Does Your Commercial Auto Policy Cover a Medical Device Delivery?

For the drive, yes. For the device, no. Commercial auto covers the vehicle and the act of transport: an accident, damage in transit, liability arising from operating the vehicle. It does not answer a product liability claim from a device that was delivered and later causes harm. Device companies shipping product assume the auto policy, or the carrier’s liability, handles the delivered device end to end. It handles the trip, not the product.

What Commercial Auto Actually Covers

Commercial auto responds to losses tied to the vehicle: bodily injury and property damage from an accident, the company’s liability as the operator, and in some forms the cargo while it is in transit. If a delivery van is in a collision, or a shipment is damaged on the road, that is the policy’s territory. The trigger is the vehicle and the transit. Once the device is delivered, installed, and in use, the auto policy’s job is done. A claim that the delivered device later malfunctioned and injured a patient has nothing to do with the vehicle that carried it.

The same boundary applies to a third-party shipper’s liability. A carrier’s liability covers loss or damage to the goods in its care during transit, typically at a limited valuation. It does not assume the manufacturer’s product liability for the device after it arrives. Reading the shipper’s coverage as protection against a downstream injury claim is the misread.

Where the Product Exposure Actually Sits

A device that is delivered and then causes harm is a product liability matter, the exposure mapped in products liability for medical device manufacturers. That line answers a third-party bodily-injury or property-damage claim arising from a defect in the device, whether the defect is in design, manufacturing, or the warnings. It responds based on when the injury occurred and what the device did, not on how the device got to the customer. The delivery is incidental to that claim; the product is the whole of it.

There is a related first-party exposure too. If a delivered unit has to be pulled back, the cost of executing that recall is not a transit loss and not a products claim, it is recall expense, a separate line. And where the harm flows from a service the company performed around the device, such as installation or calibration, that runs through errors and omissions rather than auto. The delivery sits at the intersection of several lines, and auto is only the narrowest of them.

Why the Assumption Causes a Gap

The failure mode is a company that ships product, sees commercial auto and a carrier’s liability on the file, and concludes the delivered device is covered. The trip is covered. The device, once it is in use, is not, unless products liability is in force. A company relying on auto for the product exposure has insured the smallest part of the risk and left the largest part open, and the gap surfaces only when a delivered device is alleged to have caused harm, long after the van has returned.

The cleaner way to think about it: ask what failed. If the vehicle failed, that is auto. If the shipment was damaged in transit, that is cargo or the carrier’s liability. If the device failed in use, that is products liability. Three different failures, three different policies, and only one of them is the auto policy.

What to Do Now

Map the delivery as a chain of distinct exposures rather than a single insured event. Confirm commercial auto for the vehicles and transit, confirm cargo or carrier terms for goods in transit if that matters to you, and confirm products liability is in force for the device once it is in a customer’s hands. If the company installs or calibrates on delivery, confirm E&O answers that service.

Before your next renewal, separate the trip from the product and confirm a policy answers each. A specialty review through Tower Street Insurance can confirm a delivered device is covered for what it does in use, not just for the drive to get it there.