Contingent Auto Liability

Why brokers get named at all

You do not own the truck, employ the driver, or control the route. Plaintiff’s counsel names you regardless — and increasingly leads with negligent selection: you should have known this carrier’s safety record, you should have caught the lapsed filing, you should not have tendered a load to an operator with that out-of-service rate. Whether or not the theory survives, defending it costs money from day one, and the carrier’s $1,000,000 auto policy is frequently exhausted long before your exposure is resolved.

Contingent auto liability responds when the hauling carrier’s auto liability does not — the policy was cancelled, the filing was stale, the insurer denied, the limit is gone — and you are left holding a bodily injury claim arising from a load you arranged.

Contingent means contingent

This coverage is built to sit behind a real primary policy. It is not a substitute for requiring your carriers to carry auto liability, and it is not designed to respond where you tendered a load to a carrier with no coverage at all. Underwriters know the difference between a broker whose process failed once and a broker who does not have one, and they price accordingly.

Your vetting file is the underwriting file

More than any other line on this site, contingent auto liability is priced on procedure. Expect to answer, in writing:

• Which vetting or monitoring platform you use — SAFER directly, Carrier411, RMIS, Highway, another third party, or internal process.
• Which screens you actually apply: safety rating, crash history, out-of-service percentages, CSA BASIC scores, insurance filing verification, operating authority status, and any history of revoked or suspended authority.
• Whether you have a written carrier selection policy — and who is authorized to approve an exception to it.
• Your minimum operating-history threshold for a new carrier, in months.
• How often you re-vet: per load, monthly, quarterly, annually.
• The share of your carriers pulled from the spot market or load boards, the share hauling on a signed broker–carrier agreement, and the share that are first-time carriers.

A brokerage that can answer these crisply is a different risk from one that answers them vaguely, at identical revenue. If your process is good but undocumented, write it down before you submit — it is the cheapest premium reduction available to you.

What we need to quote it

MC and DOT numbers, years in authority, monthly load volume, equipment and commodity mix, top states and lane corridors, your full carrier vetting procedure, active carrier count and the share that are new, your broker–carrier agreement, and five years of loss runs valued within 60 days.