How a Smart Marketplace Cuts the Time and Stress of Trucking Insurance

Are you tired of the endless phone trees and "dead air" when trying to get an insurance quote for your fleet? In this episode, host Chris Harris (the Safety Dawg) sits down with Sarah Mendoza-Reid, Vice President of Agency Services at Tivly, to discuss how a smart marketplace is revolutionizing the way truckers find coverage.

We dive deep into the real costs of long-haul insurance, the unique challenges faced by small fleet owners (1-10 trucks), and why commercial trucking insurance is so much more than just a standard auto policy with higher limits.

Sarah also shares her unique background—from roller derby to insurance VP and explains how Tivly’s "warm transfer" process ensures you never have to start your story over from scratch.

Key Takeaways:
How a "smart matching platform" connects you with specialists who actually want your business.
The reality of insurance costs, ranging from $8,000 to $22,000 per truck for long-haul operations.
The difference between personal auto, commercial auto, and true commercial trucking insurance.How to avoid "dead air" and phone trees when seeking new quotes.

Reach out to Tivly:
877-907-5267
sarah@tivly.com
https://tivly.com/

Your Host:
Chris Harris
CEO, Safety Dawg Inc.
905 973 7056
Chris@SafetyDawg.com
https://safetydawg.com/

00:00 – Introduction: The frustration of insurance phone trees.
00:35 – Guest Introduction: Meet Sarah Mendoza Reed.
01:06 – Sarah’s background: From Michigan to roller derby to Oklahoma.
01:52 – What is Tivly and how is it a unique insurance marketplace?.
02:22 – How a marketplace differs from a traditional broker or agency.
02:50 – The 10-minute interview and "Smart Matching" process.
03:55 – Eliminating "dead air" with the "warm transfer" system.
04:42 – Who is the primary market? Focus on small businesses and fleets.
05:01 – The unique challenges of the 1-to-10 truck fleet.
06:10 – Breakdown of insurance costs: $8,000 to $22,000 per truck.
06:55 – What exactly is commercial trucking insurance?.
07:43 – The realities of trucking: Cargo values, injury potential, and regulations.
08:04 – Nuclear verdicts and their impact on the industry.

