If you took the advice in my last story and read your insurance policy or policies, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you discovered that something (a peril, cargo commodity, operation type or location, etc.) that you need coverage for is left out. It’s actually not that uncommon.
Thankfully, there’s almost always a solution, and frequently it is fairly simple to get the necessary coverage added to the existing policy.
Other times, however, because of the uniqueness of what coverage is missing, we may need to consider other insurance options that are available.
The most common missing coverages are somewhat obvious. In fact, most all of us are familiar with them -- situations where you’ve bought/sold a truck or trailer, hired/fired a driver, or moved to a new address. Adding or removing equipment and adding or removing a driver is as simple as notifying your insurance agent. Most agencies, including mine, will require some type of documentation from the insured requesting the change. Typically, the only challenge here is when the insured wants to add more trucks or drivers than the insurance policy will allow for.
From time to time one of my new insureds, with less than one year in business, will buy a truck or two to grow their company. They will call me up and ask to add the new truck(s) to their existing policy, but in some cases they’ve forgotten that their policy does not allow them to exceed one truck within the first two years of business.
That leaves them with a difficult choice to make. I can either get them a policy from another insurance company, which will all but certainly have a much higher premium, or they need to sell the extra truck(s) so they are not in violation of failing to schedule all owned and/or operated commercial vehicles on their policy.
[Related: Why every truck owner should read their insurance policies]
