Freight carriers perform the vital duty of delivering freight for businesses across the country. They follow numerous safety and handling procedures to ensure your freight reaches its destination safely. However, accidents or mishaps can still happen at any given time. When this occurs, you may need to rely on freight insurance for compensation.
Let’s examine freight insurance in more detail and why it is so important.
What is Freight Insurance?
Freight insurance is a special type of insurance that offers protection for your freight. This includes protection from losses that occurred during transit. It may surprise you to learn that freight carriers are not legally required to possess freight insurance. This is in contrast to freight forwarders or household goods carriers who the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration mandates possess insurance.
Despite this lack of a requirement, many freight carriers do have freight insurance.
When Can You File a Claim?
To be eligible for a freight insurance claim, the losses or damages to freight must be caused by the carrier. This also covers any damages from bad-weather, poor packaging, or loading problems.
Freight Insurance vs Freight Liability
You may have seen the terms “freight insurance” and “freight liability” used interchangeably. However, these are two different things.
Freight liability refers to the liability coverage determined by the freight carrier. This coverage amount is usually based on the freight class or the commodity type, and offers protection up to a certain amount for each pound of freight. However, this means that the value of your goods may exceed the carrier liability amount.
In this scenario, you can get freight insurance on top of the carrier liability to make up for damages or losses in transit.
How a Freight Broker Can Help
If you want to find a freight carrier that offers the right liability and insurance for your freight, you can benefit from using a freight broker. A freight broker can help connect you with a freight carrier that can handle your shipping and insurance needs.
In some cases, a freight carrier’s insurance may be cancelled or expired. The good news is that many freight brokers such as Action Transport Inc carry a contingent insurance policy to keep your freight protection in such a scenario.
Why Choose Action Transport Inc?
As one of the country’s premier freight brokers, Action Transport Inc is dedicated to matching clients with trustworthy and reliable carriers from our extensive network. We understand the importance of keeping your goods safe in transit, and can match you with a carrier that offers the right liability coverage or freight insurance. In addition to this, we also carry our own contingency insurance to keep you covered. Please get in touch with us to learn more about our services.