What Is BIPD Insurance? Meaning, Limits and Filings Explained
BIPD insurance is Bodily Injury and Property Damage liability coverage — the public-liability insurance every for-hire motor carrier must carry to operate in interstate commerce. A BIPD filing is the proof: the carrier's insurance company files a certificate directly with the FMCSA showing that qualifying coverage is in force. No active filing, no operating authority.
Because insurers file these certificates with a federal agency, they become public record — which makes BIPD filings one of the most useful public data points in trucking. Here's how to read them.
What's in a filing
- The insurance company underwriting the liability policy — the carrier's current auto-liability insurer, on the record.
- The coverage amount the insurer certifies (which may be the policy limit or the federally required portion of it).
- The effective date the certified coverage began.
- Cancellations, including pending ones — insurers must notify FMCSA before coverage ends, so a drop or switch shows up in the record before it happens.
The form codes you'll see
| Form | What it is |
|---|---|
| BMC-91 / BMC-91X | Certificate of BIPD liability insurance (91X is used when coverage is aggregated across policies/insurers). This is the filing that keeps for-hire authority active. |
| BMC-34 | Cargo insurance certificate — required only for household-goods carriers and freight forwarders. Most general-freight carriers carry cargo coverage but don't file it federally. |
| BMC-84 / BMC-85 | Broker/freight-forwarder $75,000 surety bond or trust — a bond, not insurance, but it lives in the same records. |
Federal minimum coverage amounts
The required BIPD limit depends on what the carrier hauls:
- $750,000 — general freight (non-hazardous). In practice most shippers and brokers require $1,000,000, so that's what carriers typically buy.
- $1,000,000 — oil and certain hazardous materials.
- $5,000,000 — the most dangerous hazmat classes (and larger passenger operations).
The policy also carries an MCS-90 endorsement, which guarantees the public gets paid on a judgment even if a coverage defense would otherwise apply — a detail underwriters care about deeply.
Why sales teams read BIPD filings
- Insurance producers: the filing names the incumbent insurer and the effective date — the two inputs for estimating the renewal X-date. Pending cancellations are ready-to-buy leads.
- Freight brokers: an active filing at adequate limits is a basic carrier-vetting checkpoint before tendering a load.
- Anyone segmenting the market: filings separate the true for-hire universe from private fleets at scale.
Where to look one up
Individual carriers can be checked through FMCSA's public registration and insurance records, and FMCSA publishes the complete active/pending insurance table as an open dataset on data.transportation.gov — the public record DotRadar reads MOTUS-native and refreshes daily.
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