In this solo video, Hunter Nelson of Nelson Insurance walks truckers through the four main categories of trucking insurers—A‑rated mainstream carriers, Managing General Agents (MGAs) that run programs, Risk Retention Groups (RRGs), and captive/self‑insurance structures. He outlines the most recognizable A‑rated carriers (Progressive, GEICO, GreatWest, Northland, etc.), noting their typical load‑acceptance rates and occasional policy exclusions that can cause claim denials. He then explains how MGAs and programs shift underwriting authority away from the insurer, offering both niche expertise (e.g., hazmat, agricultural) and potential pitfalls such as under‑resourced teams, cheap third‑party administrators, and aggressive pricing of high‑risk business. The segment on RRGs highlights their pooled‑risk model, lack of formal rating, frequent regulatory gaps, and the high incidence of fly‑by‑night operations, while also mentioning a few well‑run RRGs and captives that have proven stable over decades. Throughout, Hunter stresses the importance of thorough vetting, warns against low‑cost, poorly‑managed options, and advises truckers to prioritize reputable, well‑underwritten coverage to avoid costly claim failures and loss of loads. He closes by inviting questions, encouraging viewers to like and subscribe, and reiterating his commitment to only work with vetted programs and RRGs.
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Hey guys, I'm Hunter with Nelson Insurance. I'm going to go over types of insurance companies today because there are RRGs out there, there's programs, there's A-rate insurance companies. Uh, some are gonna be a lot cheaper than others. So how do you guys decide, you know, who's gonna be the best, who's actually gonna give you loads, what does all stuff look like? So again, I'm Hunter with Nelson Insurance based out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. All I do is trucking and I can walk through all this stuff here. So I'm going to tell you guys about RRGs, first retention groups, what they're called, uh, programs, A-rate insurance companies, B- B-rated, what all stuff means. So let's get into it. When you guys are shopping for insurance, there are so many different insurance companies out there. There's way more than you guys would ever expect, probably 70, 80 different insurance companies out there if you guys are including RRGs, which stands for Risk Retention Group, uh, programs, and then A-rated guys, the guys you guys all know— Progressive, GreatWest, GEICO, etc., etc. And then there's also guys that work through what's called MGA, which I'll kind of get into that here. So first off, you guys have your main insurance companies everybody advertises, everybody knows. When you guys have these, you have Northland, uh, Progressive, GEICO, Great West, etc., etc. Some of these guys you can call online and get a quote. Some of them you have to go through an agent. Actually, most of these guys have to go through an agent to even get a quote on. If you guys are not going to go through an agent, there's maybe like 3 insurance companies out there. What do you do with this stuff? Pretty much everybody's going to be as load. There's not going to be any issues with it. You can almost guarantee they're all going to be A-rated. Now you might deal with some headache on Progressive or GEICO because they have— well, Progressive used to have the wetness dampness and dryness exclusion, which is actually what got them declined. That's what got brokers to quit working with Progressive for an extended period of time. They now have it on, and actually they have a better cargo policy than most other insurance companies. might just deal with some bad adjusters every once in a while, but that's kind of what you're dealing with there. Now, GEICO does still have this, to my understanding. Uh, I've not been made aware that they've changed this at all. So, you know, you guys might get loads declined. Don't know. A lot of brokers don't find out about it for years and years until they've had tons of claims get declined because of this. This is really going to deal with the flatbed guys. Now, those are your main insurance companies. The next most popular ones you guys might deal with are going to be your Northlands, your Canals, your IATs, your BSB, Crum and Forrester, all type of stuff. They are big names. They're all A-rated. They don't advertise for nothing because they work with like 16 is usually the number I kind of hear, different what's called MGAs or brokers. These guys are another middleman. Doesn't mean you're going to pay more. They do a second job of underwriting. And so they're usually more picky about the stuff, which lowers the loss ratio because they're taking on better risk, which in a sense Gives you guys lower premiums and allows them to compete even though they have another middleman in the mix. So not having a middleman does not actually do you guys any benefits. It typically will actually save you guys money. I'm not kidding you. So when you have this, you're going to have you guys, the trucker or the insured. You're going to have your actual insurance agents. You're going to have what's called a broker. Some agents refer to them as underwriters. They're the broker, whatever. And then you have the insurance company. So we, us insurance agents, have to send in a submission to them, get all the information they're looking at, and then they send it to the insurance company and they go from there. Honestly, if you can get a quote from one of these guys, they're phenomenal. They're really good. Policies are great. They want usually some of the best of the best. Canal will— it's got pretty broad appetite. They're kind of similar to Progressive and Geico in what they insure, along those lines. Northland's very similar to Great West and Century. Kermit Forrester is extremely picky. IT is extremely picky. IT, if you can ever get a quote from them, They do really well in the weird states like New Jersey. But, you know, so there's them, all A-rated, everything's gonna be great there. Here's where things kind of drop off the line on insurance companies you might not want to work with as much anymore. So now we have what's called a program. A program is going to be the same process, what I just talked about. You're going to have an MGA, a middleman, whatever the case is. But instead of the insurance company really doing a lot of the underwriting, actually issuing the insurance policy, being the ones who are backing you guys up on this. Now they give the authority to the broker, the MGA, the wholesaler. They