Managing Safety Begins Before the Crash: Why Better Trucking Outcomes Depend on Being Proactive

The U.S. commercial trucking insurance market remains one of the most challenging segments of property/casualty insurance. While many commercial line segments have experienced pricing relief, trucking liability continues to face elevated claims severity, limited excess insurance capacity, litigation pressures, and rising operational costs.

In May, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released new research detailing the rising costs of commercial auto liability insurance in the trucking industry and the risk management strategies that motor carriers use to mitigate these costs.

From 2021 to 2024, liability insurance premium costs rose by 18.6% to 10.2 cents per mile–outpacing consumer inflation by 5.4 percentage points, according to the research. But at the same time, the ATRI reported that heavy-duty truck-involved crash rates fell by 2.6% industry-wide.

“The research confirms that a sharp rise in crash claims expenses fueled this rise in insurance costs: among respondents, per-mile liability losses rose by an average of 33.1% over the same period,” ATRI noted.

Premium costs for excess liability coverage, in particular, rose at an even higher rate.

The ATRI report showed that from 2021 to 2024, per-mile premium costs for the $5-$10 million insurance layer rose by 34% to 1.58 cents, and per-mile premium costs for the $10-$15 million layer rose by 45% to 1.05 cents. “These increases in excess coverage expenses point to the role of rampant litigation in inflating claims costs,” ATRI said.

Conor O’Leary, president of Shelly, Middlebrooks & O’Leary Inc. based in Jacksonville, Florida, a trucking specialist wholesaler broker and managing general agency, said increases in commercial auto rate have slowed in some states during the past 14 months due to tort reform efforts. But with increasing risk of nuclear verdicts and aggressive plaintiff strategies targeting trucking accounts, the sector can expect to see continued headwinds when it comes to the cost of insurance in 2027.

Recent tort reform measures in states such as Florida and Georgia have helped, but not enough to move the needle significantly for the market, he said. “Florida’s done a great job. Georgia’s working on some tort reform, as well, but we have yet to see how that’s going to affect the rates,” he said. “Unfortunately, with inflation costs as high as they are, even though Florida has put in tort reforms, you’re still seeing inflated costs to repair vehicles, inflated costs to repair trucks,” he said.

“There are a lot of legislators looking for decrease in commercial auto rates, and I don’t think that that’s coming,” he said. Given other factors inflating loss costs, tort reform is just “holding the tide,” he said. “So, Florida is holding the tide of let’s say a 10% or 12% rate increase on insurance rates, but it’s not going to start rolling down commercial auto rates” any time soon, he added.

Trucking firms have been hit with significant downturn in freight hauls in 2026, as well. That’s adding more pressure on profit margins, particularly for smaller fleets and owner-operators.

ATRI reported that the average cost of operating a truck reached $2.336 per mile in 2025, a 3.4% increase and the highest level recorded in its annual report.

Also, the uncertainty around fuel costs is leading to uncertainty around load volume, O’Leary said. “As fuel continues to fluctuate and we see such drastic fluctuations (in diesel prices), it’s more difficult for truckers to operate profitably,” he said.

“So, we’ve seen a decrease in over-the-road truck volume for intermodal containers,” he said. Much of that decrease has migrated to rail because rail is more cost effective due to fuel pricing. “So, while we have seen containerized volume remain consistent for 2026, more of that volume has shifted to rail, putting some pressure on trucking markets.” That’s going to continue to be a challenge, O’Leary said.

“We’re still seeing a lot of last-mile delivery, a lot of local delivery where those rails are hauling it from a port to a warehouse, or possibly there’s a truck that’s hauling it from a port to a railhead, which did load on a rail spur and headed out, but the long haul trucking has been affected drastically,” he said.

Another emerging area for liability exposures is brewing from a U.S. Supreme Court decision in May (Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC) that opened the door for heightened litigation exposure against freight brokers if a driver for a contracted transportation carrier gets into a collision. Until May, freight brokers, which connect businesses with trucking firms to haul their products, defended themselves against negligent truck driver hiring claims by arguing that federal law shielded them from state lawsuits for the carriers they selected. But in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected that defense, ruling that such state claims involving motor-vehicle safety can apply to brokers, too.

“I think there’s still a lot that must be sorted out with that case, but I think it’s the first one where the trial bar has gone after effectively the shipper and said, ‘We want to extend liability beyond the trucker. We want to go to the freight forwarder, possibly even to the owner of the goods.’ And so, they’re just going up the chain, which is just going to increase the cost for all consumers,” O’Leary said.

