When the insurance renewal comes in higher than last year, most small carriers respond the same way: shop it, push back on the broker, maybe raise the deductible to get the premium down. That has been the playbook for a decade. It is increasingly not working — because the problem is not your specific loss history. It is the industry-wide loss environment that your insurance company is pricing you into regardless of how you operate.
Commercial auto liability insurance has been unprofitable for insurers for 14 consecutive years according to Reliance Partners EVP Jackson Alexander. That is not a down cycle. That is a structural reality that has produced consistent, sustained premium increases across the entire market, for carriers who have had zero claims as well as carriers who have had several. The math for insurance companies does not work anymore at historical premium levels, and they are correcting that through premium increases, underwriting restrictions, and in some cases, exiting the trucking market entirely.
The American Transportation Research Institute’s 2025 Operational Costs of Trucking report put insurance cost at a record $0.102 per mile in 2024 — a number that followed a 12.5% spike in 2023 and an additional 3% increase in 2024. For a truck running 120,000 miles per year, that is $12,240 in annual insurance cost per truck. Five trucks. Sixty thousand dollars per year in insurance before a single claim is filed. And the trend line points higher.
What Is Actually Driving the Increases
The nuclear verdict numbers are the headline, but understanding what is behind them matters for how you respond operationally.
In 2024, there were 135 nuclear verdicts against corporations exceeding $10 million — a 52% increase over 2023 — totaling $31.3 billion, a 116% increase from the prior year according to Marathon Strategies. The median nuclear verdict climbed to $51 million, up from $44 million in 2023. Trucking is one of the hardest-hit industries in that data set. A St. Louis jury in 2024 delivered a $462 million verdict in a trucking accident case. A Florida case produced a $125 million verdict against a small carrier — with no fatalities.
These verdicts do not come from accidents alone. They come from the combination of accidents and the litigation strategy that plaintiff attorneys have refined specifically for trucking cases. That strategy works in three phases: establishing that the carrier violated a regulation — any regulation, even a minor one — presenting that violation as evidence of systemic disregard for safety, and then framing the damage award as a punishment the jury needs to deliver to change industry behavior. Anti-trucking messaging in media and entertainment has built the context that makes juries receptive to that framing. As Lockton’s Matthew Payne noted, “Even if you’re operating perfectly, you’re going to have increasing insurance rates. It’s punishing everybody because the insurance carriers spread the risk across all their insureds.“
The excess and surplus lines market — where carriers go when they cannot get coverage in the standard market — has contracted sharply. TrueNorth’s Dan Cook reports carriers “offering $1 million primary limits after giving as much as $10 million eight to nine years ago.” Some fleets are discovering they cannot get coverage at any price. That is not a negotiation outcome. It is a market exit.
What Underwriters Are Looking For Right Now
The underwriting criteria for preferred market access have tightened to the point where missing any one element can disqualify a carrier from competitive quoting. Jackson Alexander of Reliance Partners was specific: carriers must have profitable loss history, a preferred driver pool, good CSA scores, quality safety practices in place, and documented use of technology. “Even not hitting one of these marks could completely rule a motor carrier out from being able to get a quote from a preferred market.”
That last item — technology — has moved from a differentiator to a table stake in a remarkably short period. Insurers who historically never factored telematics into underwriting are now offering discounts for carriers who share telematics data and install cameras. More importantly, insurers who have been in the trucking space for the past 18 months have begun mandating cameras and collision avoidance systems as a condition of coverage. “Fleets that are refusing to do this cannot receive insurance quotes from many insurance companies,” Alexander said.
For a small carrier trying to manage costs, the calculus on camera systems has changed. A forward-facing and driver-facing camera system that costs $800 to $1,500 per truck to install now provides something more valuable than footage — it provides underwriting access. Carriers with documented camera programs and telematics data are getting into preferred market tiers that carriers without them cannot access. The premium differential between those tiers, at current rates, exceeds the cost of the camera system within months.
CSA scores matter more than they ever have. A carrier with poor BASIC scores is not just a safety concern — they are an underwriting liability. Insurers are using CSA data directly in their pricing models. A carrier who has let their vehicle maintenance BASIC or hours-of-service BASIC deteriorate is paying for that in premium dollars, not just in inspection risk. Cleaning up a CSA score takes time — it requires resolved violations and clean inspection records accumulating over 24 months. The carriers who are proactively managing their scores now will have underwriting leverage at their next renewal. The ones who are not will be explaining their scores to every underwriter they approach.
