Your shop is the shoulder of a live interstate.
Commercial insurance for mobile repair, heavy truck garages and roadside service — garagekeepers, on-hook and in-tow, written for work performed on an open roadway.
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.
What mobile repair and heavy truck service businesses actually need.
Garagekeepers
Customer vehicles in your care, custody and control — the exposure every repair shop and dealership has and most standard policies exclude.
Without it — The customer’s vehicle is in your care the moment you start work on it, wherever that is, and general liability excludes damage to property in your care outright.
Commercial auto
Vehicles the business owns and the people who drive them for work.
Without it — Service trucks are on the road constantly and frequently stopping on shoulders, which is the worst place a vehicle can be.
General liability
Third-party bodily injury and property damage — the line nearly every contract names by default.
Without it — Completed operations matter here — a repair that fails at speed later is your claim, not the driver’s.
Motor truck cargo
The freight itself while you are hauling it. Separate from the liability on the truck.
Without it — On-hook and in-tow coverage, where you recover or move vehicles as part of the service, because the vehicle you are towing is not covered by liability.
Workers compensation
Required in almost every state the moment you have employees. Priced on payroll and class code, which is why the class code is worth arguing about.
Without it — Working beside live traffic is the defining injury exposure in this class, and struck-by claims are catastrophic.
Inland marine & equipment
Tools, equipment and property in transit. It picks up exactly where commercial property stops, which is the moment the item leaves the building.
Without it — Tools, diagnostic equipment and the fit-out of a service truck are worth more than the truck.
Umbrella & excess liability
Extra limit stacked above general liability, auto and employers liability. Usually the cheapest million dollars on the policy.
Without it — Fleet accounts and roadside contracts require limits above primary, and a highway incident exhausts them.
Commercial property
Buildings and contents, valued at what it costs to rebuild today rather than what you paid.
Without it — The shop, the lifts and the parts inventory still need replacing after a loss.
Joe Gorman
Co-Founder | President of Commercial Lines
Has placed hundreds of auto service businesses — repair shops, mobile mechanics, heavy truck garages and the roadside operators most carriers will not look at. Knows which markets take a garage risk, what garagekeepers limit a full lot actually needs, and how to describe a mobile operation so it gets rated as what it is rather than declined on sight.
Five endorsements, and a certificate is none of them.
A certificate is evidence a policy existed the day it was printed — it says so on its own face. The coverage a contract is really asking for lives on the policy as named endorsements, and this is the list they come from.
- Additional insured — ongoing operationsCG 20 10Covers the general contractor for claims arising from your work while the job is in progress.Without it: They fund their own defence on a claim your work caused, then look to you for it.
- Additional insured — completed operationsCG 20 37Extends that cover to claims arising after your work is finished.Without it: The claim arrives years later, when the policy that should have carried it has renewed several times. Cheaper policies often exclude this or do not offer it.
- Primary and non-contributoryCG 20 01Puts your policy first and stops your insurer demanding a contribution from theirs.Without it: Two insurers argue about who pays while the defence waits.
- Waiver of subrogationCG 24 04Stops your insurer recovering from the party you agreed in writing to protect.Without it: Your insurer pays, then sues your customer, which ends the relationship.
- Per-project aggregateCG 25 03Gives each job its own general aggregate instead of sharing one across the year.Without it: Another project’s claims quietly spend the limit that was meant to cover this one.
Tract, condominium and apartment work is the exception that undoes all five — an exclusion for multi-unit residential removes the coverage before any endorsement can apply. What national homebuilders require covers that in full.
A mobile truck repair operation running a fleet of service vehicles, paying what the market had told them the class costs.
They saw around a 50% saving on the fleet policy when they moved to us. Nothing about the risk changed — what changed was how it was presented and which credits were applied. This class is priced badly by default because most submissions do not explain what the operation actually is, and the discounts available to a well-run service fleet are not offered to anyone who does not ask for them.
What mobile repair and heavy truck service operators ask us.
Why is mobile repair harder to place than a shop?
Because the work moves to the roadway. A technician working in a bay is in a controlled environment; the same technician on the shoulder of an interstate at night is exposed to traffic at highway speed, and struck-by injuries are severe when they happen. Carriers that write ordinary auto repair frequently will not write roadside work, and the ones that do want to know how much of your revenue it is.
Do I need garagekeepers if I do not have a shop?
Yes, and this is the most common gap in mobile operations. Garagekeepers covers damage to a customer’s vehicle in your care, custody and control — and it is in your care while you are working on it in their yard, at a truck stop or on a shoulder, exactly as it would be on your lot. General liability excludes it wherever the work happens, so a mobile operator without garagekeepers is uncovered for the most likely claim they have.
What if I also do towing or roadside recovery?
Then you need on-hook and in-tow coverage as well, and it has to be disclosed rather than assumed. The vehicle attached to your truck is not covered by your liability policy, and a repair-written programme usually does not contemplate towing at all. Where roadside assistance is part of the offer, say so at submission — this is a class where discovering it at claim is the bad outcome.
Can this class actually be cheaper than what I am paying?
Frequently, and by more than people expect. Mobile and heavy truck service is priced badly by default because most submissions do not describe the operation properly — the split between shop and roadside, the technician experience, the safety equipment on the service trucks, the fleet controls. Presented properly, with the credits a well-run fleet qualifies for, the difference can be very large. Our largest mobile truck repair client saw about half.