Next time you take a look at your commercial truck insurance policy find out if your insurance carrier will offer you a combined deductible. It usually doesn’t cost much to add, but it can save you a lot of many in the event of an accident. A combined deductible is for insured’s that operate more than one piece of equipment at a time, or insured’s that have exposure to losses from multiple lines of coverage. For example, if you have a truck and a trailer, most policies will make you pay a separate deductible for each unit, one for the truck and one a separate deductible for the trailer. For the second example regarding the multiple lines of coverage another possible scenario could be if you drove a box truck, or bobtail dry van, you would be insuring the truck itself and also insuring the cargo inside the truck. You have multiple lines of coverage, physical damage coverage, and cargo insurance coverage. In most cases you would have a separate deductible for each line.
With a combined deductible you only pay one deductible for all lines of coverage, or for all vehicles in each occurrence. If you have a $1,000 deductible you would only pay one deductible instead of two in both the examples listed above. This may not seem like a big deal, but in many cases you can get the combined deductible coverage for as little as $20 per year. You can see the advantage, especially if you are a commercial truck driver that is pulling two trailers with cargo insurance. In this particular instance you could be out a deductible for the truck, for each trailer, and for the cargo, if you didn’t have a combined deductible and had the most common $1,000 ded. you would be out $4,000 in the event of an accident!
Something you might want to ask your insurance agent about. Most carriers will offer this coverage now as it is becoming more and more popular. Another thing to look out for is a liability deductible or a PD deductible (Property DamageDeductible). Many newer policies have added this deductible in the fine print of the policy. I have had clients switch over to companies they believed were cheaper than the coverage I was offering, unbeknownst to them they were quoted lesser coverage! A liability deductible requires that you pay a separate or additional deductible if you do damage to another person, a PD deductible requires that you pay a separate deductible if you do damage to someone else’s property. You can see how this all adds up…lots of money out of your pocket in the event of an accident, which is fine if you understand what you are getting into. Several of my larger clients opted for a PD deductible this year to save some money, but for the average independent owner operator, it usually is not worth the risk.