The Claims Response That Many Small Carriers Get Wrong
How a carrier responds in the first 24 hours after an accident has more influence on the eventual claim outcome than almost any other factor in the litigation process. Most small carriers do not have a protocol for those 24 hours. That absence is expensive.
The documentation that protects a carrier in court — dashcam footage, driver logs, pre-trip inspection records, maintenance records, drug and alcohol test results — must be preserved immediately after an accident. Footage that is overwritten, records that are not pulled, or documentation that is incomplete before litigation begins becomes a gap that plaintiff attorneys use to establish systemic failures. A gap in the documentation is not neutral evidence. It is used as affirmative evidence of the failure the plaintiff is alleging.
Rapid claims reporting to your insurer matters. The earlier your insurance company is engaged, the earlier their claims investigation team can be deployed. Evidence secured in the first 24 hours is qualitatively different from evidence reconstructed two weeks later. Carriers who report immediately and cooperate fully with their insurer’s investigation are in a materially better claims position than carriers who wait, delay, or attempt to manage the situation independently before involving their insurance company.
The simplest claims strategy, as TrueNorth’s Dan Cook summarized, is not to have the claim in the first place. But when accidents happen — and in trucking, they will — the response protocol determines whether the claim settles reasonably or becomes the kind of nuclear verdict that ends the operation.
The Non-Obvious Coverages Small Carriers Are Missing
Most small carriers are adequately covered for the obvious risks — primary liability, physical damage, cargo. The coverages that produce expensive surprises tend to be the ones that were either never purchased or were minimized at renewal to keep the premium down.
Excess or umbrella liability above your primary limits is the most consequential gap. At a time when the median nuclear verdict is $51 million, a primary liability policy at the FMCSA minimum of $750,000 is not protection — it is a starting point for a conversation that ends in the carrier’s personal assets. Small carriers who are running on minimum limits are making a calculation that a catastrophic accident will not happen to them. They are not wrong about the probability. They are wrong about the consequence if they are.
Cyber liability coverage is becoming relevant for carriers as dispatch and load management move to digital platforms. A carrier whose dispatch system is compromised, whose load data is stolen, or whose bank accounts are accessed through a logistics platform vulnerability has a loss that standard commercial policies do not cover. The freight industry has been specifically targeted by fraud and cyber operations for the past three years, and the exposure is not limited to large carriers with sophisticated IT infrastructure.
Pollution liability for carriers hauling certain cargo categories — agricultural chemicals, industrial materials, fuel — can produce claim exposures that standard cargo policies exclude. Carriers who have not reviewed their exclusions specifically against the freight they are hauling may discover those exclusions at exactly the moment they need coverage most.
Commonly Asked Questions
Q: My CSA scores are not great. What is the fastest way to improve them for my next insurance renewal?
There is no fast way — CSA scores are calculated on a rolling 24-month window, which means old violations continue to count until they age out. What you can do immediately is stop adding new violations. A clean roadside inspection record going forward starts reducing your score as older violations age off. Request a DataQ challenge on any violations you believe were cited incorrectly — successfully challenged violations are removed from your record. And have a direct conversation with your insurance broker about your score trajectory, not just your current score. A carrier who can show their score is improving has more underwriting leverage than one who cannot explain the direction of their record.
Q: Is a dashcam system worth it if my trucks are already insured?
The premium discount available to carriers with documented camera programs in preferred markets currently ranges from 5% to 15% depending on the insurer and the program. On a $60,000 annual insurance spend for say a five-truck fleet, a 10% discount is $6,000 per year. A basic forward and driver-facing camera system for five trucks costs $5,000 to $7,500 installed. The ROI is within 12 months in premium savings alone, before accounting for the claims mitigation value — documented footage that exonerates your driver in a disputed liability claim is worth far more than the camera system cost.
Q: What do I actually say to my broker when I want to push back on a premium increase?
Come with data, not emotion. Pull your loss run for the past five years and calculate your actual loss ratio — what your insurer paid in claims divided by what you paid in premiums. If your loss ratio is below 60%, you are a profitable account for your insurer and have leverage to negotiate. Present your safety program documentation: driver hiring standards, MVR review process, pre-trip inspection records, maintenance records. Present your CSA BASIC scores and their trend. The carriers who get better renewal outcomes are the ones who arrive at the conversation as a prepared business partner, not the ones who arrive shocked by the number and asking for a discount.
The post Your Insurance Renewal Is Going to Be Worse Than Last Year. Here Is Why — and What You Can Actually Do About It. appeared first on FreightWaves.
