Courier Insurance Vs Haulage Insurance

If you deliver goods for a living, it’s important that you have the correct type of insurance to protect against any contingency. When it’s time to decide, however, it’s perfectly normal to find the wide range of choices confusing, and knowing which is the best one can be difficult. One source of this confusion is the difference between courier and haulage insurance, as these can sometimes appear to be similar.

To clarify these terms, it’s important to look into both of them:

Courier Insurance

Courier companies provide parcel and package deliveries, nationally or internationally, and they include services like next-day or emergency deliveries, so that all customer needs are met. So courier insurance is aimed at this type of services and, precisely because of the sheer amount of variables they imply, it can get costly in some cases. These variables include factors like the number of hours a courier can spend on the road and the multiple stops they make, for example.

Haulage Insurance

The main difference between couriers and hauliers is that the latter are used to transport heavy or large loads; hauliers tend to perform longer journeys for one delivery, instead of multiple stops along the way. Haulage insurance is normally costlier than courier, due to the physical and financial damages that can occur if something goes wrong.

Choosing the Type of Insurance

While both courier and haulage insurance cover the carriage of goods, haulage contractors tend to deliver merchandise to the same clients regularly, which means they work with fixed contracts and usually know what they’re transporting (they also have concrete delivery times). Hauliers are used to transport shipping containers, for example, but they also tend to use heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), which require a specific type of insurance: haulage insurance.

Couriers, on the other hand, do not have specific clients they deliver for, as many can even use a particular courier company one time and then choose a different one for the next delivery. This makes it nearly impossible for couriers to know what they’re transporting on a daily basis. They also tend to use vans or cars, instead of HGVs.

Although all of this is generally accepted, if you want to get a quote on these types of insurance, the work that you do factors in the decision. Because in the end it will depend on each insurer and their policies, make sure you give all the necessary information to them to obtain the correct type of insurance.

If you want more information on the specifics of courier fleet insurance to know if this is the best service for you, don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you might have, or give us a call on 0333 200 1246.

So what do you think? Haulage or Courier: what’s the difference? Tell us on Facebook and Twitter!