Three hundred bucks, some paperwork, and you’re officially a motor carrier. But insurance, that was supposed to be different. That was supposed to be the moment where someone who actually understood risk sat across from you and asked the hard questions: Are you serious about this, or are you just playing trucker?
That moment doesn’t exist anymore for large parts of the market. And for the first time, we have data that shows exactly where the gate failed, who’s holding it open, and what it’s costing everyone else.
Insurance was trucking’s last real barrier to entry. In key parts of the market, it’s collapsed. Instant-issue coverage, inadequate minimums, and zero-verification underwriting have flooded our highways with operations that no responsible professional would have ever bound.
Insurance carriers don’t have to keep eating these losses. They don’t have to keep jacking up premiums on good operators to subsidize the bad ones. They can fix their own books. They can reduce their own exposure. They can stop passing the cost of garbage underwriting to the motoring public.
It starts with one thing most of the market has abandoned: real risk control. Performed by people who actually understand trucking. Not industrial hygienists. Not generalists. Trucking people.
I built a scorecard that matches every insurer-carrier relationship on file with the FMCSA against the carrier’s actual safety performance. Crashes. Fatal crashes. Out-of-service rates. Violations. Prior revocations. Five hard indicators are aggregated into a single risk score from 0 to 100 at the insurer level.
Carriers are bucketed into four tiers: LOW (0-10), MODERATE (10-25), HIGH (25-50), and CRITICAL (50-100). Those scores roll up to the insurer level. The key metric is the percentage of an insurer’s book falling into HIGH or CRITICAL.
The dataset covers 1,310 insurers and 2,840,743 insurer-carrier relationships. The baseline HIGH/CRITICAL share is 12.4%. The median insurer has about 212 carriers and a high-critical rate of 19.1%.
That’s the norm. Then the outliers show up.
Thirteen insurers meet two thresholds simultaneously: at least 500 carriers insured, and at least 50% of their book in HIGH/CRITICAL. That group represents 18,547 relationships, just 0.65% of the total.
But that same 0.65% accounts for roughly 1,086,571 crashes (6.01%), 34,968 fatal crashes (5.98%), and 645,108 injuries (6.08%).
Less than 1% of the insurer-carrier relationships. Roughly 6% of the crashes and fatalities. That’s not noise. That’s a signal.
This isn’t a claim that these insurers caused those crashes. But insurance is supposed to be a filter. When more than half of an insurer’s book is scoring HIGH or CRITICAL across five safety indicators, the question is: What does the underwriting look like on the way in?
The scorecard also identifies 40,188 new-entrant relationships (carriers under 18 months old). The top 10 insurers by new-entrant volume account for 50.25% of all new entrants. The top 20 account for 67.78%.
Three GEICO entities alone account for 5,465 new-entrant carrier relationships, with average authority ages from 3.3 to 4.2 years. Their risk scores look clean right now, 0.74 to 1.95, but that’s the trap. The score looks clean because the carrier hasn’t existed long enough to build a record. The question isn’t what their score is today. It’s what it’ll be in three years.
Accredited Specialty stands out: 13,708 carriers insured; 1,470 new entrants. When you’re writing nearly 14,000 carriers and more than one in ten is brand-new authority, you’re not curating a book. You’re running a pipeline.
Professional fleets don’t shop for insurance online. They’re in captives, group or sole-member, and getting in isn’t easy. Best-in-class carriers form their own insurance company. They own it. They control it. Profits go back to members, not corporate shareholders. You earn your way in.
Risk control professionals review your application. They verify driver qualification files, safety programs, telematics usage, and training protocols. They want to know you’re defensible when the crash happens, not if. Once you’re in, you’re an owner with responsibilities. Consultants review your violation data. Claims managers analyze your crash history. On-site audits happen. If your risk profile deteriorates, you’re on alert. If you don’t improve, you’re out.
That’s accountability. That’s what insurance was designed to create.
GEICO and Progressive are running a different model. GEICO’s commercial truck program advertises “quick purchase” options and “an instant price and coverage within minutes.” No risk control review. No underwriter on the file. Self-attestation, payment, and a policy.
A non-domiciled individual with no license, no office, and no policies can go online, enter someone else’s information, and get instantly underwritten for less than what legitimate insurance costs.
Welcome to trucking.
