Service
Commercial auto & fleet insurance for mid-market operators.
We read your symbol coverage, hired and non-owned exposure, MVR discipline, telematics, and umbrella attachment against the fleet’s actual operating profile, then shop and place a program across 30+ carriers. Auto is the line where social inflation hits hardest. The program has to back the verdict, not just the certificate.
01Overview
Auto severity is what’s changing.
Frequency on commercial auto has been roughly stable. Severity has not. Nuclear verdicts in heavy-truck venues, plaintiff-friendly reptile-theory tactics, and rising medical specials have reset what a serious bodily injury claim costs. The mid-market response has been to push umbrella limits up, but limit alone doesn’t solve underwriting concerns about driver quality or the kind of routes the fleet runs.
We work the program against the operating profile: who drives, what they drive, where, and under what supervision. That picture is what a carrier underwrites and what a plaintiff’s lawyer cross-examines.
02What we review
Coverage, fleet management, tower.
- Symbol coverage
- ISO symbols 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9 against the actual fleet. Owned, hired, and non-owned exposure each tested against the symbol set on the declarations.
- Hired and non-owned auto
- Employee personal-vehicle use, rental car exposure, and the gap between corporate auto policy and personal auto coverage when business use triggers exclusions.
- MVR programs
- Pre-hire and ongoing motor vehicle record review, written driver qualification standards, and the documentation that defends a negligent-entrustment claim.
- Telematics
- Telematics-linked rating, behavioral data programs, and the discoverability and retention questions that come with the data.
- Umbrella attachment
- The attachment point against auto primary specifically, drop-down where aggregates erode, and consistency with GL and employer’s liability primary.
- Garage liability
- For service operations, dealerships, body shops, towing, and storage: garage liability and garagekeepers, plus the GL exclusions that drive the need.
03Common gaps we find
What underwriters and plaintiff’s counsel both look for.
- No hired/non-owned grant. Field-sales operations with employees in personal cars and no Symbol 8/9 coverage on the auto policy.
- MVR program in name only. A driver handbook that requires MVR review with no documented run schedule, no disqualification standard, and no exception log.
- Umbrella mismatched to auto. A $5M umbrella sitting on a $1M auto primary while a peer fleet in the same venue is now buying $10M based on recent verdict trends.
- Wrong symbol on the dec. Owned-only Symbol 7 with no Symbol 8 or 9, leaving short-term rentals and employee personal use uncovered.
- Cargo and inland marine confusion. Cargo policies that respond only to scheduled goods or that exclude refrigeration breakdown when the fleet runs reefer routes.
- Service operations without garage liability. Auto and GL stacked together with mutual exclusions, leaving care, custody, and control exposure uncovered.
04When this matters
Triggers we hear from fleet operators.
- Auto premium increased materially at renewal and the carrier asked for telematics or driver-quality data.
- The fleet expanded into new states with different venue risk and different DOT requirements.
- A serious bodily injury claim is in litigation and the umbrella tower has not been tested.
- You’re considering shifting from owned to leased, or to a heavy mix of contractor drivers.
- Customers are demanding higher auto liability limits in master service agreements.
05Placement
How we place your coverage.
Vetted Risk is a licensed Massachusetts insurance broker. The analysis, the symbol mapping, and the fleet underwriting strategy sit with us. When you decide to bind or remarket, we take the program to market, shop it across 30+ carriers, and handle submissions, quotes, binding, telematics program enrollment, and policy issuance.
Then we stay on the file. Endorsements, certificates, vehicle adds and deletes, and the next renewal run through the same desk that read the policy in the first place.
06FAQ
Common questions about commercial auto.
- What is hired and non-owned auto, and why does it come up?
- Hired and non-owned auto liability covers the company's exposure when employees use rented vehicles or their personal cars on company business. It is a separate coverage grant from owned auto and has to be specifically scheduled. Companies without an owned fleet often think they have no auto exposure; the first claim involving a sales rep in their own car proves otherwise.
- Which symbols should I be on?
- ISO business auto symbols define which autos the policy covers. Symbol 1 is any auto, the broadest grant. Symbol 7 is specifically described autos. Symbol 8 is hired autos and Symbol 9 is non-owned autos. The combination matters. A fleet on Symbol 7 only is exposed on every short-term rental; a fleet on Symbol 1 has the broadest grant available but pays for it. We map the right symbol set to the actual fleet.
- How does telematics affect rating and claims?
- Most carriers now offer telematics-linked rating that adjusts premium based on actual driving behavior over the policy term. The data also serves a claim purpose: hard-braking events, route reconstruction, and driver identification at the time of loss. The trade is that the data is discoverable in litigation. We help operators decide whether telematics fits their program and structure the data retention policy accordingly.
- What's the right umbrella attachment for a fleet?
- The umbrella sits over the auto liability primary, typically at $1M for fleets up to mid-size and $2M or higher where the fleet, the routes, or the cargo demand it. The mistake we see most is an umbrella whose attachment matches the GL primary at $1M but the auto primary is also $1M, with no buffer for the litigation environment in heavy-truck venues. The attachment has to match the highest-risk underlying line, not the average.
- Do I need garage liability if I service vehicles?
- Garage liability covers operations involving the care, custody, or control of customer vehicles, plus garagekeepers for damage to those vehicles. If your operation services, stores, or transports customer vehicles, the standard auto and GL forms have exclusions that garage liability is designed to fill. The need is binary: if you handle other people's vehicles, you need it.
- How do I run a defensible MVR program?
- Pre-hire MVR review with documented criteria, annual or semi-annual re-runs, written disqualification standards, and a documented exception process when a borderline record is approved by management. Most negligent-entrustment claims turn on whether the employer knew or should have known about a driver record problem and what the policy required.
07Related services
Adjacent reviews.
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Property & Casualty
Property valuation, GL, and excess tower review aligned to your auto and umbrella structure.
Review P&C → -
Workers' Compensation
Class-code accuracy and experience-mod review for fleet-heavy employers with driver class exposure.
Review workers' comp → -
Cyber Liability
Telematics data is operational data. Cyber and privacy exposure scaled to the data the fleet collects.
Review cyber →
08Next step
Send the schedule of vehicles and the loss runs.
One business day response. Independent brokerage. Coverage placed and serviced across 30+ carriers.