The truck is not yours. The lawsuit still is.

Transportation incidents were the leading cause of workplace death in the United States in 2024, accounting for 1,937 of 5,070 fatal work injuries, or 38.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. In Oregon that year the share was half, with 26 of the state's 52 fatal work injuries caused by transportation incidents. Construction as an industry recorded 1,034 fatal injuries nationally, 244 of them transportation incidents, in the CFOI industry detail tables.

Most contractors buy commercial auto for the vehicles with the company name on the door and stop there. The exposure that actually reaches the business is quieter than that. It is the estimator in a personal sedan, the apprentice sent for parts, the lead who drives two crew members to a residential job because it saves taking a second truck. None of those vehicles appear on the policy schedule, and every one of them is being driven for the benefit of the company.

Why the driver's own policy does not end the problem

When an employee crashes their own vehicle on company business, their personal auto policy responds first. That is the correct order and it is where most of these claims quietly end. The trouble starts when the injuries are serious enough to exhaust a personal limit, because the claim does not stop at that point. It moves to the employer under respondeat superior, the long-standing rule that an employer answers for what an employee does within the scope of employment.

The gap is structural rather than unlucky. State minimum limits were set a long time ago and have not kept pace with what a hospital charges. Washington still requires only 25,000 dollars per person, 50,000 per accident and 10,000 for property damage under RCW 46.29.090, and that property damage figure has not moved since 1980. Oregon sits at 25,000, 50,000 and 20,000 under ORS 806.070. Idaho requires 25,000, 50,000 and 15,000 under Idaho Code 49-117. California raised its minimums to 30,000, 60,000 and 15,000 effective January 1, 2025 under SB 1107, the first increase in 58 years. An employee carrying exactly what their state demands holds a limit that one serious injury can clear in an afternoon.

What counts as driving for work

The question that decides these claims is whether the trip was work. The ordinary commute usually is not, but the exceptions are wide enough that contractors get caught by them regularly. California states the rule more plainly than most, because it publishes the instructions its judges read to juries. CACI 3725 tells jurors that where an employer requires an employee to drive to and from work so the vehicle is available for the employer's business, that drive falls inside the scope of employment, and that the requirement may be implied rather than stated out loud.

CACI 3726 covers the pattern every contractor will recognize. An employee running an errand for the employer while commuting is within the scope of employment from the time they start the errand until they return from it, or until they completely abandon the errand for personal reasons. That is the supply house run, the trip to the dump, the swing past a jobsite to check whether a delivery landed. These are the state's own directions to a jury, which makes them a better guide than any general description of the rule.

The California cap that will not help you

California Vehicle Code section 17151 caps a vehicle owner's liability at 15,000 dollars per person, 30,000 per accident and 5,000 for property damage when someone else drives with permission. Contractors sometimes hear about that cap and take some comfort from it. The statute does not offer any, because by its own terms it applies only to liability that does not arise through the relationship of principal and agent or master and servant.

That carve-out is the entire point. Permissive-use owner liability is capped. Employer liability for an employee acting in the scope of employment is not capped by that section at all. The business standing behind the driver is exposed to the full verdict, which is the layer hired and non-owned auto is built to sit underneath.

Where the exposure gets large

The arithmetic is what makes this coverage worth carrying. Take Washington and its 10,000 dollar property damage minimum. One work truck struck at a light can exceed that before anyone is treated for an injury. Add bodily injury at 25,000 dollars per person and the driver's own policy is exhausted early in a serious claim. Everything past that point looks for somebody else to pay it, and the employer who sent the driver is the party standing closest.

At the top end the numbers stop being theoretical. Research published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform examined verdicts of ten million dollars or more returned between 2013 and 2022 and found that auto accident cases carried a median of 21 million dollars and made up 23.2 percent of such verdicts in personal injury and wrongful death cases nationally, rising to 35.2 percent in California. Two caveats belong with those figures and we will state them up front. They are amounts as returned by juries, before any reduction on appeal, and the Institute for Legal Reform is a tort reform advocacy organization, not a neutral statistical agency. Treat them as a direction of travel, not an expected claim value. They still describe a tail a small contractor cannot absorb.

