Certificate of insurance for a trucking company

COI stands for certificate of insurance. In freight it means the document a broker or shipper asks for before it gives you a load: proof, from your insurance agent, that your truck insurance is in force at the limits the broker requires. The standard form is the ACORD 25, Certificate of Liability Insurance, and it says on its face what it is not: it is "issued as a matter of information only and confers no rights upon the certificate holder," and it "does not affirmatively or negatively amend, extend or alter the coverage afforded by the policies below."

That second sentence is the one that matters on a load. A certificate can only report what your policy already says. If the broker's packet asks for a $1,000,000 auto limit and your policy carries $750,000, no agent can fix that on the certificate; the policy has to change first. The same goes for anything the broker wants to be added as, rather than listed as, which is covered below.

There are two sets, and a new carrier needs both. The first is federal. Under 49 CFR 387.7, "no motor carrier shall operate a motor vehicle until the motor carrier has obtained and has in effect the minimum levels of financial responsibility" set in 387.9. For a for-hire carrier hauling non-hazardous property interstate in vehicles of 10,001 pounds or more, that minimum is $750,000. Hazardous materials raise it to $1,000,000 or $5,000,000 depending on the commodity.

The federal requirement is proved by a filing, not by a certificate. Your insurer files it with FMCSA on the BMC forms, which 49 CFR 387.323T lets insurers file electronically "in lieu of using the prescribed printed forms," and FMCSA "will not grant operating authority registration until the registrant has in effect the minimum levels of financial responsibility on file." The proof kept at your place of business is the MCS-90 endorsement. The filing answers to the federal floor; a broker's higher limits are checked on the certificate.

Federal law sets no cargo minimum for general freight. J.B. Hunt's carrier page says it directly: "There is no USDOT requirement for maintaining cargo insurance for freight motor carriers, only carriers who transport household goods." Household goods carriers must carry $5,000 per vehicle and $10,000 per occurrence. Cargo coverage on a general freight truck is a broker requirement, not a federal one.

The second set is the broker's own list, covered in the next section. The filing gets you authority; the certificate gets you loads.

Your insurance agent. C.H. Robinson and TQL will not accept a certificate the carrier forwards. C.H. Robinson: "the certificate must come directly from your insurance agent." TQL: insurance "is verified directly with the carrier's insurance agent (not accepted directly from carriers)."

So the request goes from the broker or its platform to your agent, and the agent's email address is part of your setup. Give each broker the agency's certificate email, forward any setup request you receive to the agent the same day, and ask your agent who issues certificates on your policy before you bind. On some placements the wholesaler or managing general agent that wrote the policy does not issue certificates at all. A wholesaler told Redoubt on one placement, "As the MGA, we do not provide COI's. These would need to come directly from the agency office." An agency that cannot issue its own certificates is a delay you find out about on the first load.

TQL also says it "continuously monitors insurance for cancellations, lapses, or changes." Before a renewal, ask your agent to send the new certificate to every broker that holds the old one.