If your business operates a fleet of vehicles – that is, a group of cars, vans, trucks or even ships or airplanes – you are much better off insuring them as an entire group than as individual vehicles. This allows you to manage the risk of all the vehicles that operate for your business, effectively distributing that risk across the fleet. That means that you do not have to pay for a specific incident (in the form of deductibles or increased premiums) more than one time. 

When you take out fleet insurance, the entire fleet functions as a single entity and is insured accordingly. There are a range of packages available, each customised to suit a particular business model. For example, a company that transports passengers on a regular basis will need a policy that includes enhanced liability coverage, while a business that uses vehicles to transport goods or merchandise is going to more concerned with covering the cost of the vehicle and the goods it carries.

Make no mistake – fleet insurance is a relatively large expense for a company. However, failing to sign up is opening the door to a host of potential disasters. First and foremost, your vehicles are required by law to be insured by one means or another. Working piecemeal with automobile insurance and providing coverage for each on an individual basis is wasteful and almost certainly more expensive than covering the whole fleet. Wasting business revenue on unnecessarily expensive insurance is going to take its toll on your profit margins. Put this on a long enough timeline, and bankruptcy becomes increasingly likely.

Even the best drivers can still become victims of collisions. Suppose your company works hard to find and hire only the best drivers with impeccable records. You might assume that this mitigates the risk of being involved in an accident, and thereby reduces the need to take out comprehensive coverage. However, driving is a community affair, and your company has no say in who is sharing the road with your drivers. 

Drink driving statistics are down in the UK, but this is still a serious problem that plagues our motorways. In a given year, more than 6,000 accidents in the UK involve at least one driver over the legal drinking limit. And those are just the people who were caught. When your company vehicles are out there on company time, they are almost certainly sharing space with drivers who are under the influence. 

Now, it’s easy to make the following assumption, “If one of my vehicles is involved in an accident in which the other party was drinking, my company is in no way liable.” While the spirit of this is true, there are some excellent law firms out there that specialise in getting drink driving charges dropped. Websites such as www.drivingoffencesolicitor.co.uk have a great deal of information on how this works. Suffice it to say, there are many situations in which your company may have to pay for its own damages despite the fact that your drivers were not at fault. 

In short, being underinsured is an enormous risk that no company can afford to take. 

Cunninghams Solicitors is a law firm with expert driving offence solicitors that can help you with any traffic violation or criminal case that involves motorists.