If a vehicle is involved in how your business makes money, a personal auto policy is probably not the right place for it. What you need instead depends less on what you drive than on who owns it, who drives it, how far it goes and what your contracts require.
Last reviewed: September 2026.
Start with these questions, not with a product
Most commercial auto quotes go wrong at the beginning, because nobody asked enough about how the vehicles are actually used. These are the questions that determine what you need and what it costs:
- Who owns the vehicles? The business, or you personally? Title and registration drive how the policy has to be written.
- Who drives them? Named drivers, any employee, occasional help? What do their motor vehicle records look like?
- What radius do they travel? Local, intermediate, or long haul. This is one of the largest rating factors there is.
- Do employees drive their own vehicles for work? Running to a supplier, driving between job sites, making deliveries in a personal car.
- Are vehicles taken home at night? Personal use of a business vehicle changes the exposure.
- Are you pulling trailers? Owned, rented or borrowed.
- Are tools, equipment or materials carried in the vehicles? Auto policies do not cover the contents — that is inland marine.
- What limits do your contracts require? Many customers, general contractors and airport authorities specify a number you must carry.
- Do you rent vehicles? Even occasionally.
If a quote arrives without anyone asking most of those, be skeptical of it. The number may be low because the exposure was never captured — and that is the kind of gap that only becomes visible at a claim.
What a commercial auto policy actually covers
The coverage parts look similar to a personal auto policy, but they are structured for business use and the limits are usually much higher.
Liability — bodily injury and property damage
This responds when you or an employee are legally liable for injuring someone or damaging their property with a covered vehicle. It pays the injured party, not you. It also funds your defense, which on a serious auto claim is frequently a significant cost in its own right.
Commercial policies are often written with a combined single limit — one number covering both bodily injury and property damage per accident — rather than the split limits common on personal policies. Most business contracts that specify a number are asking for a combined single limit.
Physical damage — collision and comprehensive
Collision covers damage to your own vehicle from an impact. Comprehensive covers most other causes of loss to your vehicle — theft, fire, hail, vandalism, striking an animal. Both are optional in the sense that no law requires them, but a lender or lessor almost always will, and a vehicle you cannot afford to replace out of pocket is not really optional.
Uninsured and underinsured motorist
Responds when the at-fault driver has no insurance or not enough of it. Worth taking seriously: the state minimum an at-fault private driver may be carrying is far below what a serious injury to your driver would cost.
Medical payments
Pays medical expenses for occupants of your vehicle regardless of fault, up to a usually modest limit.
What it does not cover
A commercial auto policy is not a property policy for what is inside the vehicle. Tools, equipment, materials and inventory in the truck are generally not covered by the auto policy — that is contractors equipment or inland marine coverage, and it is one of the most common gaps we find. It also does not cover injuries to your own employees; that is workers compensation, which in Ohio means the BWC.
Which vehicles are actually covered — and which are not
This is the single most misunderstood part of commercial auto, and getting it wrong is expensive.
A commercial auto policy covers the vehicles scheduled on it. Company cars, vans, pickups, box trucks, SUVs, limousines, taxis and similar vehicles owned by the business and listed on the policy. If a vehicle is not on the schedule, do not assume it is covered.
It does not automatically extend to a personal vehicle that an owner or employee drives for work. That is a separate exposure with a separate solution, and it catches a great many businesses by surprise.
Hired and non-owned auto — the gap most businesses have
Two distinct situations, usually addressed together:
- Hired auto — vehicles you rent, lease or borrow for business use.
- Non-owned auto — vehicles you do not own being used for your business, most often an employee’s own car.
Hired and non-owned auto (HNOA) coverage addresses your business’s liability when those vehicles are involved in an accident on your behalf. If an employee causes a serious injury while running an errand for you in their own car, the injured party can look to your business — and your business needs coverage that responds.
Two things to be clear about. On the non-owned side the coverage is liability only: it does not repair the employee’s vehicle and it does not replace their own auto insurance. On the hired side, physical damage coverage for vehicles you rent is available and usually worth adding if you rent with any regularity — it is typically an endorsement rather than something automatic.
