When Does Insurance Actually Start To Get Cheaper?

Hey guys, I'm Hunter with Nelson Insurance. I'm going to go over when does insurance start to get cheaper? I'm not going to try to BS you guys on this thing, just purely educational. I'm going to talk about the years in business, I'm going to talk about the fleet size. I'm going to talk about why insurance gets cheaper. If it does get cheaper, how you can do this, how you can best prepare yourself for, you know, going through your first couple years, really setting yourself up for success and kind of going throughout that. So first you just got to understand what insurance companies can be rating off of. What are they looking at? When you really get into this deal there is a lot of different factors. It depends on the insurance company you're going with. For example, Progressive rates extremely heavily off your credit. 104 truck insurance is not right off your credit at all. But what they're going to do is they're going to look at your safer or for us cab and see how many non pays you've had. Because we can see when you guys non pay on your insurance. So if you guys are laid on a lot of bills they're going to go eh, we don't, we don't want to do that. So paying you guys bill in time does help you guys insurance. So as you're going throughout your first year, you guys are just getting your truck insurance for the first time. What are my options here? Everybody just thinks progressive, that's it. Maybe geico, but just call Progressive directly and see what I can do. That is not the case. Sometimes you guys can get insurance through Northland. Northland is one of the best insurance companies out there for trucking. I'm not just saying that they're the best claim service policy forms are great. Everything on those lines. When I say policy forms I mean coverages. Making sure you guys are actually covered and you're not really figuring out stuff later down the road. They do sometimes take new ventures, not all the time. Depends on the state, Depends on your experience beforehand. Depends on your CDL experience, stuff like that. They're very picky. Just like Great West. Great west wants to be an owner operator for two years. Before you can do that they're both gonna have growth restrictions. They don't want you buying 100 trucks first year. They want you buying 10 trucks your first year. They want to know that you had experience getting into this stuff beforehand. So some of those guys will take you canal if you're not too risky. They don't want to know hey, too much about what you were doing before. But just don't get too risky right off the bat. So don't be doing any hazmat, auto haulers, hot shot, anything like that. Your General Freight guy, you're in a decent state, nothing too crazy. Yeah, we'll take a look at you. Canal can actually be very, very competitive. A lot of people don't know Canal, which kind of surprising but they're the fifth largest trucking insurance company out there and yeah, they're pretty dang good. They have 13,000 motor carriers insured. So for reference Great west has like 38,000 and they're. Everybody knows Great west. So there's that for an option. Berkshire Hathaway Homestate companies can be. All right, you've got, like I said, Geico Progressive, you've got Night specialty which is only accessible through brokers like insurance agents cover Whale. You know, they're being really good on hot shots, tough states, stuff like that. Not be super cheap but they might be the least expensive on that kind of side there, there's good couple other ones but those are kind of the main options there. Like I said, new ventures can be tougher. And so first year round, you guys just got done insurance first year, hey, survive that 20k premium, 15k premium, 25k premium, things can get better in my renewal. Probably not too much first year round. Nothing's really going to change. It's not like you guys go into this thing and you guys go three years throughout and your insurance like let's see, you would progress for three years. Not exactly like they're gonna just oh no, you're in business now, you're in business, let's go and decrease that premium every single year it's more so like yeah, it definitely does help does get taken into account but you know, do you have anything negative affecting that too? You get a violation or an accident or a claim or whatever the case is that's gonna way more offset the oh I got one year in business now the main thing is going to be now I got more insurance options available. And once those guys come in they're gonna be put into maybe a more low risk pool where you know, they want to make sure you're really good. And you survive these first couple years really well, you get a really well ran trucking company and you know we're gonna have these set guidelines on you got to meet these guidelines and then we'll, we'll accept you give you a quote. And usually those could be a lot better because you know they're getting rid of the, in their terms, risky new new ventures, right? So one year goes by, nothing's really gonna change. Two years goes by, okay, now you got some options. Three years where it really hits. But two years now in business, you know, Great west may be more willing to take you. Northland might be more willing to take you. Nirvana insurance is very, very good. They're writing off of ELD data which, oh, I know, not, not real well loved. But Nirvana insurance is really good. I just saved somebody $60,000 on their insurance renewal with Nirvana. The granted nine trucks. But Nirvana is really good. You might have two years CDL now, so maybe you get a couple more of those insurance companies if you had a new CDL at the new venture. So like Coverwell would not have taken you at first. Berkshire would have taken you, but Canal would not have taken you. If you have 2 years cel experience beforehand, you have 104 insurance. 