Your fleet grew one vehicle at a time. Make sure your cover grew with it.

It does not include CTP, the compulsory cover for injury to other people that is bundled into vehicle registration in most states; if that is the question you actually came here with, especially for a heavier vehicle in the fleet, Truck Insurance covers how CTP works in more depth.

On some of the wordings we place, the choice that shapes the whole policy is who is allowed to drive: named-driver cover lists each authorised driver individually, which insurers generally price more favourably because they know exactly who is behind the wheel; any-driver cover lets anyone meeting your policy's licence and age criteria drive any fleet vehicle, which costs more but removes the constant admin of updating driver lists as staff change, take leave, or share vehicles across shifts. Either way, whoever is actually driving at the time of a claim carries their own age and experience loading: on the wordings we place, that commonly starts around $500 to $850 extra for a young or newly licensed driver in an ordinary car or ute, on top of the standard excess, is $2,000 for a driver under 23 on one of the fleet wordings we place, and can run into the thousands on a more expensive or heavier vehicle. On some of the wordings we place it is waived for things like windscreen damage, theft, hail or storm damage, or damage while the vehicle was parked, and on others it applies to every accepted claim whatever the cause, so it is worth checking which basis your own policy runs on rather than assuming either way.

Vehicles come and go. A properly structured fleet policy handles this through mid-term endorsement: on the wordings we place, a newly bought, leased or hired vehicle of a similar type to what you already run is automatically covered from the day you take it. The wordings we place allow between 45 and 60 days written notice depending on the policy, and we ask for it within 30 so the schedule and premium are updated for the rest of the policy year. We would rather you tell us the day it happens than sit on it. If anything goes wrong with a vehicle before it is properly on the schedule, you want zero ambiguity about whether it was covered, not a timing argument with an insurer.

Commercial motor cover often reaches past the vehicles you actually own. On the commercial motor wordings we place through the Steadfast platform, if a staff member uses their own car for work and has an accident, the policy typically covers the business's liability for that too. This runs to the general liability limit shown on your schedule rather than a small separate figure, so if you are on a fleet policy, check your own wording rather than assuming a set dollar amount. It is easy to assume "the fleet policy" only means the vehicles on the schedule and miss this gap entirely.

Insurers do not price each vehicle in your fleet in isolation. They look at your fleet's claims history, commonly the last three to five years, frequency more than any single dollar figure, at-fault claims more than not-at-fault ones, and price the whole fleet off that pattern. That means one driver with a run of at-fault claims can push up the renewal cost for a fleet that otherwise runs cleanly, and most owners never see it coming because nobody explained the fleet is rated as a group, not as individuals.

The second risk sits in the gap between what actually happened to your fleet and what your insurer has been told. A vehicle bought, sold, or moved to a different use case needs to be reported and endorsed onto (or off) the schedule. Skip that step, even briefly, and you can find a "covered" vehicle is not properly on the policy at all when something goes wrong, or that you are still paying for a vehicle the business no longer owns.

Sometimes the fix is not managing that driver inside the fleet policy at all. If one driver's history is genuinely dragging the whole fleet's renewal up, the better move can be taking that one vehicle off the fleet schedule and placing it on its own commercial motor policy, so that driver's claims stay their own problem rather than becoming everyone else's. That is a deliberate broking decision, not a workaround, and it only works if someone is actually watching the fleet's claims pattern closely enough to notice it needs doing.

Both risks are entirely manageable, but only if someone is actually watching the fleet between renewals rather than opening the policy once a year to sign it.

If a van or truck is stolen, the work booked for it does not stop. On both fleet wordings we compared, a hire vehicle is paid after theft only, not after an accident, and neither pays for the work lost while a vehicle is off the road. On one of them, hire does not start until 7 days after you notify the theft. We check which wording your fleet is on, so you can plan for that first week before a claim tests it.

Pricing options can change past 15 insured items. One of the two lets a fleet with more than 15 insured items, in some circumstances, buy options priced on its own claims record, a burning cost premium adjustment or a claims experience discount, as well as an aggregate excess or stop loss. The other offers an aggregate excess only. We check whether those options are open to your fleet and whether they suit it. Speak to one of our brokers about which applies to yours.

The vehicles on the schedule stop matching the vehicles in the yard, the driver list stops matching who is actually on shift, and the renewal arrives as a number with no context attached to it.

