I have brought this up before, bringing it up again.
I am insured through OOIDA. The underwriter is Lloyds Of London. This is Risk Retention, not A or A+ rated insurance.
I have never had a claim, so I can not say how good this insurance is. It's affordable and allows me to keep my truck moving. Word on the street is that it can be tough getting them to pay some claims as Risk Retention groups have a reputation for trying their best to get out of a claim. I don't know this to be true, just what I have heard.
I have heard that many brokers won't work with you if you have this insurance. I know there is a small list, but I have never had a problem working with brokers outside of that list, never been rejected by a broker based on my insurance other than one instance (circle 8 logistics). Maybe there are other brokers out there that don't call based on my insurance, I do not know.
I have heard that brokers won't give you certain loads based on this insurance. Again, I have no idea if that is true, only something I have heard through the grapevine, and once again, haven't heard it from anybody who has actually been rejected based on this.
So, with renewal coming up by the middle of September, I have been looking around a little. Even got one quote a while back, but it was higher than I wanted to pay.
What gave me another push on this is I received a call from OOIDA. I had added chemicals to my haul list on my MCS 150. Wasn't sure why it wasn't listed already, but OOIDA set that up when I got my authority. Earlier this year, I also realized that many common items that I haul all the time wasn't listed on my insurance. I was told when I got the insurance, that I was covered for anything basically other than hazmat. I was green at this, so I didn't know any different and believed it. It just happened to be another OOIDA agent that was looking at the list when I was asking a question, and updated it for me.
Back to the chemicals being listed on my MCS 150. I got a call from OOIDA yesterday, and they weren't able to renew my insurance due to this update. I had to have a phone conversation and explain to them that I wasn't hauling hazardous chemicals, non hazardous only. They seemed very uneasy about it, but submitted it to the underwriter and I got my quote today. Still inexpensive, but I'm just a bit more nervous about potential claims at this point.
I'm at the point that if it isn't too much more expensive, I think I need to move on to A rated insurance through another provider. Call it a gut feeling.