There’s still plenty of uncertainty over how the case will impact the insurance industry but, in his view, it will create changes. “I think that’s going to affect the industry. I don’t know if it’ll affect the industry in the next six months or the next 10 months, but it’s something that the industry needs to pay attention to because it’s going to come from the freight forwarding side into the industry,” he said. “There have been other attempts to try to ‘reach up and grab’ the freight forwarder, but I don’t think they had been successful. But this is the first precedent-setting case where they were successful.”

The best thing that transportation firms can do to improve safety and see better outcomes in commercial auto and trucking is to be proactive in managing their risks, said Brandon Wiseman, owner and president of Trucksafe Consulting and a partner with Childress Law.

“I’ve been preaching this for years,” he said. A substantial factor in rising litigation against trucking firms is that fleets are not proactive enough when it comes to safety and compliance programs, Wiseman said. “Too often, we get calls from fleets after something terrible has happened, whether it be a highway accident or a DOT audit,” he said. “At that point, there’s only so much you can do about those things if you haven’t had the controls in place ahead of time to manage that risk.”

For example, if fleet management didn’t have the correct policies and procedures in place for driver qualification or they weren’t properly keeping track of drivers’ hours, there is very little that can be done to help the firm through a bad situation at that point, Wiseman added. “I can’t overstress enough the importance of being proactive,” he said.

“Take a close look at your compliance program ahead of time and do what you can now to prevent, or at least mitigate, some of these issues that tend to balloon into significant jury verdicts,” he advised. That includes keeping close track of driver qualifications and having a good process for identifying fatigued or distracted drivers out on the road. “All of these things can be mitigated if you take the time, ahead of time, to put controls in place.”

He also stressed the importance of holding drivers accountable when mistakes are made.

When using risk management tools such as telematics and cameras, fleets need to have written policies in place for how they will use the data to improve safety and outcomes, said Tyler Biddle, partner at Childress Law PLLC., a boutique transportation law firm. “How are we using the data? How are we coaching on the findings?” From an employment perspective, it’s important to implement procedures for what to do with the data the organization is tracking on driver behavior, he said. “If we’re using this technology and you are finding certain violations, have that written down somewhere. Or if you have it written down, follow the procedures so that if you have a driver that keeps doing the same thing over and over, well, at some point, you have to follow your policy and either terminate or provide progressive discipline, things like that.”

Wiseman added that cameras and event recorders are great risk management tools that get the most attention, but less high-tech risk management can go a long way in helping fleets improve safety outcomes. “One (tool) that gets less attention, but not enough fleets in my opinion are leveraging, is something called continuous license monitoring,” he said.

“If you’re a fleet that is just following the letter of the law, and the letter of the law tells you that you have to check a driver’s driving record once a year,” that’s a risk, he said. “So, you’re running motor vehicle reports once a year to make sure that they have a valid and up-to-date license and looking at their violations…then you’re relying on the drivers to tell you if something happens to their license in the gap between those yearly MVR pulls,” he said. “But if a driver loses their license for one reason or another–failing to pay child support or missing a court date–they’re disincentivized to tell you about that, and so it leaves a real gap. You end up with fleets having drivers out there operating with either a revoked license or a downgraded CDL, and that’s a huge exposure.”

How firms coach and train driver behavior makes a difference in safety outcomes as well, said Phillip Wigginton, a senior transportation risk consultant in the Texas region of HUB’s Risk Services Division.

“I had a conversation with a fleet several years ago about coaching drivers. They just couldn’t figure out why they kept having crash frequency issues,” he said. “They had all the tools, they had great training. So, I asked the safety director, ‘Hey, how do you coach your drivers?’ He says, ‘Well, I tell them if you do it again, then I’m going to fire you.'”

“Well, that’s not really coaching. That’s threatening,” Wigginton said. Threatening termination is not going to help. “Every company in the world is looking for good drivers. They can go next door and probably make more money.” But having a culture where the driver feels supported during the coaching will help safety outcomes.

“Culture is absolutely critical,” Wigginton said. “It does make a difference.”

To hear more about commercial auto and fleet risk management, watch Insurance Journal’s Risky Future Virtual Summit on November 17. For more information, or to register for the free event, visit: www.riskyfuture.com.