Trucking Insurance Costs Climbed 18.6% While Crashes Fell

Liability insurance premium costs for U.S. trucking fleets rose 18.6% between 2021 and 2024, hitting 10.2 cents per mile — outpacing consumer inflation by 5.4 percentage points — even as heavy-duty truck-involved crash rates fell 2.6% industry-wide, according to new research from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released in May.

The disconnect comes down to claims severity, not frequency. "The research confirms that a sharp rise in crash claims expenses fueled this rise in insurance costs: among respondents, per-mile liability losses rose by an average of 33.1% over the same period," ATRI noted.

The pain is sharpest in excess layers. Per-mile premium costs for the $5-$10 million insurance layer rose 34% to 1.58 cents, while the $10-$15 million layer jumped 45% to 1.05 cents. "These increases in excess coverage expenses point to the role of rampant litigation in inflating claims costs," ATRI said.

What does this change for fleets and brokers?

Tort reform has slowed commercial auto rate increases in some states over the past 14 months, but not enough to turn the market, said Conor O'Leary, president of Shelly, Middlebrooks & O'Leary Inc., a Jacksonville, Florida-based trucking specialist wholesaler broker and managing general agency. He expects continued headwinds on insurance costs into 2027, driven by nuclear verdict risk and aggressive plaintiff strategies targeting trucking accounts.

"Florida's done a great job. Georgia's working on some tort reform, as well, but we have yet to see how that's going to affect the rates," O'Leary said. Even with reforms, inflated repair costs for vehicles and trucks persist.

Tort reform, in his framing, is just "holding the tide" — roughly 10% to 12% annual rate increases, not rate decreases. "There are a lot of legislators looking for decrease in commercial auto rates, and I don't think that that's coming," he said.

The freight market adds pressure. Trucking firms weathered a significant downturn in freight hauls in 2026, squeezing margins hardest for smaller fleets and owner-operators. ATRI pegged the average cost of operating a truck at $2.336 per mile in 2025 — a 3.4% increase and the highest level in its annual report.

Diesel volatility is shifting freight to rail. "As fuel continues to fluctuate and we see such drastic fluctuations (in diesel prices), it's more difficult for truckers to operate profitably," O'Leary said. Containerized volume has stayed consistent in 2026, but long-haul trucking "has been affected drastically," with rail taking intermodal share and trucks left mostly with last-mile and local delivery work.

A new liability frontier: brokers in the crosshairs

A May U.S. Supreme Court decision, Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, unanimously rejected freight brokers' defense that federal law shielded them from state negligent-hiring lawsuits. State motor-vehicle safety claims can now apply to brokers too.

"I think it's the first one where the trial bar has gone after effectively the shipper and said, 'We want to extend liability beyond the trucker. We want to go to the freight forwarder, possibly even to the owner of the goods,'" O'Leary said. "They're just going up the chain, which is just going to increase the cost for all consumers."

Timing is uncertain, but direction isn't. "I think that's going to affect the industry. I don't know if it'll affect the industry in the next six months or the next 10 months, but it's something that the industry needs to pay attention to," he said, calling it the first precedent-setting case where plaintiffs successfully reached up the chain.

Proactive beats reactive

The best defense for transportation firms is managing risk before incidents, said Brandon Wiseman, owner and president of Trucksafe Consulting and a partner with Childress Law. "Too often, we get calls from fleets after something terrible has happened, whether it be a highway accident or a DOT audit," he said. "At that point, there's only so much you can do."

His advice: audit compliance programs now, track driver qualifications rigorously, and build processes for spotting fatigued or distracted drivers. He also flagged continuous license monitoring as an underused tool — annual motor vehicle report checks leave a real gap where drivers with revoked licenses or downgraded CDLs keep operating.

Telematics and camera data need written policies, said Tyler Biddle, partner at Childress Law PLLC. "How are we using the data? How are we coaching on the findings?" Fleets must document violations and follow through with progressive discipline or termination.

Coaching culture matters too, said Phillip Wigginton, a senior transportation risk consultant in HUB's Risk Services Division in Texas. Recalling a fleet puzzled by persistent crash frequency, he learned its safety director's coaching amounted to "if you do it again, then I'm going to fire you." That's threatening, not coaching, he said — and drivers can simply go next door for more money. "Culture is absolutely critical," Wigginton said. "It does make a difference."

For fleets facing record operating costs, litigation pressure and a newly opened broker-liability frontier, the practitioners' message is uniform: controls built before the crash cost far less than verdicts after it.