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How The Hartford's Commercial Auto Works in Arkansas
Liability, physical damage, medical payments, uninsured motorists — plus Drive Other Car and the hired and non-owned coverage that decides whether your business is exposed every time an employee runs an errand in their own car. Here's how it works here, and how we place it.
Short Answer
The Hartford doesn't sell commercial auto online to small businesses — it points you to a local agency. Cribb Insurance Group is that agency, in Bentonville, and commercial lines are in our Hartford contract. Core coverages: liability, collision, comprehensive, medical payments, uninsured motorists, Drive Other Car and hired and non-owned auto. Quoted against 40+ carriers.
This is the one The Hartford hands to an agent.
Worth saying up front, because it explains the whole page. The Hartford doesn't currently offer commercial auto online for small businesses. It says so on its own site, and it points you to a local agency instead.
That's not a limitation. It's an accurate read of the product.
You can buy a lot of business insurance from a web form. Commercial auto resists it, because the questions that decide the policy aren't the ones a form knows to ask: who drives, what they drive, who owns it, what it's actually used for, and what your customer contract requires.
Change any one of those and the answer changes. A van titled to the business is a different policy than the same van titled to the owner. An employee delivering in their own car is a different exposure than the same employee driving to the office. A form can't tell the difference. That's the entire reason we exist.
The core coverages.
Commercial auto covers you and your employees on the road in company vehicles. The pieces:
Liability
The part that matters most in an at-fault state. Commercial auto usually offers higher limits and broader liability coverage than a personal auto policy — which is the point, because a business is a bigger target than a person.
Collision & comprehensive
Collision helps pay to fix or replace the vehicle if you hit something. Comprehensive covers damage from theft, fire or natural disasters — which in Benton and Washington County mostly means hail on a parking lot full of work trucks.
Medical payments
Helps pay medical expenses for your employees and their passengers after an accident — treatment, rehabilitation, dental care, funeral costs.
Uninsured / underinsured motorists
Helps pay your or your employees' medical expenses, or fix the vehicle, when the other driver has too little coverage or none. Roughly one Arkansas driver in six is uninsured. Your trucks share the road with all of them.
Your employees are already on it
Typically, all your employees with valid licenses are covered under a commercial auto policy as additional insureds. That's a meaningful difference from a personal policy and it's the reason a business vehicle shouldn't be sitting on someone's personal auto policy because it was "easier."
Drive Other Car
Covers your business' executive officers and their spouses if they drive vehicles that aren't insured on your commercial auto policy.
This one is quietly important for closely held Northwest Arkansas businesses — the ones where the line between the company truck and the family truck was never actually drawn on paper. Which is most of them.
Somebody at your business drove their own car for you this week.
The bank run. The supply pickup. Lunch for the crew. The client meeting across town. None of it felt like a business trip — and every bit of it was.
Hired and non-owned auto is the coverage for that
HNOA offers lawsuit liability coverage if you or your employees are in an accident with a personal, rented or leased car that was being used for business errands. It's an add-on to the commercial auto policy, and it's the gap we find more often than any other on Northwest Arkansas accounts.
The exposure isn't the fender. It's that the accident happened on your business's behalf, and a plaintiff's attorney knows exactly what that means.
Covers your business's liability when you or an employee causes property damage or bodily injury in an auto accident while driving a rented, leased or borrowed vehicle — or while an employee uses their personal vehicle for business.
It will not pay for damages to the personal, rented or leased car itself. That's the part business owners have backwards. HNOA protects the business, not your employee's bumper.
The separate coverage for the vehicle itself
There is a distinct hired auto physical damage coverage: up to a maximum limit, vehicles you hire, rent or borrow for the business can be covered for physical damage. It typically excludes vehicles belonging to your employees or partners.
Two coverages, two jobs. Most people think they bought one thing. Ask us which one you actually have — that's a two-minute check on your declarations page and it's ours to do.
And what commercial auto won't reach
- Medical expenses unrelated to an accident that happened while an employee was driving a company vehicle
- Accidents when an employee is driving a personal vehicle for personal reasons
- Roadside assistance — recommended, but not included by default
- New vehicle replacement — recommended, but not included by default
Don't plan off the personal minimums. They aren't yours.
25/50/25 is a personal auto figure. It does not apply to your commercial vehicles.
Arkansas' well-known statutory floor is the personal auto minimum. Business owners quote it back to us all the time as if it settles the commercial question. It doesn't.
Most states require commercial auto insurance if your business uses company vehicles, and what your operation has to carry depends on the vehicles, what you haul or carry, and — very often — your customer contracts, which routinely demand limits far above any statutory floor. For some operations there are federal rules on top of that.
