The Benefits of Occupational Accident Coverage

Americans learned just how vital the trucking industry is to daily life during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Truck drivers all across the country witnessed an outpouring of public recognition and gratitude as the nation coped with shipping delays and supply shortages\. As the economy works to recover, trucking will continue to play an essential role, making it more important than ever that trucking companies protect business operations. Often overlooked, occupational accident insurance should be a key component of any trucking company’s risk management program.

Contributor

• Alek Turko is a Managing Underwriter and Office President with 5Star Specialty Programs, a division of CRC Group. Alek and his team specialize in providing trucking insurance solutions in the for-hire trucking, leased owner-operator, and public auto spaces.

5Star is a full-service MGA, and subsidiary of CRC Group, offering unmatched expertise in the trucking, public auto, and Worker’s Compensation sectors. With more than 30 years in the industry and strong partnerships with multiple highly rated carriers, 5Star writes both fleet and individual policies, making it easier for trucking companies to sponsor a program and ensure that every leased driver has adequate coverage with known limits. Along with occupational accident insurance, 5Star also offers Worker’s Compensation to cover non-leased drivers such as company drivers, clerical staff, mechanics, and company owners. Non-Trucking Liability (NTL) and Physical Damage policies, as well as Contingent Liability is also available.

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Transcript

Dan Wentz: 0:22

Americans learn just how vital the trucking industry is to daily life during the early days of the covid 19 pandemic. truck drivers from all across the country witnessed an outpouring of public recognition and gratitude as the nation coped with shipping delays and supply shortages. As the economy works to recover. trucking will continue to play an essential role, making it more important than ever that trucking companies protect business operations often overlooked occupational Accident Insurance should be a key component of any trucking company's risk management program. Today we check in with Alec Turco. He's a managing underwriter and office president with fivestar specialty programs a division of CRC group, Alec and his team specialize in providing trucking Insurance Solutions in the for hire trucking leased owner operator and public auto spaces. He's going to get us up to date with occupational accident coverage next, welcome to the placing you first podcast from CRC group. I'm your host Dan Wentz. And this podcast features news and insights from CRC group's vast knowledge base of 4300 plus associates who right in excess of $23.5 billion of premium annually, and we're giving you insider access to what's happening in our company and the types of insurance we place. This is the placing you first podcast got to admit I don't know much about this, Alex. So my first question is going to be what is occupational accident coverage. And why do we need it?

Alek Turko: 1:47

No, absolutely. First, and thank you for having me on today. I always like to start off by saying what truckers occupational accident is not. It's not workers compensation insurance. Workers Compensation offers statutory benefits and also includes employers liability coverage, whereas occupational accident coverage provides a variety of benefits but with the fine limits in place for each coverage within a typical policy. truckers occupational accident is designed for our owner operators and independent contractors who are not employees of the trucking company, but rather are leased into a motor carrier, which is the trucking company for the sole purpose of transporting loads for that carrier. Typically, a written lease agreement should be in place between the motor carrier and the owner, operator and independent contractor. Occupational accident coverage will provide benefits for accidental death, dismemberment, accidental medical and disability benefits. We have options in place for writing individual life policies here at five star and also have several carriers available for writing any larger risks starting with 10 or more lives on a separate group policy. In addition to the occupational accident coverage for a group policy, we can offer other additional coverages such as contingent liability, for group policy that we have in place, or even true work comp coverage to cover any of the clerical employees mechanics or company drivers said any of these trucking companies may have alongside these owner operators. And since I've mentioned it, I'll kind of give a definition of what contingent liability coverages it's basically a coverage that will protect the motor carrier should an owner operator or contract driver initiate an action claiming to be an employee rather than an independent contractor while demanding Workers Compensation benefits. This is

Dan Wentz: 3:56

the thing about insurance that always interests me is all these things you don't think about. It could happen like that right there. I mean, I would have never in a million years thought that that could be a problem for an owner operator. Right. But it's there. So definitely insurance for it. So obviously, you know, we've had issues in the past with it. So basically, this is just going to cover going back to occupational accident coverage, independent owner operators, right, who are working under a trucking company's authority because they're basically not employees of the trucking company. So they're not, they're not, they don't get a piece of the normal benefits from them. Great. So why is this so important? Like what is? I guess there's probably a lot of truck drivers out there that need this right. They're operating independently.

