If your truck is off the road, so is your income. Your policy needs to know that.

Quick answerTruck insurance covers your prime mover or heavy vehicle for accidental damage and theft, but on the wordings we place, it is built from several separate products, not one bundle: the vehicle itself, your income while it is off the road, your legal liability for the freight you are carrying, and public liability. Skip one and you are simply uninsured for that risk, not "mostly covered."

Before any of that, there is a basic tier to get right, the same way there is on a car. A truck can be insured comprehensive (accidental damage, fire and theft, plus your liability to others), third party fire and theft, or third party property damage only, which pays for damage you cause to someone else's property and nothing of your own. Everything below assumes comprehensive-style cover, because that is what actually protects a business whose income depends on the truck moving.

Start with the vehicle. On the transport insurers we place cover with, the normal position for most trucks, including the large majority of what we actually place, is sum insured or market value at the time of loss, whichever is lower, worked out after the accident using comparable sales, not a fixed number you settle on up front.

True agreed value, a locked-in figure agreed with the insurer before anything happens, exists on only one of the wordings on our panel, and even then it is generally offered for prime movers specifically, not as a market-wide default. On a financed truck, the detail that decides whether a write-off leaves you square with the bank is whether your policy also carries a separate finance-payout top-up benefit, an extension some of our transport wordings include specifically to close the gap between the settlement and what you still owe.

Buy a new truck partway through the year and, on the wordings we place, it is usually covered automatically from the day you take delivery, provided it is a similar type of vehicle to what is already insured and you let us know promptly.

We ask for written notice within 30 days, and we would rather hear the day it happens: the exact window depends on which product it sits on, and you want zero ambiguity if something happens before the paperwork catches up.

The trailer is not automatically part of that same conversation. A prime mover and the trailer behind it are commonly insured on different terms: an owned trailer sits on your own schedule and gets the same treatment as the truck, while a trailer you do not own but are simply towing is typically covered under its own automatic benefit, capped at a set dollar figure that varies by insurer, and on some wordings that cap applies per trailer while on others it is one limit shared across every trailer you happen to be towing at the time. Worth knowing before you hook up more than one at once.

Next is downtime, and this is where a truck policy genuinely diverges from a car policy. On a general commercial motor policy, the closest thing available is an optional hire-cost reimbursement extension, which pays back what you actually spend hiring a replacement vehicle, up to a daily cap, for a set number of days.

On the dedicated transport package wordings built for freight operators, downtime works completely differently: it is a weekly cash benefit you select in advance, paid once your damage claim is accepted, whether or not you actually hire a replacement truck.

For a solo owner-driver, we commonly place this somewhere around $1,000 a week, sized to cover the truck's fixed costs, loan repayments and insurance, rather than gross freight income, though the figure itself, and how long it runs, is a decision made at placement, not a number fixed in any policy.

If you are the only driver, this is the section that actually keeps the business afloat while the truck is being repaired, and it is also the section owner-drivers skip most often, usually because nobody explained it was optional, or that it works nothing like a hire car.

Then there is the freight question: are you legally responsible for other people's goods under a haulage contract (carriers legal liability), carrying your own goods (goods in transit, also called marine cargo), or both. Get this wrong and a load claim can come out of your own pocket regardless of who was at fault.

Around those sits public liability, and recovering your own damaged truck to a repairer after an accident, which on the wordings we place is not a separately limited item at all, it is simply folded into the vehicle damage claim itself. The genuinely different scenario, and the one that does carry its own cap, is a truck that gets bogged or stuck with no actual damage, that retrieval is a distinct, separately limited benefit. Knowing which situation you are actually in matters more than hunting for a towing limit that, for an accident, does not exist on our panel.

Quick answerThe difference a broker makes on truck cover isn't the price on the quote, it's asking who owns the freight, whether the prime mover is financed and what happens to your income if it's written off, then working one insurer panel hard rather than letting the same risk be quoted through several doors.

An online truck quote asks you for the vehicle details and gives you a price. It does not ask who owns the freight on your tray, whether your prime mover is financed, or what happens to your income if it is written off. Those three questions are the ones that decide whether the policy pays when something goes wrong, and a form cannot ask them.