How it gets added, and what to check

On a business owner policy, hired and non-owned auto is usually available by endorsement and often costs less than contractors expect, because the frequency is genuinely low. On a commercial auto policy it comes down to which coverage symbols appear on the declarations page. Symbols are how an auto policy defines whose vehicles it covers. On the standard business auto form, hired autos are symbol 8 and non-owned autos are symbol 9. If neither number appears in the covered-autos column of your declarations page, this coverage is not on the policy, and no amount of reasonableness will put it there after a loss.

Read the declarations page rather than the proposal summary. If a subcontract agreement requires auto liability covering owned, hired and non-owned vehicles, a certificate that can only evidence owned autos gets rejected by the general contractor's compliance desk, usually at the least convenient moment available. That rejection is the most common way a contractor finds out what they actually bought.

What this coverage will not do

It is liability only. It pays what you owe somebody else, and it does nothing for the vehicle that was being driven. If your employee wrecks their own truck on a company errand, that repair is between them and their personal insurer, and if they carry liability only, nobody fixes it. Say that out loud to your crew before it happens, because the assumption runs the other way.

It also does not cover a vehicle you own, lease for longer than a short term, or one titled to the business, which all belong on the commercial auto schedule. It does not cover injury to the employee who was driving, which is a workers compensation question. And it will not respond if the trip was genuinely personal, which is why the scope-of-employment section above matters more than any endorsement on the policy.

A real case, and what it turned on

In Moradi v. Marsh USA, Inc. (2013) 219 Cal.App.4th 886, an insurance broker required a salesperson to use her own car for work and paid her a car allowance. Driving home after using that car for company business the same day, she planned a stop for frozen yogurt on the way to a yoga class, turned across traffic, and struck a motorcyclist. The employer won summary judgment and the Court of Appeal reversed it, holding the required-vehicle exception put her inside the scope of employment and the planned stop was a minor, foreseeable deviation. The California Supreme Court denied review.

Read the outcome precisely: the employer did not lose a verdict, it lost its attempt to get out of the case and had to face trial on vicarious liability. That is the exposure this coverage answers. One limit is worth knowing alongside it. In Newland v. County of Los Angeles (2018) 24 Cal.App.5th 676, a 13.9 million dollar award against an employer was reversed because the employee had no field duties on the day of the crash. The employee has to actually be using the vehicle for work that day, which is a thinner distinction than most owners would want their business resting on.

What it costs, and what moves the number

This is usually one of the least expensive things on a contractor program, and the reason is the rating basis. You do not own the vehicles, so there is nothing to schedule. Carriers rate it off headcount or a flat charge rather than off a vehicle list, and on a business owner policy it often lands as an endorsement rather than as its own policy. We do not publish a range here because the number moves too much with the rest of the program to mean anything on its own.

What moves it: how many people drive for you and whether that is daily or occasional, the liability limit you pick, whether you also rent vehicles and want hired physical damage rather than liability alone, whether an umbrella policy sits above the auto line and follows this coverage, which is extra limit that starts once the auto limit is used up, and your loss history on any auto exposure you already carry. Ask for it priced both as an endorsement and as part of a commercial auto policy, because which one is cheaper depends on what else you are placing.

Questions worth asking before you sign

Ask whether symbols 8 and 9 appear on the declarations page, and what the other symbols on it actually cover. Ask whether hired physical damage is included or whether the coverage is liability only, because renting a truck for a week is a different exposure from an employee errand. Ask whether an umbrella sits above the auto limit and whether it follows the hired and non-owned coverage or excludes it. Ask what happens when a subcontractor's employee drives on your behalf. Then ask your own crew a plainer question, which is who among them has driven a personal vehicle for the company in the last month. The answer is usually longer than the owner expects.