subject: Insurance And Bonding Of Delivery Personnel [print this page] There are simply too many liability issues potentially at play for any courier company, delivery company, or 3pl providers to ever cut corners when it comes to making sure that their drivers are fully insured and bonded. The logistics and delivery business is one where at any given time a single employee could be responsible for a massive amount of cargo worth a very large sum of money. A large number of companies could suddenly find themselves bankrupt if they were left vulnerable to employee actions which would cause them a loss in this type of situation.
Bonding is when you have insurance which essentially protects your company in the event that an employee takes action which would cause you a loss, essentially the protection against employee theft. This is especially important when in the courier industry when a single driver could be driving a truck that contains goods from many different companies, all of which are worth large amounts of money. By bonding their employees a logistics provider is going to protect themselves and you from any of those types of actions.
Of course, employee theft isn't the only way that losses can be experienced when you're shipping goods. Accidents happen every day, and even professional drivers can become involved in traffic collisions from time to time. An argument could be made that they are even at a greater risk for being involved in these types of collisions due to the amount of time that they are on the road. That is why all courier companies are going to take steps to make sure that they have the maximum amount of insurance that they are allowed to in their state out on all of their drivers while shipping goods for the company.
You should never have to worry about the bonding of a logistics provider's drivers, however, you may want to just ask and ensure that they are following that standard practice for your own piece of mind. What you may want to check is the value of the insurance coverage that they have which is actually on the goods that you are shipping. This is a separate type of insurance usually just called courier insurance, but sometimes the maximum value it covers might not be as much as your goods, in which case it could be very practical to take out an extra policy to help make sure that you are completely protected if your goods are damaged.
by: Paul McDuffy
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