Premiums Fall 10% to 50% As New Firms Enter Market

A wave of new insurance companies vying for business from the trucking industry has created an unusual and welcome - situation: Rates are dropping.

Over the past 18 months, said officials of several insurance companies, premiums

The result has been a cut of the average premium for a longhaul fleet truck from $4,000 to $3,000, one insurer said.

"The market has been going south on us, going soft, for the last year or more, primarily driven by the excess reinsurance capital that's available," Jack de la Cova, chief executive officer of Insurance Network Specialties Inc., Plantation, Fla., told TRANSPORT TOPICS. The company focuses on trucking.

"People are looking for places to park their money, and they're putting it into the reinsurance market, which has drawn more people into trucking insurance because the premiums can be high" compared with other niches, de la Cova said.