What Makes Commercial Car Insurance Different from Your Everyday Policy?

It's the same question that many home business owners ask over and over again. What's the difference between commercial car insurance and an ordinary one? More importantly, why do you, as a small business owner, need a commercial policy? You're not running a commercial trucking company, after all.

You might be surprised to find out that you need a commercial car insurance policy after all.

A commercial insurance policy has three things going for it:

1) The liability limits are higher. When you're constantly out on the road you have a greater risk of being in an accident than when you're safely parked in the parking lot. With a commercial coverage not only will you be protected if you're in an accident during business hours (which you might not be if you're just covered by your personal policy) but you'll have enough liability coverage to take care of whatever damages and injuries might pop up along the way.

And with a commercial policy you'll be able to enjoy that higher liability at the lowest car insurance rates in town!

2) With a commercial policy your employees are covered if they have to use a company vehicle.

3) Commercial car insurance is designed to handle business related accidents and injuries, so your claims are handled efficiently, effectively and quickly to get you back on the road as quickly as possible.

Regardless of whether you're running your own small shop or sitting at the head of a huge trucking organization, all of these factors equal good things for your profit and loss statements!

The question is, who needs commercial insurance coverage? How do you know when your personal car insurance policy will cover the occasional errand and when the car insurance companies are going to put their foot down and insist that you pick up better protection when you're out on the highways?

A good rule of thumb to help you determine when your personal car insurance coverage is going to be enough and when you're going to need to look into collecting some commercial car insurance quotes is to think about how much time you spend on the roads during your workday. If you're on the road two to three hours a day running errands, collecting information and traveling between work sites, you probably need to get a commercial policy.

The following fields are flagged by most car insurance companies as being on their A-list for picking up commercial coverage:

Pizza Delivery
Catering
Newspaper Delivery
Door-to-Door Sales or Consulting
Landscaping/Snowplowing
Day Care
real estate

If you work in any of these fields, or if your time on the road isn't restricted solely to picking up lunch and dropping off the boss's dry cleaning, it's probably time to start looking into buying a commercial car insurance policy for your small business.

Welcome to the big time.