There’s a new bill going through the House that would increase the minimum required insurance for trucking companies. The bill, called The Safe and Fair Environment of Highways Achieved through Underwriting Levels Act (SAFE-HAUL) stands to increase the current minimum from $750,000 to $4,422,000, an increase of almost 600%.

The increased mandatory coverage would mean owner operators would see a huge increase in their minimum insurance coverage and therefore also their costs.





The bill has been introduced in response to a recent study by the Trucking Alliance which states that almost half of the settlements paid on accidents by carriers between 2005 and 2011 exceeded the $750,000 minimum. The Trucking Alliance consists of seven large truck companies including Schneider, J.B. Hunt, Knight Transportation, Maverick Transportation, Boyle Transportation, Fikes Truck Line, and Dupre Logistics.

This claim is in stark contrast to numbers given by both OOIDA and the ATA who say that only 1 to 2 percent of crashes involving commercial trucks will see a claim above the $750,000 minimum. When asked to weigh in on the bill, OOIDA executive vice president Todd Spencer said that, “All the Alliance will succeed in doing is increase costs for their competition in trucking and chum the water for personal injury lawyers.”

ATA spokesperson Sean McNally also stated that The Alliance is only recommending the limit increase “in satisfaction of some unstated goal” and that the FMCSA has “consistently found over the same time period examined by the Trucking Alliance that the average cost of a crash involving a large truck is less than a third of the minimum limit required today.”

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Source: overdrive