The Conflict Between Delivery Jobs and Insurance

There’s a lot of things for parents to worry about when their kids start growing up. One that most of you may not think about however is the negative impact a simple pizza delivery job can have on acquiring a good auto insurance policy. In fact many insurance companies are more reluctant to insure delivery drivers & you’ll want to take steps to work around that as much as possible.

Pizza Delivery Drivers aren’t covered by automobile insurance companies. Surely you recall all of the information you had to enter into the forms on your first insurance policy. The extensive questions about everything it seemed felt invasive & intrusive. Why would an insurer want to know everything about how & when you used your car before they would even agree to give you a price quote? Actually they need to know a lot about where when & how much you’re on the road. More time & more miles on the road mean the driver is more likely to be involved in an accident & for the company that means paying out for claims. You got it more claims mean higher insurance rates.

So for example if your teen is out driving the family car for a delivery job during rush hour frequently your insurance company more likely than not will sidestep far away from covering any potential accidents with great haste. If you’re unlucky you could be looking at dealing with thousands of bucks out of pocket for repairs or covering damages. No one wants to be in that kind of situation So what can you do about it if companies are so unwilling to provide coverage in this situation? Well you’re not completely helpless.

Check out an employer before letting your child work for them & look into how they’re choosing to deal with insurance issues. Since companies making use of delivery drivers are required for them to be insured many will do this by way of providing company vehicles to use. This lets them save a bit on insurane costs since they’ll have an absolute idea of the number of their cars out driving at any given moment.

Also available to companies is “non-owned auto insurance policy”. That way the employee has full liability coverage when delivering on company time. But it does not cover damages to your vehicle that’s why if your child is going to be delivering pizza or whatever you need to talk to your own insurance company & see what you can do to protect your teen & your vehicle.

As a last resort you can always just purchase outright a proper commercial auto policy. The cost for this kind of insurance is not insignificant so it’s not a decision to make lightly. However if you feel that the risk is there or your teen’s making a long haul of the job & you have no other options for getting the right coverage you should probably go for it. No matter how pricey it upfront it’s still less than the expense of paying for car repairs & the like yourself. As they say better safe than sorry.

Susan Reynolds is content coordinator for a leading South African Insurance Provider that specialises in Car Insurance Policies.