You already know insurance premiums are eating into your margins. 

Yet here’s what most operators miss: Your insurance rates aren’t set in stone. While you can’t control market conditions, nuclear verdicts or regulatory changes, you can control how you manage your risk and how insurers view your operation. 

How? Frankly, it’s not rocket science. 

Manage risk holistically and which includes treating insurance companies like business partners, not vendors. Use telematics,  videomatics and claims data to prove safety performance. Document driver training programs and share loss prevention initiatives before renewal meetings. Most importantly, get your head around the fact that insurers price risk, and demonstrating lower risk means lower premiums.

We’ll show you exactly which insurance strategies work, what data matters most to underwriters, and how to position your operation for better rates year after year.

What’s Behind the Insurance Cost Gap?

First, let’s talk about the elephant on every dispatcher’s desk: why your cousin’s mega-fleet pays $7,200 per truck annually while you’re bleeding $13,600 for the same coverage. The numbers don’t lie, and they’re getting worse. Here’s what’s really driving these disparities, and which levers you can pragmatically pull.

Disparity by Fleet Size

Size matters, and insurers aren’t subtle about it. 

ATRI’s latest data shows small carriers saw insurance costs explode from 10.2 cents to 13.6 cents per mile between 2021 and 2023. Meanwhile, large fleets watched their costs drop from 8.2 cents to 7.2 cents per mile.

Think about that math for a second. 

Your competitor with 500 trucks negotiates volume discounts while spreading risk across hundreds of drivers. You’ve got 50 trucks and one bad accident away from a renewal nightmare. Large fleets hire full-time safety managers, install million-dollar training simulators, and self-insure their first $250,000 in claims. 

If you are a small fleet, in this market you’re lucky if you can afford dashcams for half your fleet.

Systemic Factors

Nuclear verdicts have turned trucking litigation into a lottery where everyone loses except lawyers. Multimillion dollar jury awards have become routine, and what used to be a six-figure settlement now starts with seven or eight digits. The trend keeps accelerating, with verdicts doubling and tripling every few years.

Insurers now treat certain states like radioactive zones. Operating through New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Florida, Texas, or California? Congratulations, you’re automatically high-risk. Smaller carriers get labeled doubly dangerous: less experienced drivers, tighter safety budgets, and fewer resources to fight frivolous lawsuits. 

Fair or not, insurers price accordingly.

Controllable Factors

Good news: Insurers obsess over data you can influence. CSA scores, driver files, maintenance records, and claims history determine whether underwriters see you as a profit center or a time bomb.

Carriers with clean DOT audits, documented weekly safety meetings, telematics proving their drivers don’t tailgate pay significantly less than those winging it. Drug testing beyond minimums, driver coaching programs, and forward-facing cameras tell insurers you’re serious about prevention. Every violation, every claim, every gap in training and documentation costs you thousands at renewal.

Best Practices for Managing Insurance Costs

Now that you understand why you’re paying Ferrari prices for Corolla coverage, let’s start to fix it. Start with the following best practices. Fair warning, though: None of these involve reaching out to a gecko or calling Jake from State Farm.

• Build a Safety Program: A well-run safety program begins with an effective program to hire safe drivers. Document everything, including weekly safety meetings, driver training sessions, pre-trip inspections, and maintenance schedules. CSA scores below 50 make underwriters smile; scores above 75 make them reach for the rejection stamp. 
• Handle Claims Like Your Business Depends on It: Report accidents within 24 hours, investigate thoroughly, and lawyer up when needed. Track everything: accidents per million miles, average claim cost, time to resolution. Show insurers your claims dropped 30% year over year and watch them suddenly return your calls. Bad claims history follows you like a permanent record. 
• Create Scorecards That Tell Your Story: Build dashboards tracking on-time delivery, incident-free miles, CSA scores, and driver violations. Monthly improvements matter more than perfect scores. Underwriters love carriers that can prove they went from terrible to decent better than those claiming they’ve always been perfect. Numbers beat narratives every time at renewal.
• Install Technology That Proves You’re Safe: Telematics and dashcams turn your safety claims into hard evidence. GPS data showing your drivers maintain proper following distance and reasonable speeds transforms you from a high risk to a preferred customer. 
• Maintain Operational Consistency: Maintain equipment to deliver high availability performance. Broken-down trucks suggest deferred maintenance. High driver turnover screams instability to insurers. Consistent operations equal lower driver turnover, predictable risk, and predictable risk equals lower premiums.  