The rest of the account
Commercial auto covers the vehicles. It doesn't cover the customer who slips in your shop, the employee who gets hurt on the job, or the building. Those are the Business Owner's Policy and workers' compensation — we have full Hartford pages on both, and all commercial lines are in our contract.
Quote them together and you find the things that only appear when someone looks at all of it. Quote them one at a time and you find them at a claim.
Hartford Cribby reads the vehicle schedule with you.
Cribby the Chameleon is our guide to reading a policy in plain English.
A chameleon notices what's actually there. On a commercial auto account that's usually a truck that got sold two years ago and is still on the schedule, a driver who isn't listed, a business vehicle riding on somebody's personal policy, and no hired and non-owned coverage at a company where four people drive their own cars for work every day. None of it is exotic. It's just nobody's job until it's ours.
The Hartford can only offer you The Hartford.
We can tell you when the answer is no
We're appointed with 40+ carriers. Whether your vehicles and drivers are eligible with The Hartford, and at what price, is an underwriting question the carrier decides on your facts — and if it doesn't work, we have somewhere else to go. On commercial auto that matters more than most lines, because appetite varies enormously by what you drive and what you do with it.
The account is the unit, not the policy
Quote a vehicle schedule and you get a price. Quote an account and you find the gap between the work truck and the personal auto, the driver nobody disclosed, the contract asking for limits you don't carry, and the four employees running errands in their own cars with no HNOA behind them. Send us your declarations pages. That's the whole ask.
The carrier behind it
The Hartford was founded in 1810 and AM Best affirmed its Financial Strength Rating of A+ (Superior), stable, on July 3, 2025 — upgrading the group's Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating to "aa" (Superior) in the same action. More on that on the Hartford carrier page.
Commercial auto: common questions.
Can I buy The Hartford's commercial auto online?
What does The Hartford's commercial auto cover?
My employee runs errands in their own car. Am I covered?
Does hired and non-owned auto fix my employee's car?
Does Arkansas require commercial auto insurance?
What is Drive Other Car coverage?
What does commercial auto not cover?
How do I get a Hartford commercial auto quote in Northwest Arkansas?
⭐ Follow Cribb Insurance Group in Google
Add us as a preferred source and our Arkansas insurance coverage shows up more often in your Google results.
Send us the vehicle schedule and the driver list.
That's the whole ask. We'll check the vehicles you're still paying for and no longer own, find the drivers who aren't listed, tell you whether you have hired and non-owned coverage or just think you do, and quote The Hartford against our other markets — including when it lands badly. Then we'll look at the rest of the account, because the trucks are never the only thing.
1601 SW Regional Airport Blvd, Bentonville, AR 72713 📞 (479) 286-1066 ✉️ service@cribbinsurance.com 🕘 Mon–Thu 9:00–5:00
Fri 9:00–4:00
Cribb Insurance Group Inc. is an independent insurance agency licensed in Arkansas. We are not The Hartford, and this page is not written, reviewed, endorsed, sponsored or approved by The Hartford. "The Hartford" and the Hartford Stag logo are trademarks of The Hartford Insurance Group, Inc. and its affiliates, used here nominatively to identify a carrier we represent. Hartford policies placed by this agency are issued by Hartford affiliates.
This page describes coverage in general terms for informational purposes only. It is not a policy, not an offer of insurance, and not a guarantee of coverage, availability, eligibility, or price. Coverage descriptions are general summaries and are not a contract; whether a particular loss is covered depends on the specific facts and on the provisions, exclusions and limits of the actual policy. Coverages, limits, optional and specialized coverages, program terms, product availability and eligibility vary by state, by policy and over time, are set by the carrier, and are subject to the carrier's underwriting qualifications and to the terms, conditions, limits and exclusions of the policy actually issued. Not all coverages are available for all vehicles, operations, businesses or in all states, and some described coverages are optional and available at additional cost. Eligibility and class acceptability are determined by the carrier on the facts of your operation and your vehicles and drivers; this page makes no representation that any particular business, vehicle or driver qualifies. Statements about which distribution channels a carrier offers reflect the carrier's published information and are subject to change.
Statements about Arkansas law, including that Arkansas is an at-fault tort state and that Arkansas' 25/50/25 minimum limits are personal auto figures that do not apply to commercial vehicles, are general information, not legal advice, and are subject to change. This page does not state any Arkansas commercial vehicle liability minimum; confirm your operation's actual statutory, contractual and any federal requirements before relying on any figure. Statements about contractual insurance requirements are general information and not legal advice; review your contracts with your own counsel. Financial strength ratings are opinions of an insurer's ability to meet its ongoing insurance obligations, are subject to change, and are not recommendations to purchase, hold or terminate any policy, nor do they address an insurer's claims-handling practices; current ratings are at ambest.com. A rating applies only to the rated company. If anything on this page conflicts with the issued policy, the policy controls.
Last reviewed July 2026.