The truck is in your name. The insurance is the personal policy you have had for years. The work goes in the bed every morning. Most people never think about it again until there is an accident on the way to a job, and the adjuster starts asking what the vehicle was doing.
If the vehicle is registered or titled to the company, it belongs on a commercial auto policy. A personal policy is written for an individual and will not respond properly for a vehicle owned by a business entity. This one is not a judgment call, and it is the version of the mistake that is easiest to avoid.
Personal auto policies contain business use limitations. The wording varies, but the theme does not: a personal policy anticipates commuting and errands, not a vehicle that is part of how the business operates. Hauling materials, carrying tools between sites, making deliveries, driving to customer premises all day — that is business use, and a carrier that discovers it after a loss has grounds to argue.
Note the word after. Nobody checks when you buy the policy. They check when there is a claim to pay.
Higher liability limits, which matter because a work vehicle is usually heavier and on the road more. Coverage that recognizes employees as drivers rather than just you and your household. Room to schedule tools and equipment properly. And it produces the certificate a general contractor or a commercial customer will ask you for, which a personal policy cannot.
People assume lettering on the doors is what makes a vehicle commercial. It is not — use and ownership are. But lettering does something else: it tells the adjuster exactly what the vehicle was doing. If the van says your trade on the side, do not expect anybody to accept that it was a personal errand.
A sole trader who grows. The policy was right when it was one person and one truck used mostly on weekends. Then there are two vehicles, then an employee driving one, and nobody revisited the insurance because nothing felt like it changed on any single day.
If you have an employee who ever drives — even their own car, on an errand — ask about hired and non-owned auto at the same time. It is a separate gap and it catches people the same way. See our contractor insurance page.
Tell us what you drive, who drives it and what it carries. We will tell you straight whether it belongs on a commercial policy.
Start my application