got a million different names for them. Whatever the case is, typically is going to be an MGA, a managing general agent, not your typical insurance agent, or will be referred to as a retail agent. These MGAs will partner up, take the policy forms from an insurance company. The insurance company might use some data there. Do some of the claims, whatever the case is. It's all based off what they agree upon, and they give the underwriting pricing and all the authority typically to an extent to the MGA. Is this bad? It certainly can be. It's not always bad. There's some guys who are big operations who've really built a product for niche guys like hazmat and agricultural space. I love those guys. Those guys are phenomenal. They do a great job, but. Now you've got a smaller team operating it, and the quality of your insurance is in a group of 10 people's hands. Those 10 people could be phenomenal. The guy who leads the hazmat team is at every convention. He knows policies and claims and coverages and pricing like no tomorrow. The guy bats for trucking like no tomorrow. Some of these guys want to get in here and get rich quick. I'm going to insure everybody that's really tough to insure, raise the prices like crazy, because actually high-risk insurance is most profitable to insurance companies. So these MGAs like to get in this high-risk space, do a really poor job because the high-risk space usually needs more service, more attention, whatever the case is. And they're going to say, I'm going to cut all the corners and not do a great job there. I'm going to get a really cheap claims party service called the TPA, a third-party administrator, to handle this thing. And best of luck, I'm gonna make a lot of money off it. Now, I don't want to talk poor on these guys. Most of them are really good. But I'm just saying, you can have a bad group of people who are not going to do as good of a job as a normal insurance company. The reputation's not there. If things go bad, they can move insurance companies and reach out their product and go from there. If you guys are in the towing space, KBK does this and they do a phenomenal job. They're one of the best out there. If you can get a quote with KBK, they've added their own market to tow truck insurance, which is really, really tough, and they've done a great job at it. So you just need to be very careful on this stuff. There's so many programs and a lot of them do a very bad job. We'll go broke in a year, go broke in 5 years. Or just not know what the heck they're doing. So that is what a program is, and that's harder to find. It's insurance company and a brokerage teaming up to go insure stuff that's really tough to insure. RRGs, risk retention groups, are probably at the bottom of the list. There are maybe 2 RRGs that are any good, any chance you want to go work with them. I work with one RRG, and they're the best out there that I'm aware of. I will not work with anybody else unless somebody else is fantastic and I can really have the backing behind it to prove that. But these guys are really bad because so many are fly-by-night. You might get insurance, you might get your claim paid, you'll pray to God claims— claim dollars do not run out and you still get your stuff paid for. There are reports all the time Every year or two, I see it where somebody starts up an RRG. The guy who's running it takes the money and flees the country. Essentially every year or two, but I've seen it multiple times. Fleece country, and all these guys are left with no money for claims. And it's because they're not regulated, or to an extent a normal insurance company is, and things can get kind of hairy there. An RRG typically is pooling of money together. And then they get reinsurance, which is insurance for the insurance company, and hopefully they don't run out. And hopefully they do a good job underwriting to make sure they don't bring in bad risk, drain the premium dollars or the claim dollars, and go from there. Usually, or I shouldn't say usually, I see a lot of guys who have got a couple people running it. It's really tough to get people on the phone. Claims take forever. Policy service takes forever. They're almost never rated because they don't have enough money to go get rating. And if you go get rated, now you have to follow underwriting guidelines, and they don't want to do that. And so they're almost never going to be A-rated. You're almost always going to lose loads. It's a nightmare. I do not tell people to go here. I tell people to stay away from them. Again, there are one or two that are very good. Our largest— one of our largest insurance companies is actually them— is an ROG. But they start as a captive, and if you guys are familiar with the captive, it's the extent of self-insurance. And then you go from there to, um, to essentially work your way to self-insurance. You start your own insurance company, blah blah blah. These guys had like 4,500 trucks and, uh, opened up the captive to let other people in. That's a great product. They've been around for 30-some years. They've been in— it's been open for 30-some years. The captive's been open for longer. And you guys are getting the opportunity to join a captive. And that structure was just an ROG. It was not just started up and let's hope for the best here. That's a little bit of the structure of these insurance companies, making sure you guys are, uh, getting loads with your brokers. Obviously insurance sucks. It's stupid expensive. It's a big expense for you guys. Everybody hates it. People think it's a scam, whatever, right? But the matter of fact is, if you guys get into an accident, it's a million-dollar claim. You better hope you have good insurance because either you have a good insurance company and maybe pay a couple dollars more, or you go out of business because you cheaped out and got the fly-by-night guy who says he's going to do it for you. So you're going to pay for what you get to an extent. A lot of these good insurance companies can actually beat the programs or ROGs too. You know, it depends on your risk there, but that's how it plays out. So Hopefully that was helpful. If you guys got any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out. Happy to help you guys. I do not want to work with any bad programs, any bad ROGs. Everybody that we have that is a program or ROG is incredibly heavily vetted, and they're better than most insurance companies. So that says something about them. Hopefully you guys got something out of this. Please like and subscribe so I keep making content like this. And, um, yeah, appreciate watching.
