Your business isn't one truck. Your insurance shouldn't be either.

Start with motor: every truck, rigid or prime mover, and every owned trailer sits on one schedule under one renewal. Each carries the same vehicle-level cover a standalone truck policy provides (accidental damage, fire and theft, liability to others).

Non-owned trailers are the ones you tow but do not own. On the wordings we place, their cover is built around one limit for what you have in tow at a time, not a limit that grows the more trailers you add. One of the wordings we place only covers one non-owned trailer as standard and treats a second as a separate request to the insurer. The other sets one shared limit for however many are in your care at the same time.

We arrange the cargo section on an accidental damage basis, so the insurer pays for accidental loss of or damage to your customer's goods whether or not you are legally liable for it. Nobody has to prove fault against you first, and your own trading conditions do not decide what the insurer pays.

On some of the wordings we place, if you decide not to accept liability for a damaged load, the insurer can defend that decision in court on your behalf, and pay up to a set legal-costs limit as well as anything awarded against you.

Check livestock and chilled freight before you sign. Of the two transport package wordings we place, one covers both on its broader cover option, with cover for stock that wanders off after an accident. The other excludes both unless they are agreed with the insurer and shown on your schedule. Where a package wording will not carry that freight, we can place it on a standalone marine cargo or marine carriers policy instead.

Downtime is optional. Rather than one weekly benefit sized to one truck's fixed costs, you buy a benefit per vehicle, matched to what that vehicle earns. If two trucks are off the road at once from separate incidents, both benefits pay out. The benefit only starts once a damage claim on that vehicle is accepted, and its size is decided at placement, not fixed in any policy.

The packages we place carry their own public and products liability section, covering your legal liability for injury to people and damage to their property arising from how the freight operation runs. That includes a visitor hurt at your depot, a customer's property damaged while goods are moved between the truck and the door, and liability arising from goods you have supplied. The section leaves two exposures to the rest of the package. Liability arising from a registered truck on the road belongs to the motor section, and damage to the freight you are carrying belongs to the cargo section. One incident can involve more than one of those sections at once.

On new trucks or trailers, tell us within 30 days of buying, leasing, or hiring one. The window is written into the wordings we place, and it differs: one gives you 30 days to notify us, the other gives 45. Cover for a vehicle of a similar kind to what you already run is usually automatic from the day you take delivery, but conditional on that notice. Notice within 30 days meets the condition on every wording. On one of the wordings we place, a vehicle you have hired, rather than bought or financed, is not picked up by that automatic cover at all. Each wording caps the value of a vehicle it will hold automatically, so call us before you take the keys.

Both wordings we place let you choose the cargo basis, accidental damage or defined events, and the two are not close. Defined events pays only for a named list, typically fire, flood, collision, and overturning. What falls outside that list differs by wording. On one, theft, loading and unloading, and refrigeration breakdown are each a separate paid extension. On another, the named list already covers theft, and refrigeration cannot be bought back at all.

The second thing that goes wrong is averaging. That is an underinsurance penalty that does not necessarily apply the same way across every section of your own package. The penalty can apply to your fleet's motor cover on one product and not on another, even within products offered by the same insurer. Whether the penalty applies at all depends on which product each part of your risk sits on, not on a single yes-or-no answer for "transport".

A direct quote asks about your vehicles and gives you a number. The quote does not ask which basis the cargo section is written on, whether your freight includes livestock or anything temperature-controlled, or how the downtime benefit on each truck is sized. Those are the questions that decide whether the package pays out the way you assumed. The freight companies you haul for check your cover as well: they want a certificate of currency from us, so cover that does not fit the contract is found out fast.

Shop the same package to several brokers and every broker gets sent the same number, not a better price, as our Truck Insurance page explains.

On the panel we place transport risk with, we are strongest for freight businesses with gross freight earnings under $2 million.

On both of the transport package wordings we place, a driver under 23, or with less than two years in the licence class, adds a further excess on a prime mover or articulated combination. That excess is commonly $5,000 on top of the normal one. Know that before you put a new driver in the seat, not after.

In practice that means several rigid trucks and prime movers under haulage contracts, your own freight as a genuine line of the operation, or both.

Truck Insurance goes deeper on the single-vehicle questions, including settlement basis and driver excess bands, and Motor Fleet Insurance is built for a fleet of utes, vans, or cars.

Assuming every cargo section is the same cover. On some of the wordings we place, the narrow defined-events version leaves out loading and unloading, refrigeration breakdown, or theft, and the gaps differ by wording.

Not checking the livestock or refrigerated question before signing. The two transport package wordings we place treat it differently, so ask early whether a standalone marine policy suits the freight better.

Assuming non-owned trailer cover works the same everywhere. One of the wordings we place only covers a single non-owned trailer as standard unless the insurer agrees to more.

Treating safety and compliance paperwork as someone else's job. Underwriters now ask for that paperwork before they bind cover: does insurance cover a chain of responsibility breach? explains what they ask and why.