104 is really good. We love seeing them. And now, you know, hey, we've got a little bit of discounts here, stuff like that. But first two years is very important. You've proven you know how to run a trucking company. Your ISS scores are low, your safety, your CSA score, same thing. CS CSA scores are low. You're not turning a bunch of claims. You're hiring good drivers. You're not growing too quickly because once you hit year three, then you can kind of take off. But first three years, I want to make sure nothing's too risky in their eyes, right? State where you're at makes a big difference. So go through, make sure you get good credit, good claims history, good growth, good scores. You guys do that, the options really start to open up for you. Especially year three now. Now year three is around. What do things look like? If you guys are really clean, you've proven yourself and the insurance company's eyes right? And you get three years consecutive in business. Not a lot of non pays. You haven't any laps in insurance. 3 years consecutive insurance history, right? Berkeley's going to take you up. IAT is going to look at you. Crum and Forest is going to look at you. Crum and Forester. Almost nobody probably knows this name now, but Crum and Forester is wicked competitive. Every time I go against them, I can't touch them. I'm not exaggerating. I don't even have a whole lot of my clients myself with Chroma Forester just they're really tough to get a quote for some reason. But when people do get qualified with chroma Forester I mean it's like I I, it's almost impossible just move them, you know, you got them I t all those guys Midwest Semi Mutual, maybe acuity, maybe cwg, maybe auto owners. Lots and lots of other options open up here. Okay? Now as you guys keep growing, this is why everybody's like ah, first couple years old, tough because you guys just see a lot more. Insurance companies take a look at you as things go on. Right now if you guys are a fleet, I've got, I'm kind of just putting all my videos into one here. If you guys are a fleet and want to go look at that, I've got a fleet insurance video. But if you guys are fleet now, even more options open up. This, they're counting double digits, usually 10 trucks. 11. Some are 11 trucks, whatever. Some are 5 plus in their eyes. Like HDVI made a video on them. Really, really competitive. You gotta have five plus years in business though. You got five plus trucks. Well, four plus trucks if you're under 10. But, but, but above five. Biz Choice also take you guys fleets, you got AIG, HDVI, Nirvana's got their own program. Westchester, not really all that great. Munich, re, navigators, all this sort of stuff. A lot more of these insurance companies are opened up once you guys get to the fleet space, you know, National, Interstate, all that stuff. So all these companies start opening up a whole lot more. And typically fleets can be a little bit cheaper than like a two unit guy. Not always. I've got guys paying $2,000 a truck for one unit and I've got fleets paying $8,000 a truck per unit. Doesn't mean it's always gonna be, doesn't mean it's always the case, but it definitely can be right because they're gonna look at this thing in a whole whole like expense report basically. Right? So if you're paying a million dollars in insurance, they know that the chances of you have a million dollar claim and be able to break even or make some money at the end of the year, a lot higher chance than if you're paying $10,000 insurance. And you could literally have a million dollar claim tomorrow as a one unit trucking guy and you can go on and kill somebody in accident, right? So you know, they're gonna, they're gonna try to just weigh their risk on the stuff, right? So yeah, there's all sorts of different options there. But yeah, if you guys are good throughout that process and everything's being handled well, the insurance company, I know, I know you Guys different you guys opinion of risk is different insurance company. And they're. It seems like they're always trying to pull one over on you guys, but this is the stuff they look at. I'm just trying to give you guys an idea because insurance is the fourth largest expense on trucking. So yeah, I mean there is that how you guys should be shopping your insurance, your agent really should be shopping you guys every single year. You need to have an agent who knows trucking, understands trucking has options or has access to a lot of insurance carriers. We are the only one in South Dakota to have HDVI. We are one of 80 agents in the nation. There are hundreds and there's thousands of trucking insurance agencies in the nation. We're one of 80 to have some of these guys. We are one of sub 100 to have a lot of our insurance companies. You want to make sure you're with a good trucking insurance agent. Not saying it's got to be me, but it's got to be with somebody who knows what they're doing, has access to reinsurance companies for you guys is reshopping you every year is doing a good job of reshopping you. If they're coming back two weeks before every single year to shoot you a call, hey, time to reshop for your insurance. I'm going to take a look at it. That's a horrible way to do it. They should be doing it 75 days out, 60 days out, 90 days out, whatever the case is months out from you guys renewal. So that way your filings are done on time. You have time to get ready for your down payment. They have time to get their loss runs. They have time to be looked at. All the insurance companies. So some of these insurance companies want to see a submission or a quote request 30 days out. And so they're calling you within 30 days. They're not. Can you quote those guys? So that is a little bit of the process of. Does insurance really get cheaper as you go on? How does that look? What's that? What's it look like? How do you handle those first couple years? Appreciate you guys watching. I'm Hunter with Nelson Insurance agency. Just here to help, educate you guys. Help any way I can. So if you guys would please like and subscribe. So I keep making videos like this. Appreciate guys watching. Thanks.