Commercial Auto Insurance in Pennsylvania and New Jersey

Are you carrying the right insurance coverage for vehicles that are owned by your business? As either essential aspects of your service or a best practice for simplifying administrative tasks, owning company cars, trucks, or vans comes with risks. Manage your risks with commercial auto coverage for your business in Pennsylvania or New Jersey.

Commercial Vehicle Insurance is Required in PA

Commercial auto insurance, also called business auto insurance and commercial vehicle insurance, is tailored to the specific needs of businesses that own vehicles. Businesses own vehicles for various reasons. Transportation may be a key service the business offers. This would include taxi and limousine services, delivery services, and mobile providers. Other businesses provide vehicles for employees to use during the work day so that they can manage the costs and bookkeeping.

No matter how your company uses its vehicles, you are required to carry commercial auto insurance in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Both PA and NJ have minimum insurance requirements of:

Commercial insurance protects your employees who drive company-owned vehicles, other people and property when an accident occurs, and your business by paying claims when there is an accident.

The minimum legal requirements are typically insufficient for your real world risks. Consider the cost of your vehicle, the value of any inventory kept in it, and how frequently someone is driving it. Add to that the average cost of a modern car, and the fact that the other person involved in an accident may be more likely to sue a business than an individual, and you should be looking at far higher levels of coverage.

The cost and coverage options for your commercial vehicle insurance policy will depend on your business, the number and type of vehicles, the distance they are typically driven, your employee driving records, and the risk level of your business location. An experienced agent will ask many questions to get a sense of what you need in your coverage and what kind of deductible you’re comfortable with for the coverage you need.

Do you own vehicles through your business?

There are two big mistakes small business owners make when it comes to having a car for their business:

Your business vehicle needs to be for the purposes of running your business. If you or your employees use personal vehicles for the business, work with your commercial insurance agent to make sure you have an insurance policy that covers everyone appropriately. If you have employees who use personal or rented vehicles for work, you may need to add a Drive Other Car endorsement to your commercial auto policy to cover their work-related driving. The best thing to do is consult an experienced insurance agent who can advise you best.

If you are insuring your own personal vehicle through your business, you will not be covered for incidents that happen outside of work hours. Just as personal auto insurance doesn’t cover an accident that happens while the vehicle is being used for work purposes, commercial auto insurance doesn’t cover an accident during personal time. You might need to carry both a commercial and a personal auto policy on the same car to make sure it’s covered for every possible circumstance.

Never wait until you have a potential claim to verify that you have the right insurance for how you use your car. Always make sure your auto and commercial insurance agents understand who owns the vehicle, how it is used, and when it gets used for personal or business purposes.

What Does Business Auto Insurance Cover?

Business auto insurance is typically more comprehensive than personal auto insurance. These policies take into account how necessary the vehicle is to business operations and how it might be used differently than a personal car.

A commercial vehicle policy contains standard collision and liability coverage as required by law. Based on your specific needs, your agent could offer many of the following options to help you fully protect your vehicles, business, and employees:

When reviewing your business auto policy options, talk to your agent about how auto-related claims will interact with your other commercial insurance policies. For example, if an employee sustains an injury while operating a vehicle for work purposes, your workers compensation policy will also provide coverage. As another example, you’ll need to know how your various policies work if there is an accident while you are transporting a valuable piece of equipment that is normally kept on your business property.

An experienced agent will walk through all of your policies and coverage to confirm that you have the right protections in place for your business needs.

Explore the Right Coverage Options for Your Pennsylvania or New Jersey Business

Commercial insurance can be complex. The business owners we talk to every day don’t have time to do all the research on their own. They need to know that their business, employees, property, equipment, and vehicles are covered in case something goes wrong. That’s where we step in. We take our time with each client to make sure we fully understand their business and all of its moving parts. Then we do the digging to find the policies that will cover their unique needs and fit within their budget.

Freedom Insurance Group serves clients from our Northeast Philadelphia office. We are an independent agency, representing over 20 A-rated insurance companies, to our clients in Bucks County, Montgomery County, and across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We work with business owners in multiple industries to help them identify their risks and liabilities so that they can choose insurance solutions that offer realistic protection.

Please call us at 215-673-0300 to get your quote started over the phone, or complete our online contact form to review your business insurance needs.

Freedom Insurance Group
215-673-0300

Office Hours
Monday–Friday 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Saturday 9:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m.

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As an independent agency, we are here to help you find the right Business Auto Insurance coverage.