Courier Insurance: Hire and Reward Plus Goods in Transit

Courier work needs two policies and is frequently done with one. Hire and reward covers the vehicle while carrying somebody else's goods for payment. Goods in transit covers the goods themselves. Buying the first and assuming it includes the second is the standard mistake.

Hire and reward is the vehicle cover

Any private policy, and any van policy written for carriage of own goods, stops applying the moment a third party's goods move for a fee. There is no partial application and no grace for occasional work.

That matters particularly for people doing platform delivery work alongside another job. A few evenings a week on an app is hire and reward exactly as full-time courier work is, and the policy either covers it or does not.

Some insurers sell short-period hire and reward: by the day or the week, which is the correct product for genuinely occasional work and a great deal cheaper than an annual policy.

Goods in transit is separate, and clients often dictate it

Goods-in-transit cover insures the load: theft, damage or loss while the goods are in your care. The vehicle policy does not do this, and neither does a tools policy.

Limits are set per load rather than per year, so the figure needs to reflect the most valuable single consignment you would carry rather than an average. A limit chosen for typical work is the wrong limit on the day something expensive is in the van.

Many clients and platforms specify a minimum goods-in-transit limit contractually. Where they do, the figure is not a choice, and it is worth reading the contract before buying the policy rather than the other way round.

The conditions that decide goods claims

Overnight and unattended clauses do most of the work. A policy commonly excludes theft while the vehicle is unattended unless it is locked, alarmed and parked in a stated type of location, and excludes goods left in a vehicle overnight altogether.

For a courier that is not a footnote. It shapes the working day: a load that cannot be delivered may need taking indoors rather than leaving in the van, and that requirement is contractual on your side.

Check also how the load must be secured and whether particular categories are excluded, high value, electronics, tobacco, alcohol, temperature-sensitive goods. The exclusions in this class are broad and specific.

What a courier policy usually will not cover

Goods you are carrying for yourself, which sounds strange until it happens: a courier moving their own equipment is outside a goods-in-transit policy written for third-party consignments.

Consequential loss, such as a client's costs arising from a late delivery. That is a liability question rather than a goods question, and it usually needs separate cover.

And anything arising from the goods being inherently unsuitable for transit or inadequately packaged by the sender. That exclusion is used and it is why photographing a consignment's condition at collection is worth the thirty seconds.

Liability for the work, not just the load

Public liability covers injury or damage you cause to third parties while working: a dropped item damaging a customer's property, someone tripping over a trolley. It is not part of a motor policy.

Where you deliver into premises rather than to doorsteps, this becomes materially more likely, and some clients require a stated indemnity limit before they will use you.

If you subcontract to other drivers, that changes the picture again and needs raising with the insurer explicitly. Cover written for one driver does not extend to a small fleet by default.

How to buy it in the right order

Read the client or platform contract first and note any required limits. Then buy hire and reward for the vehicle, goods in transit at a limit matching your most valuable single load, and public liability at whatever limit the contracts demand.

Then read the overnight and unattended clauses and adjust how you actually work to match them, because those are the clauses that decide claims. See van cover and the own-goods line, liability cover in detail and the clauses common to every policy.

Whether the work pays once insurance is counted

Courier and delivery work is usually sold on a rate per drop or per hour, and the insurance is the line item that decides whether the rate is any good. Annual hire and reward is a substantial fixed cost, and goods in transit and public liability sit on top of it, so a full set of cover has to be earned back before the work produces anything.

Which means the arithmetic runs the other way round from most jobs. Work out the annual cost of the three policies, add fuel, tyres, servicing and the vehicle's depreciation, and divide by the number of drops you can realistically complete in a year. That figure is the break-even rate per drop, and it is frequently higher than the rate being offered.

Short-period cover changes that calculation for anyone doing this part-time, because it converts a fixed cost into a variable one. Paying for a week of hire and reward for a week of work is straightforwardly better than an annual premium spread across occasional shifts.

The thing not to do is skip the cover to make the numbers work. An uninsured claim in this trade is larger than a year of premiums, and a hire-and-reward gap discovered after an incident takes the vehicle and the livelihood with it.

Frequently asked questions