If you have employees running errands, making deliveries, or driving between locations in their own cars, you have this exposure whether or not you have thought about it.
A personal policy and business use
Personal auto policies are written for personal use and commonly limit or exclude certain business uses. Whether a given trip is covered depends on the policy wording and the facts, so the honest answer is that it varies — but relying on a personal policy for a vehicle that is genuinely part of a business operation is a risk most owners would not take if they had read the form. If you are not sure which side of the line you are on, that is worth a conversation before something happens rather than after.
How much coverage — and who decides
Three different things set your number, and the highest one wins.
1. The legal minimum
Ohio’s financial responsibility minimums for motor vehicles are $25,000 for bodily injury to one person, $50,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage. Treat that as a registration threshold, not a business decision. It is a fraction of what a single serious injury claim costs, and no commercial contract will accept it.
2. What your contracts require
This is usually the real driver. $1,000,000 combined single limit is the common baseline for corporate, institutional and general contractor requirements, frequently specified as including owned, hired and non-owned vehicles, and frequently with additional insured status required as well. Read the insurance requirements page before you sign, not after.
3. What your operation actually needs
Regulated for-hire operations are their own category. A carrier transporting passengers for hire in Ohio faces requirements well above the general minimums, and a carrier operating across state lines faces federal ones. If you are in that world, the applicable figure is not a matter of preference.
Where contract requirements outrun what makes sense on a primary policy, a commercial umbrella is the affordable way to reach the number. If your customers are pushing you toward $2 million or $5 million in total limits, tell us the required figure and we will structure the primary and umbrella together rather than pricing them separately.
What drives your premium
Rating varies by carrier, but these are the factors that move the number most:
- Vehicle type, weight and value
- Radius of operation — local, intermediate or long haul
- Driver records, and how many drivers share the vehicles
- Years in business and years of driving experience
- Claims history
- Limits and deductibles
- How the vehicles are used, and whether personal use is involved
- Garaging location
Two of those are within your control in the short term: driver selection and how cleanly you document it. A carrier looking at a submission with clean MVRs, a written driver-screening standard and organized loss runs prices it differently from one that arrives as a list of names.
Industry notes
Contractors
Trucks and trailers, tools in the bed, crews driving between sites, and general contractor insurance requirements that often specify both a limit and additional insured status. Two things commonly missing: HNOA for crews using personal trucks, and inland marine for the tools — which the auto policy does not cover.
Black car, limousine and for-hire livery
A regulated category with its own operating authority, filing and airport permit requirements that go well beyond an ordinary commercial auto policy. If you carry passengers for hire, start here:
→ Black Car Insurance in Ohio and Kentucky
→ Black Car Insurance for CVG: Florence, Newport and Cincinnati
→ Black Car Insurance in Columbus and Dayton
Trucking and heavy equipment
Large trucks, tractor-trailers and heavy equipment are rated and regulated differently, with their own federal filing requirements.
→ Commercial Trucking Insurance
Service and delivery businesses
Restaurants with delivery, home healthcare, mobile services — frequently a small owned fleet plus employees in their own cars. The owned vehicles get the attention and the personal-vehicle exposure gets missed.
Why work with Lighthouse
We ask the questions at the top of this page. A commercial auto quote that skips them is a guess with a price attached.
We are independent. Commercial auto appetite varies enormously between carriers, particularly for contractors, for-hire transportation and anything with a poor loss year in it. Access to multiple markets is what turns a decline into a quote.
We read the insurance requirements. Required limits, additional insured status, hired and non-owned wording, waivers of subrogation — we would rather check the requirements page against your policy before you sign than explain a gap afterward. We are insurance professionals, not attorneys, and we do not give legal advice on your contracts.
We handle filings and certificates. Including the ones regulated operations depend on.
About this guide
Last reviewed: September 2026.
Insurance requirements change, and what applies to you depends on your vehicles, your operation, your jurisdiction and your contracts. Coverage descriptions here are general summaries of how these policies commonly work — they are not a coverage determination, and your own policy forms and endorsements govern.
Confirm regulatory requirements with the agency that applies to you, and bring us any contract insurance requirements before you sign them. Request a quote, contact us, or call (513) 860-2552.