The USA will be our 47th country and our 67th border crossing in Cuthbert. We haven’t even quite reached the Mexico/USA border yet, but in terms of planning and preparation, it has certainly been our most difficult border so far. Applying for visas, applying for vehicle permits with the EPA and DOT are all part of the palaver, but by far the most challenging mission was getting overland vehicle insurance USA and Canada.
Note: this blog is posted August 2019 and updated December 2021 below
The Insurance Problem
Baffling, I know, but for some unknown reason, over recent years it has become extremely difficult for vehicles/drivers from anywhere in the world except North America, to buy vehicle insurance for North America. Once upon a time, travellers from Europe, Australia, Timbuktu or wherever shipped their campers into North America, bought insurance and tootled around at will. Not anymore. Since 2016-ish, it has been difficult and/or very expensive to find cover for USA and Canada. More recently, since 2018, even more difficulties have arisen specifically for Canada. Now, the few companies which were offering cover, are mostly declining cover for Canada.
Speculate all you want about the reasons (some say it’s due to European data protection laws, but if that were the case, surely Aussies wouldn’t be having the problem?) but the fact is, it’s a bit of a nightmare. We understand that it is the foreign vehicle, rather than the foreign licenced drivers, that is offending the system. However sometimes, providing a US address is a condition of obtaining cover – which can be a tricky hurdle for tourists planning an overlanding tour.
There is extensive discussion on overlanders’ Facebook forums (eg: Overlanding South and Central America, and the PanAmerican Travelers Association). You can join and search on these for long threads.
One of the issues in the FB threads that concerned us, was that several overlanders seemed to have obtained cover by being less than complete in the information provided to the insurers. Now I may be a pedantic lawyer, but I don’t think it takes years of legal training and experience to work out that in the event of a claim, this lack of disclosure will almost certainly come to light. The insurer is likely to avoid paying out and you’ll potentially be left with a hefty bill for liability, vehicle repair, medical expenses, or someone’s replacement Jimmy Choos.
The USA is famous for many amazing things, but its highly litigious society, and its extortionate medical fees are two of its less attractive attributes. So we wanted to find a genuine policy, with full disclosure as to our status in the US, against which we might stand at least a small chance of claiming should we be found liable to others.
Here’s what we found over July/August 2019 in our search to cover our Iveco Daily 4×4 55S17W camper truck (professional conversion by Bocklet, Germany), 2013 model, UK registered, with two UK licenced drivers over the age of 25 (a long way over the age of 25, in fact 😊).
The ‘No-Can-Do’ Insurers
We tried a selection of agents and insurance companies directly, by email, phone or through their on-line enquiry/application facilities. Each of these names we noted from comments found on the internet/social media, had at some stage in the past, been helpful to overland travellers.
RV Insurance America, Geico, Clements Worldwide, Liberty Mutual and All State – all replied to our enquiries and politely declined cover.
Payless, State Farm, AAA and Dairyland all failed to reply, despite two polite chase-up emails.
The ‘Maybe’ Insurers
We made some progress with three companies: Thum, Seguro Gringo and Progressive (via agent Fernet)
Thum: we gather that Thum used to be one of the favourites for European overlanders in North America. Their responses to our emails were all prompt, efficient and polite. They can no doubt afford to maintain high-quality staff when they charge between $8,000-$10,000 (depending on the detail of cover required) for one year!!! That would be for fully comprehensive cover, but only in the USA, no cover for Canada!!! Needless to say, that proposal bit the dust tout suite!!
For the sake of clarification, we asked Thum why they could not offer us insurance for Canada. The reply was: “It is only available for a small select type of vehicle – very standard motorhomes… [we cannot] insure any 4×4, expedition, or off-road vehicles”. Hmmm… rather limited. It seems that Thum cover for both USA and Canada is only really feasible for standard, road-going, professionally built motorhomes which are of sufficiently low-value as to keep the premium to a viable level.
