Trucking industry over the last period of time didn’t pay attention to truck driver health insurance. To be more precise, some segments such as is long haul trucking business, paid almost zero attention to truck driver health insurance.
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It is estimated that only 20% of long-haul trucking companies are covering health insurance for their company drivers. The numbers go even lower when we start talking about independent truck drivers, in most cases called owner-operators.
The business worked in a way that trucking companies didn’t mention this, and truck drivers didn’t ask because all of them wanted to get as much as the money they can from their weekly cheque. Only maybe more experienced (read. older) drivers started asking for this but then they would simply transfer to another company that has this option covered.
This situation worked in a way of some sort of secret agreement between truck drivers and trucking companies. Don’t ask – don’t tell kind of relationship.
But situation started to change over the last few years. Truck driver shortage and trucking industry continue growth forced the trucking companies and industry as well to start thinking outside of the box. Trucking companies need to adopt and offer better working environment and perks if they want to keep their most valuable asset – truck drivers.
Why Truck Driver Health Insurance?
Besides obvious reasons health care protection is providing there are more reasons I think trucking companies should start thinking to offer this to their truck drivers.
Back in old days and even is some recent years this was reserved for companies that are really big or market leaders (Schneider, FedEx, JB Hunt) or companies having dedicated loads and contracts with some big companies allowing them to make higher profits and gross margins in their business and then distributing this to the company truck drivers.
So, if you ask me there are a lot of reasons as well benefits that trucking companies can achieve by covering truck driver health insurance so I will mention only part of them:
- Drivers feel happy and satisfied working for company;
- They and their families are protected in case something unexpected happens;
- This saves money for truck driver and trucking companies;
- By contracting a group policies companies can save money (till March 2017 group policies were more expensive per person than singe but that changed in March 2017);
- Truck drivers are less willing to quit and change job;
- It builds the company culture and makes it easier to hire new truck drivers;
- By offering health insurance you can attract the best sand most experienced truck drivers;
As you can see benefits from introducing the truck driver health insurance are multiple. For investing extra few hundred dollars you can receive multiple returns and in the same time, you can have your drivers happy.
Who Should Pay for Truck Driver Health Insurance?
Since the amounts to cover the truck driver health insurance can heavily vary it is not easy to decide how to introduce this service into your trucking company.
On the market nowadays you can see multiple different ways how companies deal with this and at the end, I would say it all depends on how much money you are willing to invest and what is the amount your company budget can handle.
These are the ways to deal with truck driver health insurance outside on the market:
- The trucking company covers the full 100% of the amount;
- Trucking company and truck drivers agree to pay 50% each;
- Moreover, the trucking company pays 50% first year but if the driver stays in the company after 1 year they will provide the full 100% coverage;
As you can see there are multiple variations. I just mentioned the three most used on the market at the moment. Out of those three mentioned above, we could easily develop ten more solutions but this is enough so that you can understand how to approach this situation and make the most out of the budget your company has.
What Determines The Price of Truck Driver Health Insurance?
Well, this is tricky. People that are inside of this industry shared with me that health insurance is one of the most complex systems on the market and that a number of factors that have the impact on health insurance price is very huge.
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But in most cases, there are things that we know that can affect the price of the health insurance. Some of them sound perfectly logical and make perfect sense if you ask me but in some cases, there is no logical connection if you ask me.
I leave that for you to decide. But here is the list of factors affecting the truck driver health care prices from the words of one health care insurance agent:
- Age of theTruck driver;
- Drivers’ health condition and hospital record;
- Truck driver family health condition and is there any inherited diseases;
- State from which truck driver comes from (for me this is weird but actually it is this way);
- What kind of loads they transport;
- In the case of need, what are the doctors they would like to visit? Tier 1 or lower?;
- What is the amount of coverage and what is covered in the health care policy.;
So based on the things mentioned above you can conclude that the prices can very heavily. Yes, that is true. Prices can vary among the truck driver working for the same company for up to 50% and in some cases even more. For that reason negotiating a group policy that would cover all truck drivers and getting some discounts sounds like a good start.
Drivers age is one of the unfair things if you ask me. The older the driver you have the higher the premium you need to pay. Makes sense right? But this sounds like they are penalizing you because you want to have experienced truck drivers and reduce the possibility to have truck accidents.
Liability insurance will reward you if you have this kind of drivers and you can get lower prices and on the other hand health insurance is penalizing you because of this. Isn’t crazy it?
