First Cdl Accident

Amber, you are missing the point here. He's screwing you over.

Think about this:

He claims you did $10,000 in damage.

Does he have proof of damage? Did you see an estimate? Is this the damage to his truck or the other truck?

There's no police report. He can't even prove you did this.

Insurance would cover this anyway, whether you are on the policy or not. The more I'm thinking about it....the "you aren't on the policy" is crap. Trucking companies would have fleet coverage....covering all who drive for them. I drove a prime truck with my permit, was I on the policy? Do you think agents are getting constant calls to add and delete drivers every day? BS.

Heck, in NJ all policies have to have additional "Uninsured Motorist" coverage in case a driver isn't covered.

It comes down to this: either he doesn't have insurance at all and wants you to pay all the damage...or he could submit it to his insurance and you could be responsible for only the collision deductible... The other truck would come out of his fleet liability portion...so no deductible on that side.

I'd have to do.more research on this insurance thing....which state are you in?

I'm gonna give.my family a call tomorrow and ask about the fleet thing cause we had contracts with CMV fleets to do the repairs and I might be able to find more info.

Just to put this in quick perspective as far as cost. Being a guy who has been doing bodywork since I was 15 ( still have my shop) on cars, big trucks etc and working for a major manufacturer, I can tell you that 10k in damage is real easy to rack up and quick. 2k for a used hood, up to 1500 for a bumper, 7-800 for a headlight assembly plus $100 an hour labor for install, paint etc and you can see how it adds up. As to why insurance isn't involved, it can very well be that if it's a smaller company, he may have a pretty substantial deductible so that the insurance company doesn't have to get involved. Commercial insurance isn't the easiest or cheapest to get and maintain so many times an owner will go with a higher deductible to help keep the rates down. The owner of the company I used to work for only had 5 trucks of his own and leased on other drivers for a total of 12. His deductible was 25k and that was just to keep the rates down and keep him off the radar as high risk. We had an incident where 2 drivers were following too closely and one rear ended the other. The damage to the trailer was entirely cosmetic to the tune of just under 11k. The W9 had just over 36k in damage. I tracked down the parts used, did all the install and paint which saved a ton and it still wound up being almost 16k for everything. So it's not always as simple as saying the insurance should have covered it without knowing the full details of the policy involved.