There's no single price for trucking insurance — but there are published ranges. Pick your situation below to get an estimated annual premium range, a monthly cost, and your cost per mile, broken out by coverage. Built on 2026 benchmark data, not a sales quote.
| Coverage in your estimate | Low /yr | High /yr |
|---|
An estimate is not a quote. Your real premium depends on your driving record, claims history, exact garaging ZIP, credit, cargo commodity, and carrier appetite. Use this to sanity-check a quote and budget your cost per mile — then shop at least three markets.
Run under your own authority and a full insurance package — primary liability, cargo, and physical damage — typically lands between $9,000 and $17,000 a year, with high-cost states and heavier cargo pushing some operations over $20,000. If you're leased to a carrier, the carrier supplies primary liability and cargo, so your own out-of-pocket is much smaller and concentrates on physical damage, bobtail/non-trucking liability, and occupational accident — usually a few thousand dollars a year. Either way, insurance is now one of the four biggest fixed costs in trucking: ATRI pegged it at a record $0.102 per mile in 2024 after back-to-back annual increases.
The estimator above sums the coverages you select; here are the underlying annual ranges it draws from, before your state, experience, and radius adjustments. These are the same line items every broker quotes.
| Coverage | Typical annual range | What it covers / who needs it |
|---|---|---|
| Primary liability ($1M) | $4,000 – $9,000 | Damage you do to others. FMCSA min $750k; brokers want $1M. Own-authority only. |
| Motor truck cargo ($100k) | $400 – $1,800 | The freight you're hauling. Required by most brokers. Varies by commodity. |
| Physical damage | ~3–6% of truck value | Your own truck (collision, theft, fire). Required by your lender if financed. |
| Bobtail / non-trucking liability | $240 – $720 | Driving without a load / off-dispatch. Leased operators. |
| Occupational accident | $1,600 – $2,200 | Injury coverage in place of workers' comp. Leased operators. |
Sources: ATRI operational-cost data; MoneyGeek 2026 commercial-truck rate analysis; published broker/insurer 2026 ranges. National figures — your lane and record move them.
Three levers explain most of the spread. State is the biggest: primary-liability rates vary up to 242% between states — a New York driver can pay ~$666/month for $1M while a Maine driver pays ~$275/month for the same limit, and urban ZIPs add roughly 15–25% over rural ones in the same state. Experience is next: under two years of authority is a hard market and carries a surcharge, while five-plus clean years earns credits. Radius and cargo round it out — long-haul OTR and high-value or refrigerated freight cost more than local runs of dry general freight. The calculator applies all three to the benchmark ranges above.
Roughly $9,000–$17,000/yr for a full own-authority package (liability + cargo + physical damage); some high-cost or heavy-cargo operations top $20,000. Leased operators pay less out of pocket because the carrier covers primary liability and cargo.
About $0.10–$0.12 per mile for a typical solo owner-operator — ATRI logged a record $0.102/mi in 2024. Run more paid miles and the per-mile cost drops; that's why deadhead and downtime quietly raise your insurance cost per loaded mile.
Keep a clean MVR and CSA score, raise your deductible, pay annually, bundle coverages with one carrier, garage in a lower-cost ZIP if you can, and shop at least three specialized truck markets at renewal. Building 2+ years of authority history is the single biggest long-term discount.
No. Occ/acc is a cheaper private alternative many leased owner-operators carry instead of workers' comp; it has benefit caps that comp doesn't. Some states and carriers require true workers' comp — check your lease and state rules.
Benchmark ranges are compiled from 2026 published commercial-truck insurance data and adjusted by state, experience, and radius factors; physical damage is sized as 3–6% of truck value. Sources: ATRI operational-cost data (insurance $0.102/mi, 2024), MoneyGeek 2026 commercial-truck rate analysis, AtoB owner-operator insurance cost statistics, and FMCSA minimum-liability rules. Last updated June 2026. Estimates for planning only — get real quotes before you buy. Built by TruckMargin.