Transcript

0:00

Are you tired of the endless foam trees and the dead air when you're trying to get a trucking insurance quote for your fleet? Today? I'm talking to Sarah Mendoza Reed from Tivoli about how a smart marketplace is revolutionizing the way truckers find coverage. We're diving into the real costs of long haul insurance and why the traditional broker model might be slowing you down. If you want to cut stress and save time, you don't want to miss this episode. Let's get break to it. Sarah, welcome to the Trucking Risk and Insurance podcast. Can you take just a few minutes and introduce yourself to our viewers and listeners, please? Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Chris. I am Sarah Mendoza Rei d. I am vice president of Agency Services at Tivly. Uh, I started my career in commercial insurance in around 2004 with a surplus line brokerage in Florida before moving to the retail agency side of the business. Um, I'm originally from Michigan, Proud Michigan State fan, go green. Now living in Oklahoma City. Um, outside of work. I'm a wife, a mom, a former roller girl, and a proud owner of 3 amazing dogs. And your spouse comes from California. That's right, my spouse is from California. There we go. And 3 dogs were the 3 dogs from just there to curiosity. I have 2 Frenchies and a dash hound, and I have my newest Frenchie sitting right in my drawer, and he's a little hungry, so I'm gonna just keep reaching over and petting him a little bit, but... Then we better get right to it. Typically, as in positively. Positively, yes. What is it? What makes it different and unique from other insurance providers? Well, Tibley is an insurance marketplace. We have over 350 commercial insurance partners, whether they be direct carriers or agencies that we work with, and we have the ability to connect businesses, specifically, not specifically, but truckers, since that's what we're talking about, with one that specializes in trucking. And what makes that different than a broker or an agency? Well, it cuts the, our job is intended to cut the time, um, from the business owner that's looking for insurance, as well as make it easier for the agency or broker that's going to write that policy. Um, basically, a flea owner or a truck driver is going to call us. Our team is gonna conduct a small, uh, Quick interview, usually around 10 minutes or so. They're going to collect the basic information who they are, what they haul, how they run, and then, you know, what the customer is trying to solve. And then during that interview process, behind the scenes, we have a smart matching platform that ensures the fleet owner is matched specifically with a provider who specializes in the coverage that they're looking for. That's really neat, I think, because if I call up a, um, an insurance broker, because many of the trucking company, insurance companies don't sell direct, you call up either an agency or a broker, and they may or may not be able to serve you. because of the cargo that you haul or other restrictions that they may have within their own company. So what I'm hearing from you is you really don't have those restrictions. Well, you were cutting out the time. You may, you know, spend hours on the phone or on the internet searching for somebody that can help you where you could call us and we're going to get it narrowed down to a smaller group, hopefully to one specific one that can take you. They're ready to take that call. Once we're done with the interview process and we have that match for the customer. We're going to warm transfer you to that partner so you don't have the dead air. You're not getting lost in a phone tree, you're not having to start over from scratch. And then that partner's going to take it and do a deeper dive, you know, collecting full fleet information and claim history and basically all the underwriting details. So they can get them quoted. to try to make it seamless and give them a much better shot at driving away with the coverage that they need. And who is your market? We have several. Go ahead. We, we do, we're primarily small business, um, market. So, I'm going to say small. Are you talking like one to 10 trucks? Yeah, um, I think we, I had a trucking risk that came through last year through, um, our agency division. I want to say they had 25 trucks. Um, but typically we see the one to 10 range. We don't see, you know, higher, higher than that, just in our marketplace access. Um, it's really just who, who's coming across. We have the ability to connect with, you know, really large brokers that can write higher risks, specialty brokers. Yeah, and my experience is it's the one to tens. They're the ones that, um, frequently pay the highest amount and have the hardest time finding coverages. Yeah, um, I mean, really the pricing is going to be dependent on, you know, the situation. Um, The, uh, Losing my my words. The, it's dependent on, you know, a lot of different factors. So, Obviously, you know, when we're talking money, it can, you know, policies can range for a single driver from 8 to 22,000 for a single truck. you know, per year. And if you're think, that's going to be like over the over the road, long haul trucking, but, you know, a local guy with just a box truck, it could be anywhere from 3 to $8000 per truck. Um, but it's going to be based on a lot of different factors. Not, you know, the driving history, claims history, uh, what type of truck it is, if they have any specialty, you know, with like a reefer or doing hot shot or anything like that. It's all going to vary. So no policy is going to be the same for every particular company. Well, and that's for sure. It also largely depends on what the heck you're hauling and, you know, are you doing, as you said, reef or freight, drive, freight, oversize, overweight. Yeah. It's so many different variables in trucking. It's wonderful. Um, it's what makes, makes it interesting for me. Now, exactly what is it that you can cover in commercial trucking insurance or asked, I guess, a better way would be, what is commercial trucking insurance? Well, at a high level, Chris. Commercial truck insurance is a collection of auto insurance policies tailored for the trucking business. But what it's not is regular auto insurance with higher limits. So it's built around the realities of trucking. Yeah, higher vehicle, or heavier vehicles, uh, higher cargo values, higher injury potential, federal regulations that you don't see with a normal personal auto policy. Or even a normal commercial, commercial auto policy. And you've got damn nuclear verdicts too. Yes. That's how I forget those lovely beasts that are hanging out there. Tell me a little bit about what's They make one bad decision, speeding, distracted driving or like just driving tired in bad weather and not having those safety protocols in place. That can, you know, produce a multimillion dollar claim that blows past their small liability limit, which threatens their authority and their truck and their personal assets. But a large fleet. same type of crash, same