To contact Thum for your own quote: Sue Blood – sue@thuminsurance.com Tel: 001.616.957.2400
Seguro Gringo: We understand that this is a Mexican company, based in Monterrey, offering cover for many types of vehicles, including non-North American vehicles in the USA and Canada. On their website www.segurogringo.com there are sections for ‘camper van plates other countries’ and ‘motorhome plates other countries’ (clarified as being for vehicles other than US, Canadian or Mexican). The on-line form is easy to use and there was nothing we saw which concerned us about the potential validity of the policy offered: no US address, no US vehicle registration, no US drivers’ licences seemed to be required.
The initial on-line quote from Seguro Gringo seemed reasonable (compared to our quote from Thum!!!) HOWEVER, and it’s a big ‘however’, the levels of cover offered seemed very low, eg: Seguro Gringo offers personal injury of $30,000 per person, whereas Progressive (see below) offers personal injury of $250,000 per person. That’s a huuuuge difference for a similar premium. We have no experience of the US insurance market and can only assume that Seguro Gringo’s cover is designed to (just about) keep you legal on the roads, rather than offer any realistic cover for potential costs and liabilities. It’s doubtful whether $30K would cover hospital bills in the event of a serious accident. We guess the balance of the liability could be a matter that someone might want to take up with you via the US legal system at some point.
Progressive (via Fernet Agent): We contacted Fernet by email (customercare@fernet.com) explaining our circumstances. This progressed to sending them copies of documents as requested: the vehicle registration document, our UK driving licences, and photos of the vehicle (inside and outside). In response to their request for a US address, we gave full disclosure and explained that we had only an address of friends with whom we would be staying for a small part of our trip. It could be used for any necessary postal correspondence, but we did not live there and would be spending the year touring the USA and Canada living in our camper-truck. This was accepted and we bought cover with them for around $1,500 for a year.
This is a lot of money compared to other countries we have travelled, but given: a) the potential sums we could be liable for under US law; b) the fact that all insurance in US/Canada is expensive (we have to pay a premium increase to extend our personal travel insurance to cover us there) and c) we weren’t exactly inundated with other acceptable offers; we decided to go with Progressive. (See update December 2021 below)
Note: we did try to obtain a quote direct from Progressive on-line, however the system would not accept our information – foreign vehicle details seemed to be outside the scope of their standard template for in-put. Also, their template did not allow for us to make the full disclosure about the US address that we wanted to make. It was therefore easier to use Fernet as an agent, although there was an additional $60 agency fee to pay for this service.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for USA/Canada vehicle insurance, we can say from our experience that Seguro Gringo and Progressive are likely to be your only realistic options. The premiums quoted by these two companies seemed initially to be in the same ball-park. But under the magnifying glass, the cover offered by Progressive was far higher than Seguro Gringo. The small snagette with Progressive may be that you have to provide a temporary US address. If you can’t do this, then Seguro Gringo may be your only option.
If, on the other hand: i) your vehicle fits within the narrow category covered by Thum (for Canada); and ii) you are a multi-millionaire prepared to shell-out an extraordinarily high premium for fully-comprehensive cover; then Thum may also be an option for you.
Final little snippet of advice: start the process early – at least a few weeks before you plan to arrive. It takes time to make enquiries with several firms, provide all the info they want and deal with any questions either side may have. There are few things more frustrating with overland travel than sitting at a border (or port) with your vehicle, not being able to hit the road until the bureaucrats are happy. Now we’ve negotiated the insurance thing, we can smugly gloat through our last few days in Mexico and look forward to greeting Uncle Sam in Texas real soon y’all 😊overlanding vehicle insurance usa-canada
Update December 2021: after two and a half years in North America (incl 20 months essentially ‘stuck’ in Canada with Covid travel restrictions – see 2020 North America Covid blog), we have twice been able to renew our Progressive Insurance for cover in USA and Canada. HOWEVER…. we have been contacted by several overlanders in Europe planning to ship their trucks over to North America in 2022 and they seem unable to get cover with Progressive. It seems that cover with this company many not be possible any more, so Seguro Gringo might be the only option at this time.
Click here for details on all our other overlanding insurances so far.
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