Alek Turko: 4:46

Absolutely. So we, truckers occupational accident coverage is in my opinion extremely important for not only the owner operator, or independent contractor to carry, but also for the motor carrier they are leased on to to require them to have in place. When you start looking at some of the statistics out there. The US Bureau of Labor reports that truck drivers have a fatal workplace injury that's more than seven times higher than average. And in addition to that, you look at truck drivers rate of non fatal injury and illness illness is involved days away from Work just about three times the rate of all other private industry occupations. And then compounding This is the fact that when you look at the average age of any truck driver, it's generally approaching 50 years of age or older. And when you kind of mix all those factors together, it creates really an unavoidable situation where injuries will occur to many truck drivers in some way, shape, or form. And when a company driver is injured, while performing their duties at work, they can simply file for workers compensation insurance, receive benefits associated with that coverage to help pay for medical bills, pay for tests, surgeries, physical therapy, and there there's some disability benefits, of course, they could receive alongside that an owner operator or independent contractor are not employees of the company, they would not be covered under the typical work comp policy that any of these motor carriers have in place. So that really leaves that injured independent contractor very, very vulnerable. They have basically no money to pay for their medical bills in that case, that may be coming down to becoming coming in to pay for any of their really day to day bills in their lives if they're not able to drive. And what usually happens in these cases, is the motor carriers got to be sued by that driver, you know, the driver sitting at home, on the couch, flipping through the TV injured and wanting to hold on one 800, Sumi comes up whatever one of these lawyers that are out there, Florida, it's Morgan Morgan. And they're going to drag everybody into a lawsuit, not only the trucking company is going to be sued, when you look at the client of the trucking company, the shipper, they're going to be dragged and everybody's going to be dragged into a lawsuit. I know that drivers simply had occupational accident coverage in place, they would be receiving some benefits to assist them during that difficult time. There will be some assistance with medical bills, payments for various injuries that may be sustained such as you know, if they have you know, a dismemberment of some sort, there's instant benefits for that. There's limited disability benefits available to the driver to kind of help them through their difficult time they may be going through and God forbid that a death should occur. There are also benefits available to the beneficiary that they have listed on the application and on the policy to kind of help with that unfortunate thing.

Dan Wentz: 8:00

Yeah, absolutely. And people you were talking about lawsuits, people who don't think that trucking companies, truckers are getting sued right now or are very wrong. I mean, it is hot hot litigation area. And on this podcast, we've covered it to no end about how many lawsuits there are. It's pretty easy. I mean, even when, when truckers are not necessarily at fault, per se like you are I judging it, a jury can can find against them, just because they're the big mean trucker on the road. And the you know, the little car is the one that that made the mistake. But hey, you're at fault. Just because a jury found it that way. So this is I would say this is this is very important. And I probably shouldn't ask this question absolutely is I don't know the answer to it. But is there a legal defense included in this that kind of stuff? No,

Alek Turko: 8:54

not for Occupational accident. That's where the contingent liability policy comes into play, as I mentioned earlier, really is a legal defense that is there to really protect the motor carrier. In the event that owner operator that's injured, decides to try to claim the were an employee to gain work comp benefits. Within the true occupational accident policy, there is a perfect

Dan Wentz: 9:23

way to create a winning submission when it comes to this type of coverage. Occupational accident,

