When carriers go through the process of receiving a commercial trucking insurance quote, the insurance agent will ask for all vehicle’s garaging location.
The term “garaging address” is just where you store your vehicle when you are not using it.
- If you are home every night, then your garaging address would be considered your home.
- If you store your vehicle in a storage facility or park in a private lot, those areas would be your garaging address.
Is this just being a little bit nosy? Why do they care where you park your truck at night?
In general, living in an urban area compared with a rural area can have a major impact on rates. But why?
It is actually quite simple: Greater risk raises expenses, which raises premiums.
This is because insurance models weight many costs and expenses.
- Costs of accidents
- Auto body repair costs, which can differ greatly in one area than another
- Access to parts and labor, which is better in cities
- Costs associated with injury care
So, how does location increase risk?
- A metro area has more cars on the road and more traffic
- Accidents that occur on high-speed freeways do more damage than those on quiet streets, resulting in higher repair costs or more frequent total losses
- High-population areas tend to have more accidents per driver than rural areas
- High-population areas also have an increased chance of theft or vehicle damage
- Many repair or labor costs can be higher in high-population areas
Together, risk models will calculate higher expenses from living in a high-population area, which will increase your insurance premiums.
But that is just one red flag.
How do you calculate garaging address if you park in multiple locations?
There can be potential complications if you have multiple addresses.
If you spend your time between properties in different states, you will need to calculate where you spend most of your time.
The place where you spend the most amount of time would become your garaging address.
If you plan to make changes to your garaging address, it is recommended that you notify your insurance company as soon as possible. Your insurer can make the necessary adjustments to your insurance policy to protect you against possible risks.
But you should also be careful of fraud.
Carriers can get caught in garaging fraud schemes
We get it, trucking insurance premiums are expensive and seem to only be increasing to unaffordable levels.
This creates a tendency to try and manipulate your insurance provider of your garaging address to receive cheaper rates.
Well, it is not hard to catch this type of fraud.
Underwriting capabilities have improved over the years. Finding out if another driver shares your garaging address is often as easy as a few fingers tapping on a keyboard.
For example, there was a recent fraud case that was caught after AIPSO’s New Jersey Automotive Insurance Plan representatives noticed a surge of 400 trucks representing 170 companies in commercial trucking insurance applications that showed they were garaged at a truck stop that could only hold about 30 trucks.
The location of the truck stop is important as the state is divided into approximately 40 regions, each with a different premium rate. The difference between the least and most expensive region can be as high as $40,000 per truck, per year, according to the investigation.
During this time, the truck stop was in the least expensive rated region.
How can you find the best commercial truck insurance rates?
Allow a CNS Insurance Commercial Trucking Insurance Specialist pull multiple insurance quotes for you to find the best rates.
It never hurts to get a quote and try saving money on your insurance premiums.
Give us a call anytime and we can discuss lowering your premiums or getting a quote to see where you stand.
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If you have any questions or concerns, please call us at 800.724.5523 or email info@cnsinsures.com.
