Minimum Auto Insurance Requirements for Your Company Vehicle

Providing vehicles for your employees is one of the best perks you can offer. Of course, providing company vehicles means insuring those vehicles, and doing that can get complicated.

The best place to start figuring out how much you need to set aside for company car insurance is to find out what sort of insurance you’ll need. Not every small business needs commercial auto insurance. In fact, unless your employees will need to have CDLs or other types of special licensing to operate your company’s vehicles, you probably won’t need commercial auto insurance at all. You’ll be able to use personal insurance to cover your company cars and trucks.

From there, it is a matter of meeting your state’s minimum insurance requirements for each vehicle. The exact numbers vary from state to state. For instance, in Oregon, the minimum insurance requirements include coverage for up to $25,000 per person in bodily injury and property damage liability coverage, $15,000 per person for personal injury protection, and $25,000 per person and $50,000 per crash for bodily injury in uninsured motorist coverage.

Click here to read more on Oregon car insurance

To figure out what your minimum requirements are, contact the DMV for your state.

Obviously you can simply abide by the minimum insurance requirements in your state and call it a day. To really cover your company (and your employees), though, you might want to increase your coverage. It’s good not only to increase the dollar amount your insurance will cover but to increase the types of coverage you’re buying as well.

For instance, you’ll want insurance that covers passengers in the car as well as the drivers. You’ll want insurance that covers the cars (and your employees) when they are the victims of accidents as well as the causes of those accidents.

If you’re only going to have a few cars for your company but will allow anybody who works for you to drive them, you’ll need a policy that covers multiple drivers per vehicle.

All of that insurance coverage can be intimidating. You’re probably worried about having to pay an amount that you’re not sure you can afford. This is why it is important to shop around. Many insurance providers will provide discounts to people who are purchasing extensive or bulk policies. Many insurance companies also practice price matching.

So, before you sign on any dotted line, make sure you get every quote you court in writing. That way you won’t be locked in to a single provider you hate to get the policy you love.