In the UK, both truck insurance and HGV insurance are generally lumped together since most trucks on British roads are classed as heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). Some insurers offer policies that are marketed as lorry, truck and HGV insurance, too. Note that there is very little distinction – for the purposes of insurance, at least – between the term truck and lorry. As such, they can be used interchangeably. However, HGV is a more strictly defined term under UK regulations. The term is primarily used to distinguish larger – or heavier – lorries from light goods vehicles (LGVs). To be clear, light goods vehicles are defined as twin-axled vans that do not exceed 3.5 tonnes in weight and which typically have no rear or side windows – something that distinguishes them from, for example, larger SUVs. On the other hand, HGVsare defined as either having more than two axles or weighing anything from 3.5 to 18 tonnes. According to the Department for Transport smaller two-axle lorries are between 3.5 to 7.5 tonnes in weight while larger two-axle lorries are over 7.5 tonnes.
It is important for any commercial driver or operator to understand what constitutes a truck, an HGV or an LGV. This is so because the right sort of license will be needed by the driver concerned if he or she is to take the vehicle on the public road in the UK. It is crucial for the purpose of insurance, too. For example, if one of your drivers were to pick up a consignment from a depot in an HGV but they only had insurance for an LGV, then they could easily end up breaking the law. Equally, truck insurance ought to be tailored to meet the specific needs of the vehicle concerned since it is possible to over-insure yourself, especially if you – or your firm – only operate smaller trucks or light goods vehicles. Insurance for a six-axled articulated truck or a lorry with a drawbar is likely to cost more than insuring a twin-axled goods vehicle, for example.
Read on to find out more about truck and HGV insurance in the UK today. This will help you to gain a much better understanding of what sort of insurance you will need given your type of commercial operations and how the industry is geared up to meet the needs of heavy goods vehicle operators whether they only drive on UK roads or internationally, as well.
What Is Truck and HGV Insurance?
To begin with, truck and HGV insurance is a financial product. You pay for a policy that means you will be able to make a financial claim in the event of a loss or an accident. In this sense, truck insurance is just like conventional car insurance. Importantly, you need truck insurance if you are driving a truck on British roads for any reason. In other words, private owners of trucks and lorries who don’t drive them for commercial gain will still need adequate insurance for their vehicles. In short, conventional van or car insurance usually won’t be enough for even light goods vehicles and this will almost certainly be the case for any vehicle that is 7.5 tonnes or more.
Secondly, drivers of HGVs don’t just need truck insurance to be legal on the road but to protect them against commercial financial losses. Trucks and lorries constitute significant financial investments for any commercial operator. Therefore, losses from damage and theft can cripple any road haulage firm. HGV insurance should cover the driver against personal injury that occurs while driving as well as the truck itself, for example, if another road user were to crash into it. Most HGV insurance policies also cover the theft of such vehicles so long as they have been properly secured, that is.
There again, comprehensive truck insurance will typically provide additional cover that both owner-drivers and fleet operators can benefit from. These differ from policy to policy so you will have to check on the individual clauses within any proposed contract you are considering taking out. That said, many comprehensive truck insurance policies will offer cover for things like losses of personal belongings from the cab, keys being lost, broken windows, theft of audiovisual equipment from the cab and losses of electronic navigational equipment. More basic HGV insurance tends to only cover damage to the truck itself and third-party liability. To be clear, third-party cover means you can expect to make a claim if you or your driver causes damage with his or her truck to anyone else’s property including the vehicles of other road users.
Does HGV Insurance Differ From Truck Insurance?
In the UK, the terms HGV insurance and truck insurance basically mean the same thing. The same goes for lorry insurance which some insurers still prefer to use. However, this does not mean that an insurance policy designed for HGV operators will always be the same as an insurance policy for truck operators. Why? This comes down to what constitutes a truck and what is an HGV. To be clear, the term ‘truck’ or ‘lorry’ has no particular distinction in the UK although the Department for Transport tends to use the word lorry to mean any heavy goods vehicle that is larger or heavier than a light goods vehicle. Therefore, you may need truck insurance for a truck you use for commercial deliveries, for example, even though it isn’t officially classed as an HGV. Anything beneath 3.5 tonnes in weight with two axles would fall into this category which would mean the majority of Luton vans as well as numerous dropside trucks and even some smaller flatbeds.
For the most part, operators will know that they require HGV insurance because the vehicles they are using in their business are officially classed as such. Even smaller, two-axle lorries that are between 3.5 tonnes and 7.5 tonnes in weight require an HGV license to drive on the road legally. Simply put, therefore, if you need a driver with an HGV license to drive your truck, then you will also need HGV insurance that covers such a vehicle, whether or not the policy happens to be marketed as truck insurance.
What Is Commercial Truck Insurance?
Nearly all truck insurance products on sale in the UK’s insurance market today are commercial policies. Commercial truck insurance is designed to offer financial protection to all types of commercial hauliers and fleet operators in the country, large and small. Some commercial truck insurance is suited to owner-drivers who take on haulage work usually on a sub-contracted basis from a larger logistical operator. Not only will it typically cover the vehicle itself while it is in the course of its commercial activities but such policies also protect against third-party claims, too. This might mean people who might have been injured following an accident or who suffered financial loss from damage caused to their vehicle, for instance.
In short, commercial truck insurance is a type of insurance policy that is geared up to meet the needs of road haulage firms and individual commercial operators. However, not everyone who drives trucks and HGVs on British roads is a commercial operator. Some people own such vehicles in a purely private capacity. Therefore, some of the commercial risk coverage that is included in commercial truck insurance may not be needed by private owners. Standard rather than comprehensive truck insurance may be more suitable under such circumstances, especially if the lorry in question isn’t on the road a great deal. The same goes for trucks that are driven recreationally from time to time that do not have commercial loads being conveyed by them.
