins meat plant where Im almost crushed by my own freaking trailer at the wash bay there.

You cannot wake up each day in fear of death, injury or worry about the particulars of such. You will be getting up bright eyed, bushy tailed and able to work whatever that day demands of your labor so you can later on rest at home and enjoy the food and fruits of your labor as prescribed in the good book. I hope that you save some of your wages, pay your insurance and do the best you can in that work so that you and no one else will get hurt, killed or worse.

A accident that results in injury death or something else is not the end of it. If you were doing illegal hours running no logs etc when someone or yourself got hurt bad or killed, then the courts will step in and determine your future, if you have one or not. You wont have anything to say about it. That will be a bad day all around. The company would be there with their own lawyers to protect their interest in the equiptment and thier own insurance if necessary, but not there for YOU. You are replacable.

Trucking is a powerful thing in life the Nation depends on it for it's daily bread. A certain percentage will get hurt or killed over time. If you are of strong courage and have the skills and fast thinking to do this without doing any harm or having it come to you then you must count yourself very happy indeed. Not fearful that something will happen tonight before morning and there you are too smashed up to work or dead.

I used many words. But you do yourself the best you can with insurance and whatever else you feel you need before something does happen. Then after the fact you are on your own. The company will have their own set of issues, You are not part of that unless you did nothing wrong and you are wanted to return to work. For example, I had a appendix taken out, but before that event I was up in Danbury Ct at the rest area there sick as a dog for two days and nights while the reefer cheerfully hummed consuming the precious 30 gallon tank back there on a load. My boss had about 9 state polices looking for my rig. They did not look particularly hard. After surgery, doc told me 6 weeks stay home. I was back to hunts point lumping in three weeks in the same truck. That worked out pretty well.