The average verdict in truck crash lawsuits exceeding $1 million jumped from $2.3 million in 2010 to $22.3 million by 2018. A 967% increase. By 2022, the median nuclear verdict hit $36 million. In 2024, thermonuclear verdicts over $100 million reached a record 49 cases. Total nuclear verdicts across all industries hit $31.3 billion, a 116% increase over 2023.
Between 2020 and 2023, the average trucking verdict ran $27.5 million. Some carriers absorbed rate hikes of over 100%. Others closed their doors entirely.
While these verdicts bankrupt legitimate carriers who played by the rules, we’re making it easier than ever for high-risk operators to get on the road with minimal coverage and zero scrutiny. Make that make sense.
Instant-issue insurance has a best friend: the chameleon carrier. A trucking company causes a catastrophic crash. The owner folds the company, walks away from the judgment, and reopens under a new name with a new DOT number and a new instant-issue policy, often with the same insurers. Same owner. Same trucks. Same dangerous practices. New name. New policy. Back on the highway.
Take the case of William “Bill” Card, a 69-year-old Indianapolis man killed in a truck crash in 2021. The truck that killed him was operated by a single-truck owner carrying only minimum insurance. After the crash, the owner changed the company name and re-emerged as a different carrier. The Card family received inadequate compensation. The person responsible for Bill Card’s death kept right on trucking.
Chameleon carriers consistently show higher crash rates than legitimate new entrants. They undermine safety oversight and fair competition. Every time one reincarnates with a fresh instant-issue policy, everyone sharing that highway pays the price.
We have carriers declaring three vehicles on their policies while operating 20-plus trucks. When an undisclosed vehicle is involved in a crash, the insurer denies the claim. “You lied on your application. Coverage denied.” That protects the insurer. Not the motoring public. Not the victim.
When a policy is exhausted, and the carrier is judgment-proof, the public pays. Medicaid covers approximately 15.8% of hospital costs for motor vehicle crashes. Medicare picks up another 7.3%. Social Security Disability rolls increase. Welfare programs absorb the overflow. Foregone taxes compound the damage when injured workers stop contributing to the workforce.
The federal minimum liability remains $750,000, set in the 1980s. Inflation-adjusted, that figure would be $5.5 million today. That $750,000 is the total for ALL claims from a single incident. Not per victim. Total.
When a chameleon carrier folds after a crash, when an instant-issue policy covers a fraudulent operation, when minimum coverage can’t touch the actual damages, families suffer first. Government programs absorb the overflow. Taxpayers foot the bill. Premiums go up for everyone.
Everyone pays except the people who created the risk.
So we’ve got the data. We know where the gate failed. Now what?
The answer is risk control. Real risk control. Not a PDF that says “safety program exists.” The kind that digs into a motor carrier’s actual operations before the policy is ever bound.
But the risk control industry itself is busted when it comes to trucking. When an insurance company orders a risk control assessment on a motor carrier, they dispatch a “risk control professional” who might be an industrial hygienist. Expert in slip-and-fall prevention. Legitimate discipline. But that person has never conducted a driver qualification file audit. Never reviewed an HOS compliance program. Doesn’t know what a BASIC percentile means or how an ISS score triggers roadside inspections.
They’re a risk control professional. They are not a fleet risk control professional. In trucking, that’s the difference between a real assessment and a waste of everyone’s time.
This happens every day. An underwriter orders a risk control survey. The risk control company dispatches whoever’s available in the region. That person walks through a terminal, completes a generic questionnaire, takes photos, and produces a report stating that the carrier has a safety program. What it doesn’t say is whether that program actually works. Whether it’s being enforced. Whether the carrier’s FMCSA data tells a completely different story than what’s on paper. Whether the operation would survive a plaintiff’s attorney in litigation.
The insurer gets a report. The report looks professional. And the insurer knows exactly as much about their actual exposure as they did before they paid for it. This is how dangerous carriers stay insured. This is how loss ratios blow up. This is how premiums rise for the entire market.
Real fleet risk control starts with data. Real-time FMCSA data: SAFER records, SMS scores, violation history, ISS scores, out-of-service rates, and crash history. Not a snapshot. A trend analysis.
Then you dig into the operation. Over 200 FMCSA-focused questions covering all six compliance factors. Policy and procedure review. Claims data integration. Gap analysis that finds systemic failures, not just individual screw-ups.
Then the analysis. A trucking-specific assessment by certified professionals who have operated fleets, held CDLs, served as expert witnesses, and know what a plaintiff’s attorney looks for when discovery opens.
