Drivers for on-demand delivery services need a special type of insurance. Whether you drive for Uber, DoorDash, or for some other company, you’ll need insurance to protect yourself and your business. Here are the 5 best delivery driver insurance companies we recommend.
- The 5 best delivery driver insurance companies
- What is delivery driver insurance?
- Delivery driver insurance provided by delivery companies: Uber & Lyft; DoorDash; GrubHub; Instacart; and UberEats
- Who needs delivery driver insurance?
- How to buy delivery driver insurance?
- How much does delivery driver insurance cost?
- How to find cheap delivery driver insurance?
The 5 best delivery driver insurance companies
If use your vehicle for work, your personal auto insurance doesn’t cover it. If you are a delivery driver, you need to have some sort of delivery driver insurance to protect you and your vehicle when driving for work. Here are the 4 best providers we recommend.
- CoverWallet: Best for comparing online quotes of commercial auto insurance
- Progressive: Best Overall
- Geico: Best for a hybrid rideshare insurance policy covering both personal and business driving
- Erie: Best for reasonable quotes if you are ok working with an agent
- Allstate: Best for the nationwide coverage
CoverWallet: Best for comparing online quotes of commercial auto insurance
If you a full-time delivery driver or do it as a side hustle, you have two options to make sure you are fully protected while driving your vehicle for work. You can add rideshare coverage rider to your personal auto insurance policy or replace your personal auto policy with a commercial auto insurance policy. If you pursue the second approach, you may want to start with CoverWallet to compare several commercial auto insurance quotes in one place to select the cheapest one for you.
CoverWallet is a digital business insurance broker. They specialize in all types of business insurance, including commercial auto insurance. They work with several leading business insurance companies and are able to pull quotes from these companies for you to compare in one place conveniently.
CoverWallet is a subsidiary of Aon, one of the largest business insurance brokers in the world. So they have an excellent financial rating. They also earn an excellent consumer rating from BBB (A).
>>MORE: Why Do You Need Commercial Auto Insurance?
Progressive: Best Overall
Progressive has courier insurance coverage specifically for delivery drivers. It protects you while you are using your own car for business purposes. They cover a variety of on-demand services, such as food delivery, ride sharing, and grocery delivery. You simply add rideshare coverage onto your existing personal policy and you’re done—no need for commercial auto insurance. However, if you’d rather, they can also offer you a commercial for-hire livery policy if you’re a rideshare driver.
Progressive’s rideshare coverage is only available in 34 states, however. You can see the list here.
This quote is for a delivery driver in Colorado, driving a 2013 Toyota Camry.
Geico: Best for a hybrid rideshare insurance policy covering both personal and business driving
Geico has a rideshare insurance option, which is a hybrid policy: half personal insurance and half rideshare insurance. It would be your only policy, whether you’re driving for your business or for personal reasons, you’re covered. The only thing is, Geico’s rideshare is only available in 40 states. It also excludes buses, limos, and vans.
We couldn’t get a quote from Geico, but their rates are generally very reasonable, and rates for rideshare are only slightly higher than they would be for a personal auto policy.
Erie: Best for reasonable quotes if you are ok working with an agent
Erie may have been the first insurance company to offer rideshare coverage for people who drive for Uber and Lyft. Initially, they only offered it in Illinois and Indiana, but now they offer it in all the states they cover—12—which are:
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Kentucky
- Maryland
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Tennessee
- Virginia
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- District of Columbia
Erie offers coverage through independent agents only, so we couldn’t get a quote. However, adding rideshare coverage is generally only a few extra dollars a month. It is estimated to cost between $9 and $15 dollars a month extra.
Allstate: Best for the nationwide coverage
Allstate calls its coverage for delivery drivers Ride for Hire insurance. Allstate estimates adding this type of coverage to your existing personal auto policy would be about $30 a month extra. It might have occurred to you that finding delivery driver insurance is harder in some states than others, but Allstate covers every state except New York.
Most rideshare companies offer some type of insurance to drivers, but there can be a gap: that period of time where you’re technically driving for the rideshare company, but haven’t picked up a passenger yet. Allstate covers that gap so you don’t have to worry about it.
>>MORE: The 10 Best Commercial Auto Insurance Companies
What is delivery driver insurance?
