Car shipping insurance

Before the car goes up the ramp the driver records what is already wrong with it: stone chips, curb rash, a cracked mirror housing, the state of the bumper corners. That record is the baseline, and it is generous to the carrier by default, because anything missed from it becomes damage that was supposedly already there. At delivery the same sheet is read the other way round. Anything new has to be written on it before a signature goes anywhere near it. Deliveries happen in the evening, in rain, on a street where a truck cannot linger, which is exactly when paperwork gets signed clean out of hurry.

Cargo cover names a limit, and the limit is the part to ask about rather than accept. The question is whether it applies per vehicle or per occurrence for the whole trailer, because a per-occurrence figure that reads comfortably against your car alone is shared with every other car on the deck. The deductible is the carrier's to absorb, though arguments about who absorbs it are ordinary. Items left inside sit outside the cover entirely. The gap worth asking about is between what a company says is covered and the ceiling the policy actually names.

A company saying it is fully insured is describing a document you have not seen. The certificate of insurance names the insurer, the policy number and the date the cover ends, and it carries more weight arriving from the insurer's office than as a forwarded image. Filings are also public: FMCSA's licensing and insurance record shows whether a company's insurance filing is current, and a lapsed filing is the usual reason an operating authority goes inactive. A policy that expires mid-transit is a phone call worth making before the truck is dispatched.