type of settlement. They may likely survive it because they're going to have likely have layers of insurance and more capital, but they're going to feel it through higher rates and tougher underwriting and likely force investment and safety training. So, where some of the smaller guys might not think about, you know, those things, it is important because it's your livelihood. different about covering a commercial vehicle. Well, you have uh, you have your different types of vehicles that are truck, you know, that are covered. Sorry. Um, most people here truck insurance and they think just 18 wheelers, but it's much broader. You know, we've kind of alluded to that a little bit. You've got long haul and regional tractor trailers. Um, obviously, but you also have box trucks and straight trucks doing furniture furniture or parcel deliveries. Then you have the dump trucks and mixers and construction, tow trucks, rollbacks, you know, in the whole world of, you know, just general delivery vans. Um, It's not just, you know, a, uh, passenger vehicle that's used to, to run a bank errand, you know, for an office. It's, it's the, if you're driving, if you're commercial trucking, you're hauling goods. If it's a moving vehicle, moving goods, tools, equipment for a business. It's almost always going to be commercial truck. Um, or at least a commercial auto solution, you know, that we could have for it, but. One of the things that I see growing a lot right now is what I call last mile delivery. I know my wife loves to shop online. And we get cars pulling up all the time to drop off the parcels, but that's a commercial use. I think that fall, I think that falls under, that would fall more under a commercial auto policy with an endorsement. Um, or with a, you know, additional insured for like Amazon in particular. Uh, but if it's, if it's a considered a box truck or over a certain weight, that's what's going to fall into the commercial trucking portion of it.£10,000, I believe, or 4500 kilograms, depending on whether I'm talking American or Canadian, eh? Exactly. Oh, God. We've talked about how much it costs already. Um, what, again, going back to uh, positively or tivly. How can you best help a small trucking company owner? Well, I think it's just, 1st connecting, you know, getting them on the phone and seeing what their needs are, um, that interview process, where it's, it's not very long. It's only, you know, roughly 10 minutes. Some will go longer, depending on the customer where they're located. I think region, regionality, you know, tends to drive the flow of some conversations. You get a Midwest, not Midwest, northeast person, New York, Michigan. I tend to talk fast versus, you know, and somebody who wants to get things done, they want to get off the phone, they're going to be more, uh, and up to have the, the questions ready to go and answers ready for, for the person that's doing the interview on our team, um, versus somebody who's, you know, in the south where I live now where it's a little slower and you got the pleasantries and, well, sweetheart, you know, this is what I, you know, well, let me go check this. I'm going to have to grab that and that kind of thing. It can drag on, but our typical interview process, depending on the type of business it is and what they're needing is around 10 minutes. And then, you know, just going through that process, taking as many notes as we can. We're going to pass all that off to the partner that we ultimately end up trying to putting you, connecting you with, um, in that warm transfer. And, uh, you know, that's just going to give them the best shot to, uh, to, you know, keep their trucks moving and their revenue protected by connecting them with that, that right specialist that can write their business. that hopefully, you know, turns out a tailored quote and ideally write the policy form. That's going to be best for their business situation. Do you write in all states or? We can, we, we, we can help in all states. Yep. Yeah, because again, going back to my insurance days, a lot of the times it was, they couldn't help you in all jurisdictions or states. Yeah, because we are, because we're not a brokerage or a carrier, we're a marketplace. We have partners that are on the east coast, Midwest, west coast. Um, they're open all, you know, all varying hours of the day. Uh, our contact center that handles the interview process. They're open, I believe, from 7 AM central to 7 PM central or later. Actually no, it's later. No, no, the exact times. I believe it's actually 9 p.m. central is what we're open to and we're Monday through Saturday. Um, so we're only closed on Sundays. But, uh, there's always somebody able to answer the phone, I want to say we have over 400 people within our contact center. So you're typically getting a live person on the phone without going through a gamut of phone, phone tree of press one for this or press 2 for that. I think we do have one for bilingual. 11 little router for bilingual. Um, but other than that, when you connect, you're connecting with with someone that's going to be ready to start asking questions and get you going to the next best thing. Sounds like you can connect with a live human, 6 days a week. Um, basically 12 hours a day. Yeah, basically. And we do have, you know, digital digital options as well. customer can fill out a forum on our on our website. It's going to, um, it could potentially route them to a particular partner. Um, if not, then it'll tee them up for a phone call. So if we're not available during outside of our hours, then it'll tee up for our team to give you a call and finish that process. See? What a perfect place, I think, to wrap it up. Is there anything else there that we need to know about the company and or about you? Well, I mean, we've been we've been around for a while. Um, I've been with the company specifically for this is my 15th year. Almost as long as I've lived in Oklahoma. I've worked with Tipley. Um, I've worked, you know, everything from the contact center side to, you know, leading the agency side, um, from marketing to accounting to HR, uh, when we started off really not small. We've grown leaps and bounds and, you know, trying to help every business owner the best we can and and just connecting people where they're going to be best fit to cover them and really provide education for them too. That's perfect. And of course, your contact info is in the show notes down below, and I would encourage you to, or the viewers to reach out to Sarah. Finding the right insurance broker doesn't have to be a full time job that keeps you off the road. I want to thank Sarah Mendoza Reid for joining us, and pulling back the curtain on how Tivly is making the process fast and more transparent for the small fleets. If you're ready to stop chasing brokers and start getting results, make sure you check out the links in the show notes down below. Hey, as always, stay safe out there, keep the wheels turning, and I'll see you in the next episode of the trucking risk and insurance podcast.