Does Your Traveling Sales Rep Have Commercial Auto Insurance?

It's the start of spring and with that comes the need to send your team out more frequently for house calls. If you have a sales-based company, you need to protect your business not just in the form of ensuring you hit your sales goal, but also to ensure that you have the right level of protection in place to safeguard your business assets. Commercial auto insurance may be necessary to accomplish that. If you have a traveling sales team, what do you need to know about commercial auto insurance?

Who Owns the Vehicle?

The first step in determining the type and amount of commercial auto insurance is to outline who owns the vehicle. If your company owns the vehicle, then you need to have proper commercial auto insurance on it. This should protect the vehicle from collisions and liability risks. A comprehensive auto insurance plan is also beneficial as it can help to minimize risks associated with fires and theft. Protecting your company from these risks is essential.

If the employee owns the vehicle, things may be a bit different. First, if the person is an actual employee of your company, he or she should have commercial auto insurance in place on the vehicle they operate if they do so for your business. Even if you do not own the vehicle, they are operating it as a part of your business. If on the other hand, this person is not an employee but an independent contractor, he or she is responsible for maintaining quality insurance as a part of their own business.

How to Safeguard Your Team

As a traveling sales rep, your employee needs to have comprehensive protection on the vehicle he or she drives to be sure that risks are minimized. For example, the individual could be involved in an accident. If your employee caused the accident, this could lead to a claim or lawsuit filed against your company. These claims can be very high. With the right commercial auto insurance, such claims are generally covered as is any legal defense fees you may need to fight such claims.

A wide range of commercial auto insurance policies are available and should be a part of your business insurance plan. You'll want to keep the best policy in hand if you have employees on the road.