That’s what TruckSafe Consulting does. We’re one of the few risk control services in the country that specializes exclusively in passenger and property risk control for insurance companies and TPAs in transportation. We are attorneys, certified safety professionals, CDL holders, former fleet operators, and expert witnesses. We do this and only this.
Traditional risk control runs $3,700 to $6,100 per assessment with a 3-6 week timeline, performed by generalists who don’t know what to look for. TruckSafe delivers a comprehensive Fleet Risk Control Assessment for $1,250 with a five-business-day turnaround. That’s 60-76% cost savings with a dramatically better product.
The real return isn’t in assessment costs. It’s in loss ratio improvement. When you understand what you’re insuring, you make better underwriting decisions. Fewer bad risks. Fewer catastrophic claims. Lower premiums for everyone.
Regulatory: Every policy requires a thorough underwriting review. Minimum coverage limits need to reflect 2026, not 1986. A sliding scale based on fleet size, miles driven, or revenue, audited annually like workers’ comp, would ensure exposure matches coverage. Broker bonds should scale with transaction volume. Insurers that issue policies without verification should eat the consequences. You collected the premium. Pay the claim.
Operational: This is where insurers currently have agency rights. No waiting for Congress. No waiting for FMCSA. Every insurer writing commercial trucking should be asking three questions before binding any motor carrier: Who are you willing to hire? What equipment are you willing to put on the highway? What are you willing to do to be accountable when something goes wrong?
If you can’t verify those answers through specialized risk control, you have no business binding that policy. If your risk control provider is sending an industrial hygienist to evaluate a trucking operation, you’re getting answers that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
The captive model worked because it required accountability. It created a community of carriers with skin in the game, operators who knew their safety performance affected their fellow members. That model hasn’t disappeared. It’s just gotten more exclusive while the bottom of the market turned into a free-for-all.
The scorecard proves what anyone in this industry long enough already knew. A small number of insurers account for a disproportionate share of the worst safety outcomes in America. The new-entrant pipeline is concentrated among a few high-volume, low-friction players. And the risk control infrastructure that’s supposed to catch problems before they become catastrophes is staffed by generalists who don’t know what they’re looking at.
The scorecard shows state-level patterns that line up with where enforcement and chameleon carrier activity have historically concentrated.
In Illinois, filtering by insurers with 20+ carriers and average risk scores above 25 yields 20 qualifying insurers. American Inter-Fidelity Exchange has 331 carriers at an average risk score of 34.0. ACE Property and Casualty insures 328 carriers at 31.4. State National Specialty holds 651 carrier relationships at 28.4, the largest high-risk book in that filter.
California’s voluntary market is broader, but the patterns exist. ACE Property and Casualty appears in both states: 328 carriers at 31.4 in Illinois, 135 carriers at 28.3 in California. Hallmark Insurance carries 74 California carriers at 28.8 and also appears in Illinois with 21 carriers at 31.0. Multi-state patterns. Not random fluctuations.
The assigned-risk plans in these states are designed to ensure coverage for operations that can’t obtain coverage voluntarily. The question is what happens when 80,000-pound commercial motor carriers end up in those pools and keep running with minimal scrutiny. That data exists in state filings. We’re going to find it.
The motoring public shouldn’t be holding the bag because the insurance market won’t police its own underwriting. The tools exist. The data exists. The expertise exists.
The question is whether the market is willing to use them.
Until it does, the public will continue to pay the price. One crash at a time.
Methodology Note
Data source: Insurer-carrier relationship and carrier performance data linked to FMCSA filings. The dataset captures historical insurer-carrier pairings as reflected in FMCSA records; it includes active and historical relationships and may not reflect current coverage status. Carrier risk scores are based on cumulative crash, violation, and enforcement data, not point-in-time snapshots. The scorecard is a research tool intended to identify concentration patterns, not to establish legal liability or prove specific underwriting failures.
Model: 0-100 composite scoring across five FMCSA-linked indicators (crashes, fatal crashes, out-of-service rate, violations, revocations) with defined caps and scaling. Carrier tiers: LOW (0-10), MODERATE (10-25), HIGH (25-50), CRITICAL (50-100).
Risk control services: TruckSafe Consulting provides specialized fleet risk control assessments exclusively for the transportation insurance industry. For more information, visit TruckSafeConsulting.com.
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