We treat the fleet policy as something that needs managing between renewals, not just at them. Every year, not every three, we take the policy back to the market and put the holding insurer on notice: match a fair result or we move the business. Treated respectfully, insurers work with us on that, because a broker who remarkets properly and negotiates fairly is worth keeping on the books. When a renewal comes in higher, we go through the claims history with the insurer and argue the context a raw loading skips: whether a claim was genuinely not-at-fault, whether it was a one-off against an otherwise clean record, whether the driver involved is even still with the business.

We also structure the placement itself around how claims actually behave. Light vehicles, utes, vans and cars, and heavy motor go on separate policies rather than one blended schedule, because the claims experience on the two is different enough that treating them as a single risk works against a fleet owner over time. That is a deliberate choice we have refined over 15 years of placing fleet and commercial motor business, not a default setting applied without thinking. It also shows up in the fine print: some direct-to-business motor products apply an extra underinsurance penalty on vehicles over two tonnes if the insured value is a little light, on top of the shortfall itself. One of the fleet wordings we currently place carries no such penalty on any vehicle: you are paid the lesser of the sum insured or the vehicle's value. The other applies one to every vehicle, reducing a repair claim when the sum insured is below 80% of the vehicle's market value. A write-off is still paid at the lesser of the two.

That is the difference a fleet with several moving parts actually needs: someone watching the parts, not just renewing the total.

This is built for a business running a genuine fleet of vehicles as part of how it operates, not as its core freight business: a trades business with a van for every employee, a delivery or courier operation, a professional services firm with pool cars or reps on the road, or a business that started with one work vehicle and has quietly grown into a fleet without anyone restructuring the insurance to match.

That 15-or-more figure is a general rule, not a law. Different insurers set different thresholds for what counts as a fleet, and for a genuinely claims-free client, keeping vehicles on commercial motor policies rather than folding everything into a fleet structure is sometimes the cheaper, better option even as the vehicle count grows, not a lesser one, and it is something we do regularly. Working out which structure actually suits your business, and moving between them as your claims history and vehicle count change, is exactly the kind of ongoing comparison a broker runs and a single online quote cannot.

If your vehicles are rigid trucks or prime movers carrying freight as the core of the business, with carriers cargo insurance and downtime to manage, the Transport Operators Insurance page covers how motor, cargo and income cover come together as one package. One or two trucks without freight contracts behind them still sit naturally with Truck Insurance.

Treating the policy as set and forget. A fleet policy set up three years ago for the vehicles and drivers you had then does not automatically stay accurate as the business adds vehicles, changes drivers, or changes what those vehicles are used for. Nobody reviews what nobody looks at, and the gap between the schedule and reality is exactly where claims get complicated.

Assuming any-driver cover means literally anyone can drive. Any-driver cover removes the need to name each driver individually, but it does not remove the underlying requirement that whoever is driving actually holds a valid, appropriate licence. Handing the keys to someone unlicensed or under-qualified for the vehicle is still a problem any-driver cover was never designed to solve.

Not checking a new driver's licence history, and not telling us about it. At claim time, the insurer can request the driver's licence history direct from the transport department, on the department's own letterhead, and an undisclosed history discovered that way is exactly how an otherwise straightforward claim falls apart. Check the licence history of every new driver before they get the keys, and disclose what you find to us, so it is on the record before a claim tests it rather than after.

Not reporting a vehicle change straight away. Buying, selling or repurposing a vehicle without getting it onto or off the schedule promptly is one of the easiest ways to end up either uninsured for a vehicle you thought was covered, or paying for one you no longer run.

Ignoring the risk management insurers actually reward. Documented driver induction, maintenance schedules, and increasingly telematics or dashcam evidence are things insurers look at, and reward with better terms, particularly as fleets grow. A fleet with nothing to show here is pricing itself on reputation alone.

Accepting a renewal loading without asking why. A higher renewal usually has a specific cause, a claim, a change in fleet composition, a market shift, not just "insurance going up." The biggest gap we see when we review a new client's existing policy is not any of the mistakes above, it is a broker who only takes the fleet back to the market every three years instead of every one, so the holding insurer never has a reason to stay sharp. Asking the question, and having someone who actually remarkets the fleet every year and can argue the answer, is the difference between paying a loading and understanding one.