Owner Operator Insurance after 1 year

You need a good agent that deals a lot with trucks and build a good relationship with them, they can make or break you and will check out rates from all companies they have available to them every year if needed to get your rates down after that first year, actually even for the first year, an agent has access to several companies depending on what state you are in.

 

OOIDA told me no until after 4-5 years. I just finished my first year.

 

Ooo that's odd! I literally got my quote from them today

 

That was last year when I first started. Maybe they've changed since then. I'll ask again.

 

My insurance for this first year as an independent was hell. Progressive quoted me at 160k a year and I had already been carrying bobtail through them for 4 years prior. (Yes clean mvr on myself and my drivers and no accidents or claims) I was a leased mini fleet, (just 4 trucks) have 3 trucks licensed and insured (a 4th in the garage because I cant afford any more insurance or find enough drivers) with 5 trailers and had already been running under lease for 4 years...but when I established my own authority I got the run around and my rates went up dramatically. Before I went independent I was only paying 2k per month..now the monthly is $6800.00 and it was 14k down. I am really hoping for a break on year two, because the last 10 months have been a real uphill climb. Especially where progressive is concerned..it seems like they tried to price me out of business before I even started. I had to go with National Indemnity..my agent told me no one else would accept me with multiple trucks... I am in Missouri if that makes a difference.

 

It has been several years, but the deal with my insurance was I could not put another truck on for a year when I first got my authority. I actually did after 9 months or so and just got a waiver from them.
At the time I got mine, I moved the garage address from Texas to NM and got insurance for half of what it was going to cost me based out of Tx.

 

I already had drivers and the trucks. I couldn't fire them and tell them see you next year....? I was basically running them under someone else's authority and they were taking a percentage of the total gross. The guy ended up writing me some bad checks and I had no choice but to move on. I think last year during the "boom" would have been a better time to have been a new authority. It's been a good change over all...just the penalties for "starting fresh" seem steep. I'm only running half the trucks consistently..2 on the road, 1 downtime spare..and 1 in "hiding" off road until I can add it back on. I'm not netting as much this year because I'm down a truck and 2 drivers..but managing about 80% of what we ran with 3/1 spare truck(s) last year. The margins are tighter because some costs have gone up..and the rates have fallen on some of our back hauls. I can understand why a lot of the new start ups don't make it through year 1. If I didn't have a consistent load out contract and was trying to load board all of the work...we would have shut down after a few months of getting the new authority. On a brighter note.. we just passed our first audit with no violations or issues. Kinda jumped off the insurance topic, but if I could cut that insurance rate down, things would be a little easier to manage.

 

I kept my insurance and old authority active for several years by keeping one truck insured as light as was legal, without running a load at all with it. After 5 years they rendered my authority inactive because I kept reporting 0 miles, should have just paid for some miles ' lol'
I had an aAlaska only authority during that time with 2 trucks on oi, and every other year they would screw it up and change it to interstate, we would go through the hassle oif changeing it back when the feds called for an audit, and required some stuff I couldn't even get, finally with the states help, got it straightened out to where it would never happen again. A few months later at an inspection, I do not have any authority at all. lol
I called and talked to the same gal, right from the scale house and explained to her, that now they are going to take me to jail on account of her help. lol

She said your hauling logs, they can't you don't even need authority, which I already knew, but wanted her to fix it. lol I don't think they ever got it fixed, but the work I do with my other truck, it has to be leased out and they have cheap insurance anyway, since I will only be running another year or two, I think I will just let it stay like it is. lol My insurance did go back down 3 grand this year on the log truck, which I am not even using at all anyway.

 

Ooida is not accepted by alot of brokers I work with . I was with Progressive for 2 yrs and price was decreasing , year 3 it went up so I dropped them . I went with a different company that was about a grand cheaper , earlier last month it dropped another hundred.