When you order food delivered by services such as GrubHub or DoorDash, someone has to get in their car and bring it to you. You may not realize that your personal auto insurance policy will not cover you if you’re in an accident while using your car for work. Most rideshare and delivery companies do offer some sort of protection, but what happens if you’re in an accident either before you picked up the food or after you’ve dropped the food off? That could result in both your personal auto insurance policy and your delivery service company denying coverage, which could spell financial disaster. Delivery driver insurance covers that gap.
Here are the coverages provided by different delivery companies.
Uber’s and Lyft’s delivery driver insurance:
Uber and Lyft both make insurance as complex as possible. They break everything down into phases:
Period 0: App is off—you are not driving for Uber and/or Lyft, so your personal insurance policy covers you.
Period 1: App is on. You are ready to work, but haven’t done anything yet. If you use this time to just drive around, this is the gap where rideshare coverage is essential. Since you haven’t picked anyone up, you’re technically not driving for a rideshare company. Uber and Lyft will provide a small amount of liability coverage, but that’s it. Your personal auto policy may not cover you at all if you don’t have rideshare coverage.
Period 2: You are en route to pick up your passenger. Now you are covered by Uber and Lyft’s insurance.
Period 3: Passenger is in the car. You are covered by your Uber and/or Lyft company insurance.
DoorDash’s delivery driver insurance:
DoorDash covers drivers for up to $1 million if you are in an accident while actively delivering food. However, much like Uber and Lyft, if you’ve turned the app on but don’t have food in the car yet, you’re in insurance no-man’s land where neither DoorDash or your personal auto policy wants to cover you.
Also, DoorDash’s insurance only covers you after your personal insurance is exhausted. If you don’t have any insurance, they won’t cover you at all.
GrubHub’s delivery driver insurance:
GrubHub requires all drivers to have their own insurance and doesn’t provide any coverage at all.
Instacart’s delivery driver insurance:
Instacart considers all their drivers to be independent contractors. In other words, you’ll need your own insurance.
Uber Eats’ delivery driver insurance:
Uber Eats provides drivers with insurance after you’ve picked up the food—before that, when the app is on but you’re en route, you should get rideshare insurance.
Who needs delivery driver insurance?
Anyone who makes deliveries or picks up passengers as either a full-time job or as a side hustle needs delivery driver or rideshare insurance. Your personal auto insurance policy won’t cover you if you’re in an at-fault accident while driving your car for business. Furthermore, if they find out you drive for a rideshare company or delivery service and you failed to inform them, they could drop you as a customer.
How to buy delivery driver insurance?
Simply tell your personal auto insurance company that you’re a driver for a delivery company. Depending on the insurance company, you can either add-on a rideshare policy or get a hybrid policy. If your personal auto insurance doesn’t offer rideshare coverage, you can either shop around for a new policy or buy commercial auto insurance. In some states, in may be necessary to buy a commercial auto policy if rideshare insurance is unavailable.
You can’t have a personal auto policy from one company and delivery driver or rideshare insurance from someone else. They should come from the same company. However, you may be able to have a personal auto insurance policy from one company and a commercial auto insurance policy from another company, but that might not be necessary and you may pay a lot more.
How much does delivery driver insurance cost?
Delivery driver insurance costs vary, depending on several factors: the type of polices you get; the coverage level; your driving record; your location; your car details; etc. just to name a few.
On average, if you get a delivery insurance rider, you should expect to pay additional $10-$50 a month, on top of your personal auto premiums.
How to find cheap delivery driver insurance?
Below are a few tips to find cheap delivery driver insurance:
- Be sure to shop with a few companies or a digital broker like CoverWallet to compare several quotes to select the cheapest one
- Keep a clean driving record
- If your insurance company offers some sort of telematic driving monitoring, consider to take it to get good driving discount
- Consider cars with good reputation for safety features and cheap/reasonable to maintain
- Consider taking driving lessons and tests to get discounts
What if I own a delivery service and other people drive for me?
If you own a delivery service of some kind, you will need to make sure your employees have either commercial auto insurance or rideshare insurance before they drive for you. Otherwise, you could be held liable if they cause an accident while making deliveries for you, especially since their personal auto insurance won’t cover it.
Last Thoughts
There are a lot of advantages to driving for a delivery service or a rideshare company: flexible hours and you can work as much or as little as you want. But don’t risk your finances by failing to get the proper insurance.
