12.1 Business Auto Coverage Form and Covered Auto Symbols

The Business Auto Coverage Form

The Business Auto Coverage Form (BACF) is the Insurance Services Office (ISO) standard form CA 00 01, the commercial counterpart to the Personal Auto Policy (PAP). It is wrapped inside the Commercial Auto Coverage Part, which a producer assembles into a package or monoline policy alongside common declarations and the Common Policy Conditions (IL 00 17).

The BACF insures cars, trucks, trailers, and vans an organization owns, hires, or uses in its business. Exam vendors test the form heavily because almost every commercial account carries auto exposure, and because the covered auto symbols control exactly which vehicles get coverage.

Covered Auto Symbols

A BACF does not automatically cover every vehicle. Coverage is switched on by numeric symbols entered next to each coverage on the declarations. The symbol defines the class of "covered autos." Memorize the nine symbols — every state exam tests at least one.

Trap: Symbol 1 (Any Auto) is allowed only for liability, not physical damage. Physical damage requires owned-auto symbols (2, 3, 4, 7) because you cannot pay an own-damage claim on a vehicle you neither own nor schedule.

Symbol Strategy and Automatic Acquisition

Most commercial accounts pair Symbol 1 for liability with Symbol 7 for physical damage on scheduled units, then add 8 and 9 for hired and non-owned liability. This combination closes the three exposure categories: owned, hired, non-owned.

When Symbol 2, 7, or coverage is written, the form's newly acquired auto provision gives automatic coverage. If Symbol 7 is used, the insured must report a newly acquired auto within 30 days for it to remain covered; under Symbol 2 ("owned autos only") all newly acquired owned autos are covered automatically with no reporting requirement.

Who Is an Insured Under the BACF

The BACF uses an omnibus clause broader than the symbols themselves. Three categories qualify as an insured:

• You (the named insured shown in the declarations) for any covered auto.
• Anyone else while using a covered auto you own, hire, or borrow with your permission. This is the heart of permissive-use coverage on a commercial fleet.
• Anyone liable for the conduct of an insured but only to the extent of that liability (for example, the business when an employee drives).

Several people are carved out even when using a covered auto. The owner of a hired or borrowed auto is not an insured (the lessor must be added by endorsement, CA 20 01). An employee using a vehicle the employee owns is not an insured under owned-auto symbols — that exposure needs Symbol 9 (non-owned). And someone in the auto-selling, servicing, or parking business is excluded because that is a garage exposure written elsewhere.

Symbols on the Declarations — A Worked Reading

Suppose a contractor's declarations show Liability: Symbol 1; Physical Damage Comprehensive and Collision: Symbol 7; Hired and Non-Owned Liability: Symbols 8 and 9. Read that as: the business has broad any-auto liability protection, but the insurer will pay for damage to vehicles only on the trucks specifically scheduled under Symbol 7.

If that contractor borrows a customer's pickup and damages it in a collision, liability to third parties is covered (Symbol 1), but there is no physical-damage payment for the borrowed truck because Symbol 7 covers only scheduled units. To close that gap the contractor would add hired-auto physical damage (Symbol 8 physical damage), which most exams flag as the correct fix.

A common exam distractor offers Symbol 1 for physical damage; reject it. Symbol 1 is liability-only by design, because an insurer cannot pay an own-damage claim on a vehicle the insured neither owns nor schedules and whose value it never rated.

Exam Memory Hooks for the Symbols

Candidates who miss commercial-auto items usually miss them on the symbols, so anchor three rules:

• Liability can use any symbol; physical damage cannot use 1, 8, or 9. Own-damage payment requires owned or scheduled autos (2, 3, 4, 7).
• 8 = hired, 9 = non-owned. A rented box truck is hired (8); an employee's personal car used on a sales call is non-owned (9).
• 5 and 6 are state-driven. Symbol 5 captures owned autos in no-fault/PIP states and Symbol 6 captures owned autos in compulsory uninsured-motorist states; both exist so a multistate fleet automatically picks up the legally required coverages.

When a question describes a business that owns trucks, rents occasional trailers, and sends employees out in their own cars, the complete liability solution is Symbols 2, 8, and 9 (or simply Symbol 1, which subsumes all three). Spotting that the three exposure classes — owned, hired, non-owned — must each be addressed is the skill being tested.