Hotshot insurance cost per month

What sets your price for a hotshot setup?

What you actually pay comes down to your truck and trailer, your record behind the wheel, your location, and whether you haul across state lines. What you pay reflects the coverage your operation needs and how risky the insurer thinks your business is. Every commercial vehicle must carry vehicle liability, Progressive notes. When you operate under your own authority and cross state lines, the federal minimum varies with your truck and what you haul:

Each figure is a combined single limit: your policy has to cover at least this much for one crash, with injuries and property damage counted together.

Brokers often ask for more than the legal minimum. TQL, C.H. Robinson, Amazon Relay and Uber Freight each ask for $1,000,000 in auto liability and $100,000 in cargo coverage, per their carrier pages like TQL's, so check what yours wants before you buy. Federal cargo insurance rules apply only to household goods movers, not general freight carriers, J.B. Hunt explains, but customers may still require you to carry cargo coverage.

Insurers also look at:

• The type and size of your truck, and the trailer you pull: bumper pull, gooseneck (hitched in the truck bed) or flatbed
• What you haul, how far, and how often
• Whether you cross state lines or stay inside one state
• Your driving record: even one small speeding ticket can raise the price a lot
• Your safety rating, the grade the FMCSA gives your business after a safety check, which can change the price a lot
• Your city and state: busy areas with more crashes cost more
• How much your business earns in a year and how many people work for you

Commercial truck insurance costs across the industry

Progressive shares national monthly averages for trucking as a whole. For for-hire transport truckers it puts the number at $926 a month, while for-hire specialty truckers average $734 a month, according to Progressive Commercial.

Coverage is just one expense of keeping a truck on the road. The American Transportation Research Institute calculated that running a truck in 2025 cost an average of $2.336 per mile, a 3.4 percent jump over the prior year.

The Insureon numbers are medians, meaning the middle price among hotshot businesses that requested quotes through Insureon. They are not a price every driver can expect.

Finding the cheapest commercial truck insurance

Since quotes are built around your specific details, the best savings come from adjusting your policy and setup. Insureon suggests 3 ways to lower what you pay:

• Go with lower limits, provided they still satisfy the law and your brokers' requirements
• Take a higher deductible, the amount you pay out of pocket before insurance covers a claim
• Drop add-ons like comprehensive coverage

Keep in mind that physical damage coverage is generally required while you still have a loan or lease on the truck, so dropping it may not be an option.

Running leased onto a motor carrier tends to cost less than holding your own authority, says Progressive. Under a lease, the carrier generally handles primary liability while you're hauling for it. Ask what the carrier's policy covers while you're hauling for it and whether you need non-trucking liability for off-duty driving.

Newer trucks equipped with advanced safety features can sometimes be cheaper to cover. Progressive also gives discounts when you bundle policies, pay in full, or insure your personal vehicles through them.

What does each part of your policy cover?

You may need coverage beyond commercial auto, depending on what you haul and what your customers require.

A per-occurrence limit caps what gets paid for a single incident. An aggregate limit caps the total paid across every claim in the policy period, which most often runs 1 year.

You can also combine general liability with commercial property inside a business owner's policy, which extends protection to your office and other business property.

Paying in full and startup costs

If you can afford to, paying the whole policy up front may save you money. Most Progressive customers cut costs by 10% or more when they pay in full, according to Progressive.

Coverage also feeds into startup expenses. A new operating authority requires a one-time FMCSA fee of $300, while yearly registration with the Unified Carrier Registration plan for 2027 runs $55 for 0 to 2 trucks. Once your authority application is published, the insurer gets 20 days to file proof of coverage, otherwise the application gets dismissed. So it helps to line up an insurer early.

New authority checklist and fees

How much does non CDL hotshot insurance cost?

Non-CDL hotshot cover is not priced higher than CDL cover, says Trucking Insurance Services: a typical non-CDL rig under 26,001 pounds runs $1,000 to $1,585 a month in its first year, and the record and the state move the price, not the license. Many hotshot drivers use heavy-duty pickups like duallys rated under 26,001 pounds.

You need a CDL when a single truck is rated 26,001 pounds or more, or when truck and trailer together are rated 26,001 pounds or more and the trailer alone is rated over 10,000 pounds, under 49 CFR 383.91. Certain freight companies insist on a CDL even where the law doesn't, which can shrink the pool of loads available to you.

Holding a CDL may also affect workers' compensation. Some insurers give a workers' comp discount to hotshotters with a CDL that drivers without one don't get.

Common questions