Auto Insurance for Commercial Vehicles

If you drive a trailer to transport business equipment, use your vehicle to drive employees to job sites, or have a designated business vehicle, you probably need to buy commercial auto insurance.

While your personal auto insurance covers your vehicles when used for personal purposes, this coverage usually won’t extend to commercial vehicles or vehicles that are being used for business purposes. As a result, it’s important to protect your business vehicles with a commercial insurance policy.

What is Commercial Auto Insurance?

Commercial auto insurance is designed to help protect you, your employees, and your vehicles if you’re ever in an accident while driving your vehicle for business use. This commercial insurance applies to anything from a single work truck to a whole fleet of commercial vehicles.

What does commercial auto insurance cover?

Insurance for commercial vehicles typically consists of several coverage types:

Liability coverage helps to pay for any property damage, like damage to another car, or bodily damage, such as medical bills, resulting from an accident that you or an employee cause while driving a company car.
Collision coverage helps to cover the cost of any repairs your company vehicle needs after a covered accident.
Comprehensive coverage helps to pay for any damage to your vehicle caused by an event other than an accident, like storm damage.
Uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage helps to cover expenses, like medical bills and repair costs, if you or an employee are hit by a driver who doesn’t have insurance or whose insurance limits don’t cover the full expense cost.
Rental car coverage can help to keep your business mobile if your vehicle needs to be repaired after a covered claim.

Who needs insurance for a commercial vehicle?

By law, you need to buy auto insurance for commercial vehicles that are titled to your business. For example, if your landscape business owns a truck and trailer, those vehicles need to be commercially insured.

But you may also need commercial insurance for a vehicle that you only occasionally drive for business purposes. If you use your personal car to perform business deliveries, your personal car insurance probably won’t cover an accident that occurs while you’re driving the vehicle for business purposes. You’ll need commercial insurance for that car.

How much does commercial auto insurance cost?

The cost of your commercial auto insurance will depend on your vehicle’s value, insurance history, number of cars you have, and how you use them. You can keep your insurance costs down by choosing a policy with a higher deductible or by choosing lower coverage levels, which will keep your monthly premiums down.

Every insurance company calculates their premiums differently, so finding affordable commercial auto insurance starts with getting and comparing commercial auto insurance quotes.

Paige Cerulli Paige Cerulli is a freelance content writer and journalist who specializes in personal finance topics. She graduated from Westfield State University and brings more than a decade of professional writing experience to the ConsumerCoverage team. Paige’s work has appeared in outlets including USA Today, Business Insider, and more.