Florida Hired and Non-Owned Auto

The office manager at a Sunrise accounting firm runs to the bank with the day's deposits. She drives her own Corolla, the way she has done a hundred times. On Oakland Park Boulevard she rear-ends a pickup, and the driver goes to the hospital with a neck injury. Her personal auto policy is the Florida minimum: $10,000 of PIP and $10,000 of property damage, with no bodily injury liability at all.

Two months later the injured driver's attorney sends a demand letter. It is addressed to the firm, not to her. She was on a business errand, so the firm is the defendant with the deeper pocket. The firm owns no vehicles and has never bought auto insurance, so the partners assume they have nothing to worry about. That assumption is the gap hired and non-owned auto insurance exists to close.

Hired and non-owned auto (HNOA) covers your business's liability when someone drives a car the business does not own for business purposes: an employee's personal car, or a vehicle you rent or borrow. It pays for injuries and damage to other people. It does not repair the car your employee was driving.

Why an Employee's Car Crash Becomes Your Lawsuit

Florida applies respondeat superior, the rule that an employer answers for an employee's negligence committed within the scope of the job. Driving to a client meeting, picking up supplies, dropping off paperwork at the county building or making the bank run all count. The ordinary commute to and from work generally does not, under what Florida courts call the going-and-coming rule, although a detour for a work task during the commute can change that.

Owning no vehicles does not protect you. Florida's separate dangerous instrumentality doctrine makes a vehicle's owner liable for anyone who drives it with permission, which is why business-owned vans and trucks need a commercial auto policy. HNOA is built for the opposite case: the car belongs to someone else, but the trip belonged to you.

Timing works against you too. HB 837, the 2023 tort reform law, cut the deadline for most negligence suits to two years under Florida Statute § 95.11. That is shorter than it used to be, but still long enough for a claim to arrive well after everyone at the office has forgotten the errand.

What Hired and Non-Owned Auto Covers, and What It Leaves Out

The name describes two exposures that are usually sold together.

• Non-owned autos: vehicles the business does not own, lease, hire or borrow, driven for business. In practice, this means employees and owners using their personal cars for work.
• Hired autos: vehicles the business rents, leases for a short term or borrows. The rental car your sales rep picks up at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International for a trade show in Orlando is the classic example. Standard forms exclude cars hired or borrowed from your own employees, which fall under non-owned instead.

Both pay the same thing: bodily injury and property damage your business is legally liable for, plus the cost of defending the suit. The list of what HNOA does not pay is just as important, because most of the surprises live here.

• Damage to the employee's own car. That is their collision coverage, if they carry it. Many employers reimburse the deductible as a goodwill gesture, but the policy will not.
• Physical damage to a rented vehicle. HNOA is liability only. For rentals, you need hired auto physical damage added to the policy, the rental company's damage waiver, or a corporate card benefit that genuinely covers business rentals. Read the card terms; many exclude them.
• Your employee's own injuries. An employee hurt while driving on the job is a workers' compensation claim under Florida Statute Chapter 440, not an auto claim.
• Vehicles the business owns or leases long term. Those belong on a commercial auto policy. HNOA is not a cheap substitute for insuring your own van.
• The employee personally. HNOA protects the business. The employee's own liability is their personal auto policy's job.

Florida's Low Auto Minimums Put HNOA Closer to the First Dollar

HNOA is written as excess coverage for non-owned cars. The employee's personal auto policy pays first, and your HNOA limit responds once that policy is exhausted or unavailable. In most states that arrangement leaves the employer with a thin slice of risk. Florida is different.

Florida requires only $10,000 of personal injury protection under § 627.736 and $10,000 of property damage liability under § 324.022. Bodily injury liability is not required on a standard private passenger policy. An employee carrying the minimum has no coverage at all for the injured driver's pain, suffering and lost wages. There is nothing underneath your HNOA for that part of the claim, so in practice it pays from the first dollar of bodily injury.

There is a second trap. Many personal auto policies exclude delivering goods or carrying people for a fee. If your Miami restaurant has staff running catering orders or deliveries in their own cars, their insurer may deny the claim outright. Then your business is the only insured party left.

Which Broward and Miami-Dade Businesses Need It

The shortest answer: any business where someone drives a car the business does not own, for a business reason, more than never. That covers far more operations than owners expect.

• Professional offices in Fort Lauderdale and Sunrise: accountants, law firms, real estate brokerages and insurance agencies whose staff drive to clients, closings and the courthouse.
• Restaurants and caterers where employees make deliveries or supply runs in personal cars.
• Cleaning, home health and pet-care businesses whose workers drive between client homes in their own vehicles.
• Contractors whose field crews own their trucks and drive them to jobsites across Broward County.
• Any company that rents vehicles for travel, events or overflow work.

Contracts often force the question. Commercial landlords, general contractors and larger clients increasingly list hired and non-owned auto on their insurance requirements. If a certificate request asks for it and your policy lacks it, you will find out at the worst moment: when the job is waiting on paperwork.

What HNOA Costs and Where to Add It

HNOA is rarely sold as a standalone policy. You add it as an endorsement to a policy you already have, which keeps it cheap. Published small-business pricing guides put the endorsement at roughly $30 to $60 a month on a business owner's policy. Office-based businesses with occasional driving often land at the low end. Businesses with many drivers or delivery exposure pay more.

• On a BOP: added by endorsement. This is the most common route for small South Florida businesses, and you can see what a BOP bundles on our business owner's policy page.
• On a general liability policy: a similar endorsement exists for businesses that buy monoline GL instead of a package.
• On a business auto policy: if you already insure owned vehicles, hired and non-owned coverage is added through the policy's coverage symbols instead of a separate endorsement.

Pricing usually depends on your employee count, how often people drive and what they do behind the wheel. Be accurate on the application. A carrier that priced your firm as occasional bank runs will look hard at a claim that turns out to be a daily delivery route.

HNOA or a Full Commercial Auto Policy?

HNOA fits businesses where driving is occasional and the cars belong to someone else. Once the business titles a vehicle, leases one long term or hands an employee a car to take home, you need a commercial auto policy on that vehicle. HNOA can still sit on the same policy for everything else.

Whichever you carry, a few habits lower both the odds of a claim and what it costs.

• Collect proof of auto insurance from every employee who drives for work, each year, and ask for bodily injury limits of at least $100,000 per person.
• Run motor vehicle records before handing someone regular driving duties. One DUI or a string of speeding tickets changes who should be making the bank run.
• Keep a simple mileage or errand log. It helps settle whether a trip was business or personal when a claim arrives.
• Book rentals in the company's name, and decide in advance whether you rely on hired auto physical damage or buy the counter waiver.

The firm in Sunrise ended up paying its defense and settlement out of pocket. A few hundred dollars a year of HNOA would have handled both. If your staff drive for work in Fort Lauderdale, Miami or anywhere in Broward County, check your policy declarations for a hired and non-owned auto endorsement this week. If you cannot find it, our commercial insurance team can add it or tell you what else your operation needs.