Turn Underwriters Into Allies Through Smart Communication and Tech

Best practices mean nothing if your insurer never hears about them. Too many companies treat insurance companies like the IRS: Avoid contact, hope they forget you exist, pray nothing bad happens. 

Wrong approach! 

Modern insurance strategies require treating underwriters like business partners and letting technology do the heavy lifting by providing data and KPI metrics that they consider key for assessing risk using the underwriting model. Here’s how.

Communicating with Insurance Companies

Your underwriter doesn’t have ESP. They need proof you’re managing risk; not promises you’ll do better next time. The smart approach is to go into renewals armed with data: CSA scores trending downward, telematics reports showing improved driver behavior, and documented safety meetings with attendance sheets.

Show them cold hard numbers. “Our accidents per million miles dropped 25% since January. We’re really focused on safety every single time.” Installed collision mitigation systems? Completed defensive driving training? Tell them immediately, not at renewal when you’re begging for mercy.

Regular quarterly updates showcase improvements that work magic too. Share wins like accident-free months or successful DOT audits. Keep audit-ready documentation: current driver MVRs, inspection logs, training certificates. When underwriters request information and you respond within hours instead of weeks, you’ve separated yourself from the pack.

Leveraging Automation and Technology

Manual compliance tracking is like using a typewriter to day trade. Modern TMS platforms automatically vet brokers, flag insurance lapses, and monitor CSA scores daily. EKA’s Omni-TMS™, for example, bakes compliance into every workflow, and BI tools that catch violations before they become claims.

Automated scorecards aggregate performance metrics into digestible reports that underwriters love. Real-time dashboards tracking safety scores, on-time percentages, and incident rates prove you’re managing risk systematically, not accidentally.

Connect telematics and videomatics directly to insurance reporting. Share driver behavior scores, predictive maintenance alerts, location and route risk assessments automatically. Some carriers already use dynamic coverage models where safer performance instantly reduces premiums.

Work With Risk Conscious & Loyal Brokers

Brokers hold more power over carrier insurance costs than you may realize. They control your freight including lanes you run at a risk-rated fair price, how you get paid, and in many cases whether you succeed or fail by monitoring data to qualify brokers you want to work with. Your success, among other things, depends on whether freight brokers proactively work with you to reduce your risk. Listed below is an effective trifecta approach.

• Vet Brokers Like your Business Depends on It: Build internal scorecards ranking broker by lane for detention, safety, claims, on-time delivery, payment history, etc. Use these metrics to vet and rank each broker load hauled by lane. 
• Broker Willingness to Fix Problems: That Force Unsafe Decisions: Does your broker negotiate detention pay with shippers, so drivers aren’t racing clocks. Willing to work with you to arrange backhauls to reduce your empty miles and risk exposure? If a broker you work with do, you have a winning start!
• Broker Value Beyond the Rate: Stop hauling freight on price alone without knowing the true cost of hauling freight by load by lane. Be aware of how broker technology, transparent processes, and steady freight makes your life easier. Trucking companies stick with brokers who help them succeed, not just brokers offering an extra 50 bucks per load. 

The Bottom Line on Insurance Costs

You’ve got two choices: Keep paying insurance companies like they’re holding your business hostage or prove you’re worth better rates. Every safety meeting you document, every telematics report you share, every quarterly update you send your underwriter chips away at your premiums. Small carriers and brokers who treat insurance like any other business relationship get treated like valued customers. Those who ghost their underwriters until renewal get treated like risks.

At EKA Solutions, we focus on cutting insurance costs and streamlining operations for trucking companies through smart technology. Our Omni-TMS™ and dFEMX™ tech ecosystem help track compliance in real-time. We integrate risk analytics with your daily operations, giving you the exact data underwriters want to see while saving you hours on compliance tasks. Whether you’re managing a 50 truck fleet or a 300 truck fleet fighting for fair rates, we help you prove you’re worth insuring.

Contact us today to learn more.