Protect Your Employee Drivers with Commercial Auto Insurance

Commercial auto insurance is imperative if employees are driving on behalf of your business, regardless of who owns the vehicle. Here’s what you need to know about insuring business vehicles and how to save on your commercial auto insurance.

If your company name is on the vehicle title, you’ll need to buy commercial auto insurance. 

Commercial auto insurance is typically much more expensive than personal auto insurance.  Even though commercial auto insurance premiums are more expensive, commercial insurance offers more coverage.  Even during the current driver shortage, onboarding a single inexperienced or incompetent employee can expose you to costly fines, crashes and a tarnished reputation.

These factors will influence the price of your commercial auto insurance:

– The number of auto insurance claims your company has had in the past.
– The motor vehicle report—or driving record—for all drivers within the company.
– The age of the drivers, this is especially important!
– The safety of the location where you keep the vehicle, such as a garage vs. on the street.
– The amount of security you have in place, which could include anti-theft devices.

Customize Your Commercial Auto Insurance

GDI Insurance Agency, Inc.  provides exactly the expertise you need.  We have the right commercial auto insurance plan for your commercial automobiles AND we can deliver the strategies, tools and resources that will help you manage your transportation and fleet industry risks, control workers’ compensation claim costs, advance safety and boost employee morale.

How To Create Driver Standards for Employees

When it comes to your business, keeping your employees safe is a top priority. It’s why you have workplace safety regulations, and if the unexpected happen, you have business insurance.

What About Business Vehicles?

If your business requires your employees to operate a motor vehicle at all, it’s important to create a plan for ensuring their safety. Read these tips for developing driver standards to keep both your employees — and the other drivers on the road — as safe as possible.

Commercial Driver Hiring and Onboarding Toolkit

The best way to make sure you’re employing the most qualified drivers is to perform comprehensive pre-employment screenings in accordance with DOT and FMCSA regulations.

This toolkit includes forms, checklists and other materials that you can use to onboard a new driver and ensure that all applicable records are in order.  Your business should make efforts to check for any state and local pre-employment requirements, criminal histories and other relevant information to see if candidates are the right fit.

Here are Tips On Hiring Employee Drivers

Check records. Your prospective employee’s driving history can be a strong indicator of their future driving record, which is why it’s so important to check into it. Department of Motor Vehicle Records are kept on file in every state where your employee holds a driver’s license. These records will show:

• If their license has been revoked
• If their license has been suspended
• If the driver has received any traffic violations
• If the driver has been involved in any traffic-related accidents

To obtain a DMV Record, contacting your state agency or your insurance agent is your best bet. Commercial Driver Hiring and Onboarding Toolkit In order to access a record you will need to know the individual’s name, date of birth, address and driver’s license number.

Mandate Safety Plans

After you check out your prospective employee’s MVR, it’s important to establish guidelines to help determine if they should be considered for a job that will require them to operate a vehicle. For example, guidelines that might disqualify an employee from a driving position might include:

• A driving while intoxicated conviction in the past three years
• Three serious violations, such as reckless driving or following too closely, during the past three years
• Two accidents within the past three years
• License suspension due to traffic violations in the last three years

Keep Tabs On Your Employees

After you go through the necessary background checks and the employee is cleared to start driving, its important to continue evaluating their current driving records on a regular basis. That way, you can verify they still meet your safe driving requirements after they’ve been hired.

Require Experience

If your business requires the use of large passenger vans, it’s important to understand the safety precautions you and your employees can take to keep everyone in the vehicle safe. Remember, only experienced drivers should operate fully loaded vans, and should understand and be familiar with the handling characteristics of these types of vehicles.  Youthful drivers are one of the factors that will greatly increase your commercial auto insurance costs.

Risk Management Techniques

One of the best things you can do to control your commercial automobile insurance premiums is implement risk management techniques for controlling the frequency of accidents. Improving your drivers’ performance can make a big difference: A study by the U.S. Department of Transportation revealed that 90 percent of all collisions were due to driver action, attitude and behavior. Making your drivers safer and purchasing dependable vehicles can affect both frequency and severity of accidents, ultimately lowering your premiums. Some steps to take include the following:

• Select good drivers. Conduct background checks and request regular motor vehicle driving records.
• Provide driver safety training on a regular basis, both at hire and as a refresh, ensuring that both new and seasoned employees are properly prepared.
• Train employees on reporting a loss immediately after a crash.
• Monitor drivers to ensure their best performance.

California’s Leader in Insurance and Risk Management

As one of the fastest growing agencies in California, GDI Insurance Agency, Inc. is able to provide its clients with the latest and greatest of what the insurance industry has to offer and much, much more. With locations across the heart of California’s Central Valley and beyond to provide a local feel to the solutions and services we provide our clients. We pride ourselves on exceeding our client’s expectations in every interaction to make sure that our client’s know how much we value and appreciate their business. Contact us today 1-209-634-2929 for your comprehensive commercial auto insurance quote!