Estimate your annual commercial truck insurance cost by coverage line, per truck and per mile.
What goes into a trucking insurance premium
A full owner operator or small fleet program stacks several coverage lines. Primary liability is the largest and is required by FMCSA before your authority activates, with $750,000 the federal minimum for general freight but $1 million the practical standard demanded by most brokers and shippers. On top sit motor truck cargo, physical damage (typically priced as a percentage of your equipment value, entered here as a rate), and smaller lines such as general liability, non-trucking liability and occupational accident cover. The calculator totals these per truck, scales to the fleet, and converts the result into a cost per mile you can feed into rate calculations.
What operators actually pay
Market surveys for 2026 put full-package premiums for a single truck under its own authority at roughly $9,000 to $17,000 per year, with an average around $11,800, while operators leased to a carrier commonly pay $3,000 to $5,000 because the carrier provides primary liability. New authorities, long operating radius, poor CSA scores, reefer or hazmat freight and litigation-heavy states all push quotes toward and beyond the top of the range.
Lowering the number
The levers insurers reward are time under authority with a clean loss history, strong CSA scores, experienced drivers, higher deductibles backed by reserves, dash cameras, and shopping the policy through a trucking specialist at every renewal. Even so, budget for increases: liability rates have risen for years on the back of large verdicts.
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