Can you prove you’re a good risk?

There’s a disconnect in trucking right now that I think deserves more attention. Crash rates are improving by some important measures. Liability costs are not.

Federal highway safety data shows heavy-duty truck crash rates continue a steady decline, while liability losses per mile have increased sharply over a similar period. Bottom line: there are fewer crashes, but they have more expensive consequences. This fundamentally changes the risk conversation for trucking and transportation leaders.

Don’t get me wrong. We still need to ask, “How do we prevent the accident?” But I think trucking leaders need to ask another critical question: “Can you prove you’re operating like a good risk before the accident ever happens?”

What happens after the crash has changed

This is where Laurence J. Rabinovich, transportation partner at Barclay Damon, adds an important perspective. Larry has spent decades working in transportation law. His point is that the basic negligence principles facing motor carriers have not changed nearly as much as the consequences have.

When he started in the field, a million-dollar case was relatively unusual. Today, policy-limit demands are commonplace, and plaintiffs’ attorneys have access to far more information about how a carrier operates. 

This means a crash can become much more than a question of what happened on the road. It’s a question of how the business was being run before the truck ever set off.

The exceptions worry me

Every trucking operator understands the pressure. The load must move. The customer needs an answer, a driver calls in sick, a truck goes down. These are the moments when exceptions are made. You use a driver you normally wouldn’t. You accept freight outside your usual wheelhouse. You shorten a process because today’s load must get on the road.

One exception may be perfectly reasonable. The danger is when exceptions become the operating model.

Larry uses a phrase I like: stay within yourself.

His example is simple. A company can be an excellent food hauler and still make a poor decision by taking a specialized steel load that it’s not equipped or experienced to handle. His advice: bring in the expertise, or don’t take the load. That sounds obvious. It gets harder when revenue is on the table.

Insurance is the backstop, not the strategy

I’ve spent my career in insurance, so I want to be clear: insurance matters. But it’s a financial mechanism. It helps put your company back on its feet after a covered loss.

Insurance does not replace operating judgments.

Larry put it well from the legal side: insurance can respond to covered events, but the business decisions a transportation company makes remain the company’s business risk. That distinction matters more as insurance gets more expensive.

If you want to retain more risk, buy different limits, or control costs more intelligently, you must first understand your own operation. Constantly question what you can control and measure. Where are you and your team making exceptions? Where is the data telling you something you’d rather not hear? Without the answers to these questions, you’re not really making a risk decision; you are hoping. The moment your plan depends on hope, you’re already on the road to a bad outcome.

There is no trucking company without risk. Accidents will happen. People will make mistakes. The opportunity is to become more deliberate about everything that happens. Being compliant is essential. Being insured is essential. But the strongest operators are able to prove something very important—they deserve to be viewed as a good risk.