Motor Fleet Insurance for Australian Fleet Operators

Truck insurance normally refers to cover arranged for individual trucks, often alongside liability in a transport package, which is where most one-person operations with a prime mover and a trailer sit.

Motor fleet insurance covers a schedule of vehicles under a single policy. As a fleet grows, moving from individual policies to a fleet schedule usually becomes the more workable arrangement, though there is no fixed point where that has to happen.

For light vehicle motor fleets, insurers commonly use around sixteen units as the point where a fleet arrangement is available.

For transport fleets the practical starting point tends to be closer to ten items, but there is no clean number and it depends on the insurer, the mix of equipment and how the business runs.

Smaller operators are often better served by a transport package until the schedule grows.

Heavy motor is the insurance industry's term for cover on heavy commercial vehicles: prime movers, rigids, trailers and the equipment towed behind them, as opposed to light commercial vehicles. A heavy motor schedule with enough units on it is what most operators mean when they ask about transport fleet insurance.

The starting point is the asset register and the total sum insured, and whether cover is on an agreed or market value basis.

From there: what the fleet carries, the age and maintenance of the equipment, where it is garaged and how secure the yard is, the operating area and radius, and your claims history.

The credibility of the director and the business over time also carries real weight. How many powered units you run matters more than the total item count, because that is what is actually on the road.

It depends entirely on the shape of the claims.

If the pattern is lots of small losses, around eight or twelve thousand each, the fleet can often be re-quoted with a higher excess of ten or twenty thousand.

That takes those claims out of the insurer's layer and brings the premium down. If the pattern is two or three total losses or rollovers, a higher excess will not fix it.

That needs investigation into the cause, controls put in place, and evidence of the fix presented to the underwriter. Cheapest is rarely a product question and usually a risk question.

Where an agreed value can be determined and supported by a valuation, it is generally the recommendation, because most owners want a settlement that reflects what they believe the truck is worth rather than what a market assessment concludes after the fact.

It does require the valuation work to be done properly, and recent movement in the economy has made the gap between the two wider than it used to be.

Some fleet policies carry automatic cover for newly acquired equipment for thirty or sixty days, but it depends on the wording and it is not universal.

Outside that window an unlisted item may not be covered at all. A total loss on an unlisted prime mover and trailer can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the argument that follows means proving the purchase date and the value from your own records. Telling your broker at the time of purchase is the whole fix.

In most cases yes. Transport fleets commonly carry a few light vehicles, a forklift or a piece of plant alongside the trucks and trailers, and that mix is normal. The ratio generally needs to stay predominantly transport for it to be written as a transport fleet rather than a commercial motor fleet.

Yes, and it is one of the areas most often left loose. Obligations tend to cascade: your T1 or T2 client contracts impose terms on you, and yours should impose equivalent terms on your subcontractors. Written subcontractor agreements are strongly preferred over handshake arrangements, which remain common in transport and leave the obligation sitting with whoever cannot prove otherwise.

Typically: what you transport and what work you do, your equipment count and powered unit count with types and values, estimated turnover now and over the past five years, employee numbers now and over the same period, contracts and tenders in place or coming, depots and who holds chain of responsibility, your safety systems, driver onboarding and offboarding, where maintenance is done, and your claims history.

Your largest single revenue project and your subcontractor arrangements matter too.

On a fleet of forty to fifty items, around twelve weeks before expiry, with your information back to the broker between eight and six weeks out. That is what creates enough runway to properly approach the market rather than accept the first terms available.