Insurers Are Splitting Fleets Into Flat Renewals and 40% Hikes

For most of the last decade, a trucking renewal was a negotiation over how much of the market's losses a fleet would absorb. Good fleets paid more because everyone paid more. That is changing. Insurers still cannot make commercial auto profitable, but they have stopped raising everyone's rates by a similar amount. They are sorting fleets, and the sort is being made on paperwork and data rather than on a broker's narrative. Fleets heading into 2027 renewals are effectively being placed in one of two markets.

Two Markets, One Line of Business

Mark Gallagher, transportation leader at RPS, described the split to Insurance Business on November 3. Fleets with strong safety records are getting flat or modestly higher renewals, with the best accounts seeing flat or 5% increases. Weaker accounts face increases of 30% to 40% and fewer willing insurers. "We are seeing the best accounts still have multiple options available to them," Gallagher said. Insurers at recent Wholesale & Specialty Insurance Association meetings cited an underlying trend requirement of about 8.5% to 9%, which means the best fleets are renewing below the rate insurers say their losses need.

The pressure on insurers has not eased. The same report cites an Insurance Information Institute and Milliman forecast that puts the 2026 commercial auto net combined ratio at 100.9, an underwriting loss, with the line expected to stay above 100 through 2028. Earlier in the year, Insurance Business reported AM Best figures showing commercial auto lost about $1.9 billion on underwriting in 2025, with a combined ratio of 103.5, after a $4.9 billion loss in 2024. Commercial auto premiums rose 4.5% on average in the second quarter of 2026, according to The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers, while commercial property and casualty premiums across all account sizes fell 2%. Only umbrella rose faster.

Gallagher connected the split to fleet finances. Average trucking operating costs reached a record $2.336 per mile in 2025, repair and maintenance costs rose 8.6%, and operating margins in the truckload and refrigerated sectors remained below 1%. "As you see margins strapped and operational shortcuts potentially occurring, that translates into higher risk," he said. Underwriters are reading thin margins as a warning sign about deferred maintenance and rushed hiring.

Safer Roads Have Not Meant Cheaper Coverage

The industry-wide numbers explain why insurers are drawing hard lines. In research published in May, the American Transportation Research Institute found that liability insurance premiums rose 18.6% between 2021 and 2024, to 10.2 cents per mile, outpacing consumer inflation by 5.4 percentage points. Over the same period, heavy-duty truck-involved crash rates fell 2.6% industry-wide. The problem is severity, not frequency: per-mile liability losses rose an average of 33.1% among the fleets ATRI surveyed.

The steepest increases are in the upper layers that respond to large verdicts. Per-mile premiums for the $5 million to $10 million excess layer rose 34% to 1.58 cents, and the $10 million to $15 million layer rose 45% to 1.05 cents. ATRI also found that six safety technologies had a statistically significant correlation with lower per-mile liability losses, and that fleets retaining more risk in their primary layer had lower combined liability losses and premium costs, regardless of size. "Good fleets don't just react passively to rate increases each year: they take the initiative by analyzing data," said Lynette Woodie, manager of loss prevention and administration at ArcBest.

The 2027 renewal is being decided by what a fleet can prove in its records, and most of that proof has to exist before the submission goes out. Logistics Focus analysis

Underwriters Now Want the Evidence

What separates the two markets is documentation. "Telling a good story is just not going to work," Justin Foa, national property and casualty practice leader at Alera Group, told Insurance Business. "The logs, the procedures, the maintenance records, all of those things shouldn't be hard to provide." Foa reported premiums of $30,000 to $50,000 per unit for some distressed tractor-trailer risks. Gallagher made the same point from the data side: "When you share telematics and data, it opens up more of a world of opportunity within the commercial auto space."

Cameras have moved from a discount to a condition of coverage for some insurers. Jackson Alexander, executive vice president at Reliance Partners, told FreightWaves that "Fleets that are refusing to do this cannot receive insurance quotes from many insurance companies," referring to camera and collision-avoidance requirements. The same piece put an installed forward and driver-facing camera system at $800 to $1,500 per truck and premium discounts for documented camera programs at 5% to 15%, depending on the insurer and program. The word that matters is documented. A camera that records events nobody reviews does not show an underwriter a working safety program.

Retention is the other lever. Gallagher said insurers considering a larger deductible want to see that a fleet has handled one before, from an operations standpoint. That is consistent with ATRI's finding that fleets carrying more primary-layer risk had lower combined costs, but only fleets with the claims handling and cash reserves to absorb it can take that route.

The Playbook for Logistics Leaders

• Build the submission before the renewal. Assemble logs, maintenance records, driver qualification files and safety procedures months ahead. If they are hard to pull together, that is the first thing an underwriter will notice.
• Put telematics and video data in front of the market. Share coaching records and trend data, not just the fact that devices are installed. Brokers say shared data opens more options for the best accounts.
• Close the gaps between systems. Safety, maintenance and compliance data held in separate tools are hard to assemble into one picture of risk. Connect them so a single report shows the whole fleet.
• Watch maintenance spending closely. With repair costs up 8.6% and margins below 1%, deferred maintenance is exactly the operational shortcut underwriters are pricing for. Keep inspection and repair records current.
• Model retention honestly. A larger deductible can lower combined costs, but only if the fleet can show it has managed one before. Test the cash and claims capacity before offering it.
• Review excess limits against verdict exposure. The upper layers rose 34% to 45%. Decide what limits the business actually needs rather than renewing last year's tower by default.

Insurers expect commercial auto to keep losing money through 2028, so the pressure on rates is not going away. What has changed is who carries it. A fleet that can document how it manages risk is being priced near flat, while one that cannot is being asked to fund the line's losses. For logistics leaders, the renewal is now a test of the safety program they run every day, scored on records they either have or do not.