How To Handle Your Truck Insurance Renewal

Hey guys, I'm Hunter Renells with insurance. I'm going to get into how to handle your renewal. Let's get into it. So if your guys insurance here is renewing soon, what should you guys do and when should you start shopping for that? So it's going to really depend on how big your business is, how long you've been in business. But I would say a general rule of thumb is about 60 days ahead. You should be looking at things, your agent should really be reaching out to you and you should be looking to see if there's any new options that prevented themselves, that has presented themselves. If you are a brand new venture and you're not coming for one year in business, there's probably not be a whole lot for you. They hate to break the news, but you're probably looking at Progressive or geico. If you're one of them, you need to go check the other one maybe. Right. If you're a fleet, you really should be checking 90 days ahead. There's a lot more work that goes into renewal and there's a lot more insurance companies that look at a fleet, especially if you're general freight. So you know, rates were changing all the time. You probably want to be looking, looking there about 90 days ahead. Okay, now I'm going to get into the stuff here. That's going to change. That's really going to make a difference on if you should shop, if it's necessary to what the benefits would be there. I think the biggest thing is, is if you're hitting two years of CDL or two years in business, you now have some more options. If you're hitting three years in business, you're going to have a lot more options now. So go from two years to three years of business is going to be a huge deal for you. Because now at three years of business, a couple of the companies I'll look at you are, Iet Crum and Forester, Berkeley small business. On and on and on. I'm not going to name them all, but you're going to have a lot more companies there. If you're getting two years in business, not going to have Nirvana. Look at you. We've got a really good company that's gonna look at you. We're gonna have Northland, that's going to look at you now. And then the two year CDL experience, you might get a couple of those guys like Canal or Cover Whale who won't take you. Let's get to your CDL experience. You might have been stuck with Progressive or geico. So to give you guys kind of an idea, the other thing, too is if you're now hitting fleet, that's like the holy grail. That is multiple, multiple, multiple other companies looking at you now that want to insure you, they're all for it. Please give me this guy's insurance policy. We're here to compete on it. Right. Fleet is determined at typically, I want to say, probably 95% of insurance companies clarify or qualify fleet as 10 or more units. Okay? So it doesn't mean you got 10 units in one year. It means, you know, three years in business, you, at the very least, and you got 10 units. Right. So if you guys have any of those changes going on, might be a really good idea to look at some of those other markets, because those guys who are picky and not want to take you ahead of time are usually a lot more competitive. Right. The other thing, too is just, you know, if you're taking a big increase, everybody's probably increasing right now. Actually, I just did a big renewal and they decreased. But that was one of the only. Right. My last seven progressive renewals, barely anything changed, and they jacked rates to the roof. I couldn't really tell you what it is. Right. But if you're increasing, go check out your other options. And I do want to mention this. If you're with the current agent and you're not sure if. Whether you should go check with another agent or you should check, or if you just stay with your current agent and see what things go on there, here's how I'm going to say this. I think. I think what matters more is your agent than your insurance, almost than your insurance company. Right. If you've got a good agent and he's got 70% of the markets and there's an average agent who's got 85% of the market, so he might have a couple other guys. He might have one insurance company that's going to come in $2,000 cheaper. Right. But the thing is, is a really good agent is going to be helping you with all the claims. If they know that they bring on somebody else and you qualify for them, they're going to shop you with them right away. They're going to work on that renewal 60 days ahead. They're not going to say a day before, hey, let's make that payment. I know you're not getting loads right now because your insurance expires tomorrow. I'm now just sending COIs so that $2,000 will do any good. If you Just lose. If you lose a couple grand for the renewal, being pushed back in revenue, right. So it doesn't do you any good. So you should be interviewing agents, making sure that they have the insurance companies that you need, making sure they have the industry knowledge, they know what your filing should be. They know what how trucking works. They know it's difficult to hire drivers and what the commodities are that you're hauling. You should have an agent who knows trucking and out and has the access to the insurance companies to get those markets. So your renewal is always, always looking good. If you're taking a massive rate increase and your agent goes, I got nothing for you. And it's five days to renewal, that's going to cost you insane money and you could have gone somewhere else to begin with. So don't get stuck with that bad guy right away. And then that kind of brings me to the point here of binding your insurance like what I was bringing back. Right? You want to be having your new insurance policy probably at least three to four days ahead of your renewal. Some of your brokers are not going to give you loads unless you get the proof of the new insurance already in place. Okay. Security agents should be giving you COIs, new ID cards. You should be making your payment three to four days ahead of your renewal. You're going to have to go make a payment. There's barely anybody who's just going to set you up on auto pay and it's just going to renew your policy. Doesn't really happen. Right. So you have to go into the system, make a payment. But your agent should be reaching out to you and communicating all this stuff to you. So that's how you should handle your insurance renewals. Don't go out every single year and shop out five insurance agents because if you got a good one, he's going to see that. I, believe me, all these insurance agents can see it. We have cab, we can see how many people have reviewed the CAB report there. @ some point they're just going to get sick of it. Having to fight for your business every single year when they're working hard for you. But you're trying to give your, trying to give your business away as fast as possible. So you going to shoot yourself in the foot and save $2,000. It's end up costing you 10,000. So again, I can't stress enough. Find one good agent. You should interview them like you're interviewing an accountant, a lawyer, a realtor, any of that type of stuff. Right. Insurance is not meant to be treated like an like you're like insurance agents and insurance companies not meant to be treated like insurance vendors. They will give their time where time is due and if you're wasting their time and you're going out and about trying to get your business away from them as fast as possible they're going to work for you they are not going to go to work for you and when claims time happens or renewal happens whatever goes on they're not going to want to go to bat for you here okay so you should interview them and then that's how you choose your options okay so that's the renewal if you guys have any questions on that please shoot me a message call me whatever my contact information below I'm here to try to provide value to truckers so if you guys like and subscribe that mean a lot and it it would help me just create more content so thanks for watching Let me know if you guys have any question.