Your employee, another driver, your truck and fifteen thousand dollars of tools. Four different policies.
Commercial auto · Updated September 2026
Your employee is driving a company truck to a job site with a trailer and fifteen thousand dollars of tools. He runs a light and hits another vehicle. The other driver is injured. Your employee is injured. Your truck is badly damaged and the tools are destroyed.
One event. Here is where each piece of it lands.
The other driver's injuries and vehicle go to your commercial auto liability. This is usually the largest number, and it is the one your limits either cover or do not.
Your truck goes to commercial auto physical damage — collision coverage, subject to your deductible. If you dropped physical damage on an older unit, that repair is yours.
Your injured employee goes to workers compensation. Not auto. Auto liability excludes injury to your own employees arising out of employment, and this is one of the clearest reasons a business with employees who drive cannot skip comp.
The destroyed tools go to inland marine, if you carry it. Auto physical damage will not replace them.
And if the claim exceeds your auto liability limit, your umbrella picks up the excess — if you have one.
Every one of those policies can be quoted separately, by different agents, at different renewal dates, with nobody looking at how they fit together. That is how a business ends up with a good auto rate, no inland marine, a workers comp policy with stale class codes, and an umbrella that sits above limits that do not qualify.
The gaps are never in the middle of a policy. They are in the seams between policies, and the seams are what nobody quotes.
Get people medical attention and call the police. Photograph everything: both vehicles, the scene, the trailer, the load. Get the other driver's information and any witnesses. Report the auto claim and the workers compensation claim the same day — they are separate reports to potentially separate carriers.
Then call us. Part of the job is making sure each piece goes to the right policy rather than one adjuster deciding what is theirs and what is not.
Know your auto liability limit and whether an umbrella sits above it. Know whether you carry physical damage on each unit. Know whether tools are covered and to what limit. Know that workers compensation is in force for every driver.
The commercial auto checkup walks through all of it in about ten minutes.
No. Injuries to your own employees arising out of employment go to workers compensation. Commercial auto liability excludes them.
Generally not. Auto physical damage covers the vehicle. Tools need inland marine coverage.
Your umbrella policy responds to the excess if you carry one and the underlying limits meet its requirements. Without one, the business owns the difference.
Emergency services, then report both the auto claim and the workers compensation claim promptly — they are separate. Then call us so each piece goes to the right policy.
Not necessarily with one carrier, but one agency seeing all of them together is how the seams get checked. Gaps rarely sit inside a policy; they sit between policies.
Questions about your own situation? Call 417.623.8300 or send us your current policy. We are licensed in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.
Questions about your own policy? Send it over and we will go through it with you.