Everyone in this industry knows insurance costs are up. Premiums on commercial trucking coverage rose 12.5 percent in a single year according to ATRI's Operational Costs of Trucking report, the sharpest jump across all operating cost categories they measured. Carriers feel it. Shippers feel it through rate pressure.
But premiums are only part of the cost picture. What actually drives claims expense higher, year over year, sits inside individual files. Towing invoices that go unchecked. Storage fees that compound while paperwork moves slowly. Repair estimates written by adjusters who don't understand the equipment they're appraising.
The Towing Bill Nobody Audits
Towing a loaded commercial truck is genuinely expensive. Specialized recovery rigs, experienced operators, sometimes multiple units depending on the incident. There's no arguing the base cost is high.
The problem is what gets added. Mileage that doesn't match the dispatch record. Equipment charged as used that was dispatched but never deployed. Line items for services the driver and police report make no mention of. These charges go on the invoice and, in most cases, get paid without review.
Storage fees run $125 to $200 a day in most markets for commercial vehicles. A claim that spends 40 days in queue before an adjuster inspection runs up $5,000 to $8,000 in storage before anyone looks at the actual repair. Multiply that across a fleet or a program book with frequent incidents and the number gets significant fast.
One carrier reviewed its annual towing spend and found it had overpaid by more than $650,000 in a single year. With insurance already among the fastest-rising operating costs in trucking, recoverable waste inside claims files is one area where carriers actually have leverage. They just rarely use it.
Supplement Rates and the Appraisal Gap
Commercial trucking claims carry supplement rates between 20 and 25 percent industry-wide. A supplement is what happens when the repair shop writes an initial estimate, gets approval, then comes back with a higher number after disassembly. One in four claims.
Some supplements are legitimate. Damage that wasn't visible before the cab came off, secondary failures that only become apparent mid-repair. But a 20 to 25 percent rate across the entire book is not a hidden damage problem. It reflects who is writing the first estimate.
A general auto adjuster reassigned to a Class 8 truck or a piece of heavy construction equipment doesn't know what to look for. The estimate comes in low. Supplements follow. Claims operations using appraisers who specialize in commercial trucking consistently hold supplement rates to 10 to 14 percent. That gap costs money at any scale.
What Shippers Rarely See
Cargo claims sit in a slightly different bucket but follow the same pattern. Documentation is incomplete. Recovery is slow. Subrogation against a third-party carrier never gets pursued because no one builds the file correctly from the start.
Heavy equipment and freight subrogation requires specific expertise. Values are high, liability is contested, and the file has to be built from day one of the incident. Police reports, witness contacts, cargo condition records, maintenance logs. Organizations that collect this consistently come out ahead at the back end of claims.
Win rates above 80 percent are achievable in commercial trucking subrogation when the right expertise is on the file. One recovery recently netted $73,760 for a carrier client after all service costs were settled. That money came back on a claim that had already been paid out.
Connecting Data That Lives in Silos
The push in 2026 to connect fleet data systems that have long operated in isolation applies directly to claims management. Most carriers keep safety data separate from claims data. Incident reports in one system, indemnity and reserves in another. The two sets rarely talk to each other in a structured way.
When they do, patterns show up. Equipment with deferred maintenance generates claims that close slower and cost more. Drivers without documented training on specific equipment types file incidents with higher supplement rates. Certain towing vendors show up repeatedly on inflated invoices.
Finding these patterns doesn't require new technology. It requires someone asking the question and having access to both data sets at the same time.
Specialty Claims Handling and the Numbers
Carriers and shippers that manage claims costs well tend to use third-party administrators with genuine specialization in their equipment type. Not general commercial lines adjusters handling everything from slip-and-falls to crane collapses. Specific expertise applied at first notice of loss. Veritas Claims, which operates exclusively in heavy equipment and commercial trucking across all 50 states, documents the cost difference that specialization produces. Supplement rates held to 10 to 14 percent. Towing savings exceeding $650,000 annually for individual clients. Subrogation recovery above 80 percent on eligible files.
The premium problem in commercial trucking insurance is real and largely outside any individual carrier's control. The claims management problem is not. Every file that closes for less than it should have cost is money that stays in the operation.
TAGS: commercial trucking claims, freight cost management, towing and storage fees, cargo claims recovery, trucking insurance costs
AUTHOR BIO:
Adam Zuccato is Chief Revenue Officer at Veritas Administrators LLC, a TPA in the United States dedicated exclusively to heavy equipment and commercial trucking claims. Operating across all 50 states, Veritas handles appraisals, towing and storage resolution, subrogation, cargo claims, and full TPA services for carriers, MGAs, and program administrators.