Alek Turko: 9:29

absolutely the kind of the perfect submission will include some specific items depending on the size of the risk. We we have a master policy in place where we write a lot of individual life risks. I'm an owner operator, I reach out to my retail agent and say I want to purchase occupational x accident coverage, I can purchase a policy in my name. So there's simply a two page application that's completed. Part of our master policy we have four different plans available. We provide the underwriting guidelines with some of the information basic information to our retail agents, so they kind of pre qualified some of these opportunities. They would complete a simple application, return to our underwriting office, we would review it for acceptability and price it and then get back with the rate halation. So it's a very simple process. When we look at what we consider a fleet of like, say 10 or more lives, obviously, there's a few additional items that we would require. There's a separate fleet application that's available on our website at five star SP Comm. We would need a current drivers list of all the owner operators independent contractors, which would include their date of birth, the state that they're domiciled in the years of CDL experience, and including the date that they were leased onto the motor carrier. And we would want to see a sample copy of the lease agreement that the motor carrier is using with these owner operators. We would like obviously, three years, or four years worth of loss runs, details to any claims over 25,000 or more. We do have cases where we have motor carriers that have been in business 10 years, but they've really never had a group policy in place. So we would just need some information that they This is the first time we're actually purchasing this coverage. And we do see a lot of that happening. You know, you have motor carriers who have been in business five, six years, and they finally come to the realization of how important it is to carry this product in require their own Raptors to carry this product. So we see a lot of what we would consider new ventures for this particular coverage from seasoned trucking companies. So we would just need some information that this is our first time purchasing the coverage. And we would rate based on some of the trucking company characteristics. And if they did have coverage in place, we would like to see a copy of their benefits schedule pricing information so that we could provide even more enhanced coverages than what they may currently have available to them.

Dan Wentz: 12:19

And one of the main benefits of working with a five star producer or a CRC producer, I mean, first of all, I should say, if you want this type of coverage, you're the guy to go to right Alec there at five star so you're the guy, but you can work with any CRC producer you can work with five star obviously has a lot of different arms, different areas that they cover, great program. But what is working with any of these producers, anybody who's under that CRC group umbrella, the five star umbrella? What kind of benefit do you add to

Alek Turko: 12:55

Bob? First we have the experience in this business, we have a knowledge of the industry and all the coverages that are associated with it. We have relationships with a variety of insurance carriers that would really meet the needs of any of the trucking occupational accident opportunities that any retail agency may have. In addition to that, since we're playing and we're writing coverage in this owner operator space, we do offer other coverages kind of that really cater to the owner operators, which is like non truck liability coverage, physical damage for these owner operators. So when you look at the coverages we have available, the products we have available, the markets that we have access to many of our long term retail agencies use us as a one stop shop when it comes to their owner operator. product and their and their opportunities. They know that if they send that submission to us, we're going to cover all bases, we're going to give them an excellent quote with with our strong carriers. And in addition to that, we could also quote some of the other products such as non truck liability to kind of round out that, that the option and that proposal for their own wrapper.

Dan Wentz: 14:18

Yeah, and that's great. And I should mention here too, that you guys have a very informative website, five star SP comm that you can go to to get all that. And if you can't remember that or you're driving in the car, don't want to write it down. Of course, you can go to CRC group comm and search through there to find five star it's pretty easy to find them off that website. But that's great. So did we miss anything today out like anything you want to mention about this type of coverage or anything at all?

Alek Turko: 14:46

Yeah, the one thing I did miss, maybe we're focusing on truckers occupational accident coverage. I did want to point out that we do have carriers that are extremely interested in writing, other occupational accident for other business classes such as couriers public auto gig economy. So there are other areas that we could write occupational accident coverage and even tailor policies to other than just trucking.

Dan Wentz: 15:19

Yeah, that's good information. So you know, it's not just truck Hackers right? Could be anything? Absolutely. So, okay. Well, you know, if you're listening to this, you go, hey, maybe that's for me. I mean, just give Alex a call. And he'll, you know, he can give you the answers right? As always, absolutely appreciate you doing this, Alec, I know. You're a very busy man. But thank you very much for taking the time to do this today. And hey, hopefully we talk to you again soon here on the podcast.

Alek Turko: 15:49

I hope so. Thank you for having me.