Here is something most truck owners are never told: shopping the same policy to several brokers at once does not get you a better price, it gets every broker the same price. Once an insurer sees the same risk quoted through more than one door, there is nothing left to negotiate, and every quote lands in the same place. The better outcome comes from going to one broker who genuinely works the panel, playing insurers off against each other on your behalf, not from spreading the enquiry around and hoping one comes back cheaper. That is how heavy motor pricing actually works in this market, and it is the opposite of what shopping around feels like it should achieve.

From there, the work is in the detail, not the price. If your prime mover is financed, we check whether the wording you are on carries a finance-payout top-up benefit, an extension some of our transport products include specifically to close the gap between a total-loss settlement and what you still owe, rather than assuming agreed value is the answer when it is only available on one wording on our panel.

If you are carrying freight under a haulage agreement, the cargo cover needs to match what you are actually liable for. We have placed enough of this business to know what the major freight companies expect, commonly around $1 million of carriers cargo cover, and we know what to ask you at quote stage.

There is a built-in backstop too: the company you haul for will want a certificate of currency from us, so a sum insured that is not fit for purpose gets found out fast, well before a claim tests it. And because transport is a specialist market, several of the products that fit this risk properly, weekly income cover structured as its own product, cargo liability written correctly, come from insurers most people have never heard of, reached through a broker's panel rather than a home page.

That is the whole difference. Not a cheaper number. A broker who works your risk instead of just quoting it.

What does an insurance broker actually do when you make a claim?

When a Queensland transport operator faced a total loss across a prime mover, trailer and forklift at the worst possible time, CIB took the admin off their plate, pushed the insurer for a fast settlement across all three units, made sure the people affected were looked after first, and had the settlement paid straight to the financier. Claims service, at the moment a client can least handle it, is what a broker is actually for. The full story of what that looks like sits on Claims Management.

Quick answerThe mistakes that cost the most are the same few every time: assuming CTP covers the truck, shopping one risk to several brokers, skipping downtime cover or assuming it works like a hire car, assuming a settlement will clear the finance owing, not saying whose freight is on the tray, and treating safety and compliance paperwork as someone else's job.

Assuming CTP is enough. Compulsory Third Party insurance is real cover, but it only ever pays for injury to other people. It does not pay to repair or replace your truck, it does not cover the freight on it, and it does not replace a single dollar of income while the truck is off the road. CTP is compulsory because the law requires it, not because it protects your business.

Shopping the same policy to multiple brokers. It feels like due diligence. In heavy motor insurance it usually backfires. Once an insurer sees your risk quoted through more than one broker, there is no discount left to give, every broker gets sent the same number, because the insurer has nothing left to negotiate over. The stronger move is the opposite of what feels intuitive: pick one broker and let them work the whole panel hard on your behalf, playing insurers off against each other for a genuine discount, instead of spreading the enquiry around and having every quote land in the same place.

Skipping downtime cover, or assuming it works like a hire car. If you are the only driver, a written-off or repair-bound truck is a written-off income stream too, for however long the repair or replacement takes. On a dedicated transport package, downtime is not a hire-car reimbursement, it is a weekly cash benefit you select in advance that pays out regardless of whether you actually hire a replacement truck, and we commonly see it placed around $1,000 a week for a solo owner-driver. It is optional, which means it is often the first thing cut, usually by whoever is buying on price rather than on what happens next.

Assuming a market-value or sum-insured settlement will clear the finance owing. On the vast majority of truck policies, including most of what we place, the truck is insured for sum insured or market value, whichever is lower, and that is completely normal, not a corner-cutting choice. The real mistake is not knowing whether your policy also carries a finance-payout top-up benefit, an extension some transport wordings include specifically to close the gap between a total-loss settlement and what you still owe. Without it, a written-off truck on a growing loan can leave you short. With it, the shortfall is largely covered. Nobody tells you which one you have got unless you ask.

Not telling us whose freight is on the tray. Carrying someone else's goods under a contract and carrying your own goods are two different insurance problems. Answering this question properly, once, at the start, is what decides whether a freight claim actually gets paid.

Treating safety and compliance paperwork as someone else's job. Heavy vehicle regulation in Australia is moving toward outcome-based safety duties rather than a fixed checklist, and insurers are starting to ask about fatigue management, safety systems and compliance evidence before they bind cover, particularly for operators working inside tightly regulated freight chains. An operator with nothing to show here is not just a compliance risk, they are becoming a harder risk to place.