What is livery insurance?

What this means for you

• Livery is defined by the fee and the dispatch, not by the vehicle. A black sedan driven by its owner to the store is a personal car. The same sedan carrying a paying passenger to the airport under the owner’s business name is livery. The vehicle did not change; the use did, and the personal policy is written for the first use and excludes the second.
• The personal policy excludes it by name. The standard personal auto form does not provide liability coverage while the vehicle is being used as a public or livery conveyance, and most forms extend the same exclusion to physical damage. The carrier does not have to know about the business for the exclusion to work. It reads the facts at the claim, and a booking record is a fact.
• Taxi is livery with its own rules. Federal law carves a taxicab seating fewer than seven passengers off a regular route out of the passenger carrier rule, and cities and counties regulate taxis under their own ordinances. A taxi is insured on a commercial auto policy too, filed with whoever licenses it, and the specialty carriers that write limousines write taxi fleets alongside them.
• Rideshare is a different market with a different clock. An app-based driver is covered in periods, by the platform’s policy while matched or carrying a rider and by a thinner layer while the app is on and waiting, with the driver’s own policy or a rideshare endorsement underneath. California’s order lists a separate schedule for transportation network company vehicles, at $1,000,000 for injury and property damage. The specialty passenger carriers that write livery do not write app-based rideshare, and a livery policy does not cover a driver who also logs on to an app unless it says so.
• The seat count sets the limit, whatever you call the vehicle. Under the federal rule a vehicle seating sixteen or more including the driver is a $5,000,000 vehicle and one seating fifteen or fewer is $1,500,000. California adds a $750,000 tier at eight seats or fewer. A stretch sedan, a sprinter and a party bus are all livery, and they file at three different numbers.
• A livery policy is more than the auto policy. The auto policy answers for the vehicle in motion. The rest of the operation, the passenger hurt on the curb, the allegation against a chauffeur, the drink served in the back, the chauffeur hurt lifting a bag, sits on general liability, abuse and molestation, liquor liability and workers compensation. Livery insurance in practice is that set, filed and certificated together.

Related questions

Is limo insurance the same as livery insurance?

Limo insurance is livery insurance for one kind of vehicle. Livery is the category, and it also takes in chauffeured sedans, party buses, shuttles and taxis, each filed at the limit its seat count sets.

Limousine service insurance

Can I add a livery endorsement to my personal auto policy?

Not for a business that dispatches vehicles for hire. Some personal carriers offer a rideshare endorsement that closes the gap while an app is on and unmatched, and that is as far as personal forms go. A limousine, a black car service or a party bus needs a commercial auto policy written for livery and filed with the regulator that permits it.

Black car and chauffeur service insurance

Does livery insurance cover a party bus?

A party bus is livery, and it is filed at the top band because it seats sixteen or more. What a plain livery policy does not automatically include is the liquor liability that alcohol on board creates, which has to be added and disclosed.

Party bus insurance

Is a charter coach livery?

Yes, at the top of the class. A motorcoach is a for-hire passenger vehicle at the $5,000,000 band, with the MCS-90B endorsement and the contracts that come with school and tour work.

Charter bus and motorcoach insurance

Who writes livery insurance?

A short list of specialty passenger carriers, the same list for the whole public auto class. None of them writes app-based rideshare, and a general commercial auto carrier that declined a livery account was rarely the right market for it.

The public auto market, and who writes what