Does Truck Insurance Cover All Commercial Uses?
No, typical truck insurance will not cover every sort of commercial use for an HGV. If a container lorry is used to take goods overseas on a roll-on, roll-off ferry service, for example, then you will need to check whether or not you need further cover, usually in the form of marine cargo insurance. Hauliers who unload shipping containers at ports only to have another of their trucks collect the goods after the sailing will usually need HGV insurance in both locations as well as marine cargo insurance unless this is already provided by the shipping firm that is used.
Equally, picking up cars and other vehicles, such as with a breakdown recovery service will not be insured under most lorry insurance policies on the market in the UK at the moment. For such work, including the use of vehicle transporters, operators should seek out a more specialist policy type, commonly referred to as vehicle or car transporter insurance. It is also important to note that truck insurance is designed to protect haulage firms in terms of their drivers, their trucks and any public liability that might arise from accidents on the road. However, this does not necessarily mean that their clients’ cargoes will be covered when in transit, as well. Although this is something that differs from policy to policy, many HGV insurance products don’t cover the theft or destruction of cargo loads. For this, some form of goods in transit insurance will be needed. Most haulage companies in the UK, therefore, have a separate haulage freight insurance policy to cover such eventualities on top of their truck insurance.
Why Is Truck Insurance More Expensive?
The fact is that truck or HGV insurance is more expensive than many other types of vehicle insurance policies that you can find in the UK these days. There are sound reasons for this, however. Before we examine why truck insurance costs as much as it does, it is worth noting that there are ways to reduce your insurance costs as a commercial HGV operator. For example, numerous lorry insurance policies allow you to set the excess level in a way that you find affordable. The higher it is, then the greater the threshold a claim would need to reach before you will receive a pay out. However, higher excesses result in lower premiums, thereby making truck insurance more affordable. In this regard, truck insurance is very much like other vehicle insurance products.
Nevertheless, HGV insurance is more costly than other types of vehicle coverage. One of the primary reasons for this is that lorries and trucks cost so much more than vans, motorbikes and cars on average. Excepting rare or vintage cars, writing off a fairly new vehicle following an accident would likely cost tens of thousands of pounds. However, a typical HGV will be many times over this sort of figure even if the truck in question wasn’t particularly new. In other words, truck insurance costs more because trucks themselves are more costly. When it comes to commercial haulage work, more miles are driven than with typical cars and vans, too. Long-distance hauliers spend hours and hours each day on the road which implies greater risk. Even if the driver is skilled and takes regular breaks, insurers have to consider greater risk exposure simply because of the amount of time lorries spend undertaking their commercial activities.
There again, the loads that trucks and lorries convey are often heavy. In turn, this makes it harder for drivers to brake and to swerve around hazards. Again, this is something that insurers need to take into account when they set out their pricing. Note that bearing cargo doesn’t just make it potentially more likely that an accident on the road will occur but that, if one were to occur, the greater weights involved will often lead to more damage. Greater damage will typically lead to higher claims being made by both policyholders and third parties. Indeed, personal injury claimants can often be of the most serious kinds following road traffic accidents when HGVs are involved. Although the insurance industry tries to make truck insurance as competitive as possible on the whole, it should be noted that over half of the fatal accidents that occur on British motorways each year involve one or more HGVs. Given this telling statistic, it is easier to understand why the pricing of commercial truck insurance needs to reflect such risk exposure.
Can You Get Temporary HGV Insurance?
Yes, it is possible to obtain temporary HGV insurance from some insurers. This is a good way for operators to save money on their insurance overheads if they only take on work from time to time. However, given that most trucks on the road are used as an asset to make money, the more they are in action, the better it tends to be. Therefore, annual HGV and truck insurance tends to be the norm in the industry. Indeed, some insurance companies – even those that provide short-term or temporary van or courier insurance – do not provide temporary cover for HGV operators. It is always worth looking at the details of an annual truck insurance policy, however. This is because if you think that you may need to stop driving for a while in the next twelve months or you may decide to alter your business model in some way, knowing that penalties you may face – if any – for cancelling your policy midway through the year would be beneficial.
Is Fleet HGV Insurance Better for Multiple Lorries?
This depends on your circumstances as a commercial operator. Typically, haulage firms with two or more lorries will benefit from a fleet insurance policy that covers all of their HGVs and drivers. Such insurance policies usually offer fleet managers a great deal of operational flexibility when arranging for different drivers to operate different trucks. They also tend to include employer’s liability insurance, something that HGV insurance designed for owner-operators who are self-employed may not need. In addition to the operational versatility afforded by fleet HGV insurance, this sort of policy is likely to be more cost-effective compared to insuring each truck individually.
However, it should be underlined that this is general advice and not something that could be said of all fleets and all insurance policies. Please note that some – but not all – fleet insurance policies restrict which drivers can drive your fleet. This may be because of the sort of license they hold, their age or whether or not they are allowed to drive one of your trucks on overseas roads. Again, checking before you commit to such a policy is highly advisable.
Truck and HGV Insurance in Summary
Truck and HGV insurance may amount to the same thing from a commercial point of view but not call trucks – including pick-up trucks, for example – require either an HGV license or HGV insurance to drive on British roads. Usually, truck insurance provides commercial operators with coverage that extends to:
– Accidents that occur on the road with or without commercial loads on board.
– Injuries to drivers and third parties as a result of accidents.
– Theft or damage caused to the truck including its rig.
– Cover for all employed drivers under fleet policy arrangements.
– Protection both in the UK and overseas for qualified drivers.
– Most commercial loads, except certain hazardous goods and vehicle transportation.
– Vehicles over 3.5 tonnes in weight (trucks over 7.5 tonnes or with more than two axles may need some additional cover).