The chassis is not yours, and that is the whole insurance problem.
Insurance for motor carriers pulling containers under the UIIA — why intermodal narrows the market before anything else about you is read, and which coverages the interchange agreement is actually asking for.
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What UIIA and intermodal cover businesses actually need.
Trailer interchange
Damage to a trailer you are pulling but do not own, while it is in your possession under a written interchange agreement. Your own physical damage cover follows equipment you own, so an interchanged trailer is unprotected without it.
Without it — The chassis belongs to the equipment provider, and damage to it is what the interchange agreement exists around.
Commercial auto
Vehicles the business owns and the people who drive them for work.
Without it — Auto liability at the limit the agreement specifies, with the filing that keeps your authority live.
Motor truck cargo
The freight itself while you are hauling it. Separate from the liability on the truck.
Without it — A sealed container you never loaded is still your cargo exposure while it is on your chassis.
Truckers general liability
General liability written for a motor carrier — the yard, the dock, loading and customer premises. The auto policy answers for the vehicle; this answers for everything else.
Without it — Terminals, ramps and yards are premises exposures the auto policy does not reach.
Auto physical damage
Damage to your own tractor and trailer. Primary liability pays for what you do to everyone else and nothing for your equipment, so without this a rollover you caused leaves you paying off a truck you can no longer run.
Without it — Your own tractor, which nothing in the interchange agreement covers.
What our UIIA and intermodal cover clients ask us.
Which markets are comfortable with intermodal at all?
It divides them sharply, which is why the question is worth asking before you submit rather than after. Nirvana permits intermodal and UIIA work as ordinary business, which is unusual for a program built on telematics. Berkshire Hathaway Homestate names intermodal container hauling in its appetite. Canal writes it, including for new ventures in a specific handful of states with conditions on equipment age and radius. Progressive excludes intermodal and UIIA outright. Others simply do not say, which in practice means asking. The split is not about your record — it is about pulling equipment you did not maintain, loaded by somebody else, at a weight you are taking on trust.
What is the UIIA, in plain terms?
The Uniform Intermodal Interchange and Facilities Access Agreement — the standard contract between motor carriers and the ocean carriers, railroads and leasing companies that own containers and chassis. Signing it is what lets you pull their equipment, and it carries insurance requirements the equipment providers enforce before you can interchange. It is a contract requirement rather than a regulation, which is why it can ask for more than the federal filing does.
What limits does it require?
The agreement sets them, and it revises them, so the only safe answer is the current schedule rather than a number on a broker’s website — which is why there is not one on this page. Send us the requirement you have been given and your current declarations page and we will tell you plainly whether what you hold satisfies it. The coverage that most often falls short is trailer interchange, because it is the one an ordinary trucking policy is least likely to carry at the limit an equipment provider wants.
Why do carriers get funny about intermodal?
Because it changes the risk in ways that are invisible on an application. You are pulling equipment you did not maintain, loaded by somebody else, sealed, at a weight you are taking on trust — and ports and ramps concentrate a lot of low-speed damage. So intermodal narrows the market before anything about your driving record is read. Some carriers exclude it outright, Progressive among them. Others permit it as ordinary business, which Nirvana does. And Canal will write it for a new venture in a specific handful of states, with conditions on equipment age and radius.
Can I get UIIA cover as a new authority?
It is one of the harder combinations, and there is a real door. Canal writes new-venture intermodal in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington, on units from model year 1997 onward, inside a three-hundred-mile radius, with the owner driving while the authority is under two years old. Outside that list a first-year intermodal operator is a genuinely difficult placement, and worth starting early rather than in the week the interchange is due.
Commercial insurance is 96% of what we do — it is not a department here, it is the whole business. Not ready to talk? The guides answer the questions this page raises in more depth. Already insured with us and need a certificate or a policy change? Ask the service team rather than starting a quote — it is faster and it goes to the people whose job it is. We also write home and auto, which is usually cheaper alongside the business policy than apart from it.