The company behind a trucking navigation app has launched its own insurance agency.
In October, Trucker Path announced the launch of its in-house, digitally enabled retail agency focused exclusively o
n trucking insurance. Trucker Path Insurance (TPI) debuted with a $7 million book of business.
TPI offers a full suite of commercial coverages, including auto liability, motor truck cargo, physical damage, non-trucking liability, and more. According to a pres
s release, unlike traditional distribution channels, TPI connects markets with a community of drivers already engaged in safe driving practices.
“Trucker Path Insurance gives markets direct access to a highly engaged audience of truckers–spanning op
eration types, commodities, and geographies,” said Aaron Ealy, general manager of Trucker Path Insurance. “With nea
rly one-third of all U.S. commercial truck drivers using our platform, Trucker Path Insurance is able to partner with mar
underwriting appetite, at scale.”
Ealy is eager to integrate more safety functionality and
data between Trucker Path and TPI–and chart how using the Trucker Path app improves loss outcomes for his agency’s insureds.
“The safer, more compliant that you keep your user base, that’s a way to contain insurance costs, whic
See more beautiful photo albums Here >>>
h a lot of Trucker Path users would name as a top-three to top-fiv
e expense for them,” he said during an October 14 interview at InsureTech Connect in Las Vegas. “And [a] top-three to top-five pain point for them year-to-year.”
Early in his career, Ealy cut his teeth across broad commercial lines on Zurich North America’s corporate strate
gy team, and he later took a position at SiriusPoint that enabled him to invest in MGAs and startups. While
co-leading an investment round in Lucky Truck–another retail agency focused on trucking–the segment’s industry
insurance dynamics piqued his interest, and Ealy joined Lucky Truck as its head of strategy and partnerships.
That company was designed to make the insurance-buyi
ng experience as frictionless as possible for a complex segment of the insurance industry, he said.
“They have the expectations, almost, of a personal lines consumer,” Ealy said of truckers. “And at the same
time, what they’re buying is like a $20-, $30-, [or] $40 thousand package that is really complex to underwrite.”
The experience primed him to take the reins at TPI about a year a
go. Trucker Path’s CEO, Joe Chen, reached out to Ealy about solving the insurance pain point truckers have, and E
aly saw the offer as a perfect opportunity to craft a solution and drive its development.
Even before he was hired, Ealy knew that the right move was to launch an in-house retail agency at Trucker Path.
Released in 2013, Trucker Path takes truck dimensions and fuel levels into account when generating cus
tom routes for drivers. It also aggregates and shares information about weigh stations, truck stops, and fuel pric
es. Ealy described the app as “Waze merged with Yelp, specifically made for truckers.” Trucker Path has one million mont
hly active users who use the app to safely and compliantly navigate their routes.
The positive brand equity and recognizability the app carries are hard to find within trucking, Ealy explained. He envis
ions Trucker Path Insurance as a “service-based company built on top of a company that truly knows technology and would provide us a really good foundation to build on top of.”
TPI has since been integrated into the Trucker Path application. The agency’s foundation came in the form of an acquisition; TPI acquired Truckers Best Insurance of Charlestown, South Carolina, and officially launched earlier this month.
“We’re like a startup–we’re quick, we invest in things very heavily as compared to an incumbent or a large existing brokerage,” Ealy said. “But we also have access to a finance team, an HR team, [and] a legal team. We have the resources, so it’s very buttoned up. But we move quickly, and we invest quickly, and we build things really quickly.”
Cover Whale and several more markets have already integrated with the agency, and other carriers, wholesalers, and MGAs have also expressed interest in integrating via API, Ealy said.