Why am I being quoted as long haul when I only run 25 miles?
Because with new authority there is nothing to rate you on except the class, and many carriers default a first-year operation to a long-radius assumption. You get priced as though you run five hundred miles even where your longest trip is twenty-five, and the fix is evidence rather than argument.
Tell us the situation.
A licensed human replies the same business day — not an auto-responder, and not five producers calling at once. We shop it across our carriers and tell you if the policy you already have is the right one.
We use this to quote and service your insurance, and we do not sell it or pass it to lead networks. Privacy policy.
The detail
Radius of operation is among the largest rating factors in commercial trucking, and carriers apply class assumptions where a carrier has no operating history of its own.
Commercial trucking underwriting practice
What this means for you
- State your radius explicitly and be able to show it. Customer addresses, delivery logs, telematics and the lanes on your rate confirmations are all evidence, and a submission carrying them is a different submission.
- Where the work is genuinely intrastate, say so. Purely intrastate operations are regulated by the state rather than federally, and being described as an interstate long-haul carrier when you are not is both wrong and expensive.
- Electronic logging data is the strongest proof available to a new venture. It is one of the few things that substitutes for a loss history in a first year.
- Expect a material correction at first renewal, and make sure it happens. Twelve months of clean data at your real radius is the largest single price movement available to a new authority, and it does not happen by itself if nobody presents it.
- Not every carrier applies the same default, which is why a market that specialises in short-radius work is worth finding rather than taking the first quote.
Related questions
- Is the long-haul default unfair?
- It is rational and frequently wrong in the individual case, which is not the same thing. An underwriter with no history is pricing uncertainty, and the class average for new authorities contains a lot of long-haul operations. What is unreasonable is leaving it there once you can demonstrate otherwise, and that part is an agent problem rather than an underwriter one.
- How quickly can it come down?
- Usually at first renewal with a clean year behind you, and sometimes mid-term where the evidence is strong. Worth asking rather than waiting, because a policy rated on an assumption nobody revisits stays rated on it.
- Does the same thing happen with my commodities?
- Yes, identically. A new authority that has not stated its commodities precisely gets the broadest assumption, and broad assumptions in trucking are expensive. Being specific about what you actually haul is worth real money in year one.
Need this handled?
We do the filings, and we place the accounts other brokers decline — lapsed authority, claims history, new ventures. Tell us the situation and a licensed human replies the same business day.