Goods in Transit Insurance
Comprehensive motor cover does not mean the cargo inside the vehicle is insured. Neither does public liability, which excludes goods in your care, custody and control almost as a rule. Goods in transit insurance is a separate policy, it is bought in two quite different forms depending on whose goods you are carrying, and it fails on conditions more often than on the sum insured.
The Plain Version
Goods in transit insurance covers goods while they are being moved — in your own vehicles, in a subcontractor’s, or by a carrier acting for you. It sits outside the motor policy entirely. A comprehensive commercial vehicle policy will repair the van and settle a third-party claim; it will not pay for eleven pallets of stock that were in the back when the van was stolen.
It is also not covered by public liability. Almost every PL wording carries a care, custody and control exclusion, and goods you are carrying are the textbook example of property in your control. Businesses discover this at the point of a claim with some regularity.
There are two distinct products sold under the same name, and buying the wrong one is the most expensive mistake on this page.
Scope
Not every wording does all four. Which ones yours does is a question worth asking before the loss, not after.
Stock, materials, finished product and equipment while being carried in vehicles you own or operate, whether the journey is a delivery, a collection or a transfer between your own sites.
Damage that happens at the kerb, on the tail lift or on the customer’s yard. Some wordings cover transit only, and a load dropped during unloading falls outside them entirely.
Consignments held overnight at a depot or held pending delivery. Cover often stops when the vehicle is unloaded, which leaves a gap that warehousekeepers’ liability is designed to fill.
Your legal liability for other people’s goods carried for hire and reward, usually subject to standard trading conditions that cap what you owe by weight rather than by value.
The Decision That Matters
If you are moving your own stock, you want all-risks goods in transit. It insures the goods themselves, for their value, up to a sum insured per vehicle and per loss. If the load is damaged, the policy pays you.
If you are carrying somebody else’s goods for payment, you usually want carriers’ liability. It does not insure the goods — it insures what you are legally obliged to pay the owner when something happens to them, and that obligation is normally capped by your standard trading conditions. Under RHA-style conditions of carriage the cap is calculated on the weight of the consignment, not its value. A pallet of electronics that weighs very little and is worth a great deal produces a liability figure that will horrify the customer who assumed they were fully covered.
That leads to the part most carriers get wrong. Trading conditions only protect you if they were properly incorporated into the contract — brought to the customer’s attention before or at the time the job was agreed. Conditions printed on the back of a delivery note handed over on arrival have almost certainly not been incorporated, and a carrier relying on them may find the cap does not apply at all.
Many businesses need both covers. A wholesaler who delivers its own stock and also runs the occasional load for a neighbouring firm is doing both things, and one policy will not answer for both.
Read the Conditions
Cover can be in force, correctly sized, and still not respond. These four conditions are why.
Theft from an unattended vehicle is excluded unless specified security was in place and in use. Locked, alarmed, immobilised — and a driver stopping for five minutes counts as unattended.
Most wordings carry a condition requiring the vehicle to be in a locked compound or secure premises between stated hours. A driver taking the van home breaks it, quietly, every night.
Tobacco, alcohol, phones, computers, designer clothing and non-ferrous metal are commonly excluded or heavily sub-limited. If you have started carrying any of them, the policy needs telling.
If you sub a load out and it goes missing, your policy may not respond at all unless it covers subcontracted carriage, and what you recover from the subcontractor is capped by their conditions.
Numbers to Check
Every one of these is on the schedule. Almost nobody reads them until the week a load goes missing.
The maximum payable for goods on any one vehicle. Set years ago against a smaller operation, it is the figure most likely to be wrong on a schedule we are asked to review for a new client.
A separate cap on a single incident, which can be lower than the vehicle limit and can apply across several vehicles in the same event — a depot fire, for example, or a multi-vehicle collision.
All-risks wordings cover accidental loss or damage subject to exclusions. Named-peril wordings cover only what is listed, typically fire, theft and collision, and nothing else at all.
UK only, UK and Europe, or worldwide. International carriage by road runs under the CMR Convention, which applies its own liability limits calculated by weight and its own claims procedure.
Who We Arrange It For
Goods in transit is the cover question behind four of the seven trades Park knows best.
Carrying for hire and reward, so the conversation is about liability, trading conditions, subcontracting and whether the operation crosses into CMR territory.
Own stock moving out and supplier stock moving in, often with a peak season the sum insured was never sized for and a growing third-party fulfilment element.
Raw material inbound, finished goods outbound, and the occasional very high-value single consignment that sits far above the ordinary load and nobody thought to declare.
Tools, materials and hired plant in a van. Usually bought as part of a trades policy, and almost always with an unattended-vehicle condition the owner has not read.
Where vehicles are involved the two policies work as a pair — motor for the vehicle, transit for the load — and they are almost always sized against different years of the same business. Both belong in the same business insurance review, and for multi-site operations inside the same corporate insurance programme.
Named People
Delivery notes, weighbridge tickets, tracker data, the driver’s statement and the security arrangements in force on the night. Assembled early, they settle a claim; assembled late, they invite a declinature on conditions.
Ian Snowdon and Paula Hunter place transit and fleet cover for manufacturing, distribution and haulage clients. Jody Sutherland handles the day-to-day on those accounts, including the mid-term additions that keep a schedule current. Colin Thompson runs every claim from this office, from the first call to settlement — the full process is on our claims support page, and the rest of the team is on meet the team.
Goods in Transit Enquiry
Six questions and an optional upload. Tell us what you carry, who carries it and where it sits overnight, and attach the current schedule if you have it to hand. We will come back within one working day with what we would change. No fee, no obligation.
Common Questions
No. A comprehensive motor policy covers the vehicle and your liability to third parties. Goods being carried are insured separately, under a goods in transit or carriers’ liability policy.
Goods in transit insures the goods themselves, for their value, and is what you want when you are moving your own stock. Carriers’ liability insures what you are legally obliged to pay when somebody else’s goods are lost or damaged in your care, and that obligation is usually capped by your trading conditions.
Only if they were properly incorporated into the contract before or when the job was agreed. Conditions produced at the point of delivery are unlikely to have been incorporated, and a carrier relying on them may find the limit does not apply.
Most often on a condition rather than a limit. The unattended vehicle clause and the overnight parking requirement account for a large share of them, followed by goods that were excluded or sub-limited and nobody had told the insurer they were being carried.
It depends on the wording. Some cover the full operation, some cover transit only. It is worth checking, because loading and unloading is where a meaningful proportion of damage actually happens.
International carriage by road runs under the CMR Convention, which sets its own liability limits and its own notification and claims procedure. If you have started running into Europe, the policy and the paperwork both need reviewing.
Yes. Send the schedule and we will tell you what we would change. If the answer is that it is correctly arranged, we will say so.
