17.1 Business Auto Coverage Form

17.1 Business Auto Coverage Form

Quick Answer: The ISO Business Auto Coverage Form (BACF) (CA 00 01 concept) covers an auto only when a covered auto symbol on the declarations applies to that auto and to the coverage being claimed. Symbol 1 (Any Auto) is the broad liability grant. Symbols 2, 3, and 4 are owned-auto buckets. Symbol 7 (Specifically Described) lists units and does not automatically pick up a newly acquired auto unless the insured notifies the insurer. Symbol 8 is hired; Symbol 9 is nonowned; Symbol 19 is mobile equipment that a motor vehicle law treats as an auto. Liability, PIP/medical payments, UM, and physical damage (comprehensive/OTC, specified causes of loss, collision) are separate grants. The fellow employee exclusion sends workplace injury to workers compensation. Drive Other Car coverage is the endorsement for executives who have no Personal Auto Policy (PAP).

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Covered auto symbols

Each coverage—liability, no-fault/PIP, medical payments, UM, comprehensive, specified causes of loss, collision—can show a different symbol. Read the declarations the way you would a schedule of limits, not as a title that says the fleet is insured.

Symbol 7 is the scheduling trap. Underwriters use it when they want to know exactly which VINs have liability or physical damage. Students treat it like Symbol 2. It is not. Buy a fourth dump truck on Friday, wreck it Monday, and never tell the insurer: Symbol 7 coverage is the coverage you do not have unless the notice condition was already satisfied.

The Symbol 1 versus 2 + 8 + 9 trap

Desks often write liability as 2, 8, and 9 and nickname it “owned, hired, and nonowned.” That combination is not Symbol 1.

• Symbol 1 is Any Auto. It is the residual liability grant: if the unit is an auto and the named insured has a liability exposure from its use, Symbol 1 is built to attach. Newly acquired autos of types the insured does not yet own are inside it.
• 2 + 8 + 9 covers three defined buckets. It leaves gaps when a use is not “owned,” not “hired” as Symbol 8 defines hired (remember the employee/household carve-out), and not “nonowned” as Symbol 9 defines nonowned. It also does not magically add Symbol 19 mobile equipment that a title or financial-responsibility law just turned into an auto.

Physical damage is almost never Symbol 1. You do not comprehensive “any auto,” including employees’ personal cars. Physical damage uses 2, 3, 4, 7, or 8.

Who is an insured (liability)

For a covered auto, BACF liability insureds typically include:

1. The named insured for any covered auto.
2. Anyone else while using a covered auto the named insured owns, hires, or borrows, with form exceptions (among them: the owner from whom an auto is hired or borrowed if that owner is an employee or a member of an employee’s household, and someone working in an auto business).
3. Anyone liable for the conduct of an insured (vicarious liability).

An employee driving her own sedan to a job site is not using an auto the named insured owns, hires, or borrows. That is Symbol 9. If Symbol 9 is missing from liability, the CGL will not quietly fill the hole. Listing the employee as a “driver” on a certificate is a rating fact, not a coverage grant.

Liability, PIP/Med Pay, UM, and physical damage

Liability pays bodily injury (BI) and property damage (PD) for which an insured is legally responsible because of an accident, plus defense. It does not repair the named insured’s own vehicle.

Personal injury protection (PIP) / no-fault and auto medical payments are first-party medical grants. They exist only if a symbol and limit are shown and if state law requires or the insured bought them. Do not invent PIP on every commercial auto policy.

Uninsured motorists (UM) (and UIM where required or purchased) addresses compensatory BI—and in some states PD—when the at-fault driver is uninsured, a hit-and-run, or the liability insurer is insolvent.

Physical damage is three optional insuring agreements, each with its own symbol and deductible:

• Comprehensive (other-than-collision / OTC): open perils except collision (and except listed exclusions). Glass, theft, flood, vandalism, and striking an animal typically sit here.
• Specified causes of loss: a named-peril list (fire, lightning, explosion, theft, windstorm, hail, earthquake, flood, mischief or vandalism, and sinking, burning, collision, or derailment of a conveying conveyance). Narrower than comprehensive.
• Collision: upset of the auto or impact with another object.

Comprehensive on Symbol 7 listed units does not collide-cover a new truck nobody scheduled.

Fellow employee exclusion

BACF liability typically does not cover BI to a fellow employee arising out of and in the course of employment. That injury belongs on workers compensation (Section 17.2) and, if someone sues the employer in a way exclusive remedy does not bar, on employers liability. A company van striking a coworker in the yard is not “an auto claim” just because rubber tires moved. The exclusion exists so two employees of the same insured do not turn every workplace injury into a liability suit against a coworker’s auto policy.

Drive Other Car coverage

Executives who are furnished a company auto often drop their PAP. The unendorsed BACF does not give that person PAP-like coverage while driving a neighbor’s car, a vacation rental, or a spouse’s auto that is not a covered auto. Drive Other Car (DOC) coverage (CA 99 10 concept) schedules named individuals and extends liability—and usually medical payments and UM—to those people and resident spouses while using autos they do not own. DOC is not Symbol 1. Symbol 1 is a named-insured liability grant on business autos. DOC is a named-person endorsement for personal use of nonowned autos.