Commercial auto is the whole story in the Southwest — rates are spiking and carriers are heading for the exits.
Seven approved commercial-auto increases cleared our screen this cycle, and not one qualifying workers-comp increase joined them. The pattern is everywhere: carriers adopting fresh ISO loss costs, citing double-digit liability severity, and pricing your fleet on new vehicle-history and credit scores. Trucking takes the hardest hits — and on page 3, three carriers are walking away from it entirely.
Industries in this issue's filings
Lead Filing
MS Transverse hits Utah trucking fleets with a 42.4% increase
Approved June 16, effective July 1. MS Transverse's RPS Fleet Trucking program — 1,934 Utah policyholders, $60.7M in premium — takes a 42.4% average, climbing to 44.5% on liability. Long-haul and unlimited-radius operations (300+ mile radius) absorb the most. With a thin state book, the carrier leaned on countrywide data and benchmarked Canal and HDVI to justify a 9% liability and 10% physical-damage loss trend — so this is a floor, not a ceiling. Utah fleets that renew here should be shopping now.
Also Approved This Cycle
AXA XL resets California motor-carrier rates on ISO loss costs
Liability loss costs jump 32.9% and physical damage 44.9% as AXA XL adopts the updated ISO motor-carrier form. A stacked 30% follow-on was filed and withdrawn — read that as intent. The filing also adds a mandatory communicable-disease exclusion and tightens drone exclusions on every California commercial-auto policy.
Acuity's 21% Texas average hides 46% for heavy trucks
On a $130M Texas book, heavy and extra-heavy trucks and high-limit accounts run toward 46%. Acuity cites a 46.9% one-year liability-severity jump, raises increased-limit factors, and cuts physical-damage experience-rating credibility — so one recent claim moves your mod faster. Construction and trades fleets with older equipment feel it most.
Canal takes 22.4% on California truckers — and erases the good-credit discount
Nearly half the book sees 20–35% regardless of driving record. Canal removes its commercial-credit tier (the discount good-credit fleets earned) and its vehicle-age factor, and launches an optional ELD mileage program for lower-utilization fleets. Its companion Texas filing singles out livestock haulers and rewrites small-fleet experience rating.
Sentry's Middlesex book: 19.8% average, up to 90% with new scoring
A new non-FCRA LexisNexis driver score and Carfax odometer data surcharge high-mileage fleets and remove the option to self-report lower usage. Loss ratios hit 93–95% in 2024, and Sentry selected a 15% liability-severity trend. Columbia Insurance Group's severity-5 Texas filing (25%, up to 33%) runs the same LexisNexis-scoring playbook.
Why no workers-comp story up here?
Not one workers-comp rate increase cleared our severity-4 bar this cycle. Bureau loss costs are soft across the Southwest, and the comp filings that qualified are structural, not rate-driven — Pie Insurance's Texas hazard tiering (construction +15%, trucking +30%) and Williamsburg National's California withdrawal both live on page 3. If a client's comp premium is rising in this market, it's tiering or a carrier exit doing it — not the bureau.
Package and property carriers are re-pricing catastrophe — and landlords are footing the biggest bill.
Same screen, every other commercial line: reinsurance and updated catastrophe models are driving the largest books, while general-liability carriers pile segment surcharges onto day cares, contractors and fitness studios. One Texas landlord filing alone reaches nearly 150,000 policyholders — the biggest book in the entire issue.
Industries in this issue's filings
Lead Filing
Allstate's 19% Texas landlord filing puts 148,000 rental owners on the hook for reinsurance
Approved June 3, effective April 20. The largest book in this issue by a wide margin: 148,492 Texas landlord and rental-property policyholders and $339.6M in premium take a 19% average, climbing to 23%. The driver isn't claims — it's a 26% jump in Allstate's own net cost of reinsurance, layered onto updated Verisk hurricane and wildfire catastrophe models. Coastal Reinsurance Zones 1–3 and low-deductible accounts absorb the steepest hikes.
Three Filings Worth a Closer Look
Philadelphia hits Texas day cares with 20% — and adds a pool surcharge
Citing poor day-care losses, Philadelphia Indemnity moves the class toward ISO base rates for a 20.3% average — some territories up to 95%. A new mandatory 8–15% Swimming Pool factor lands on HOAs, apartments and fitness risks with pool class codes, and camps, RV parks, religious organizations and condo associations all take a 10% base-rate bump. Effective March 2027.
CNA's property re-rate: +77.9% in one Texas wind/hail territory
The region's only severity-5 package increase. CNA re-prices Texas property around updated AIR v12 catastrophe models and severe-convective-storm exposure: External Peril Territory 5 jumps 77.9% on wind and hail, manufacturing occupancies +20%, frame construction +25%, joisted masonry +15% — and the old 2012 transition cap that softened renewals is gone.
Spinnaker's fee stack lands on California artisan contractors
Optional Contractors E&O rises about 35% on adverse experience, and every Completed-Operations additional-insured endorsement (CG 20 37) now carries a flat $50 charge — a real cost for any sub that adds GCs by the job. A new $2-per-installment fee compounds it. Micro-contractors with 0–4 employees feel it most. Effective November 1.
The Rest of the Qualifying List
| State | Carrier | Line / Sub-type | Severity | Policyholders | Effective |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UT | Great American | General Liability — Sports & Wellness | 5 / 5 | n/d | Dec 1, 2026 |
| NV | Great American Alliance | CMP — Businessowners | 4 / 5 | n/d | Jan 1, 2027 |
| CO | Acuity (Bis-Pak) | CMP — Businessowners | 3 / 5 | 6,318 | Jun 1, 2026 |
| CO | Travelers (OMNI II) | Other Liability — General Liability | 3 / 5 | 3,252 | Nov 1, 2026 |
| TX | Federated Mutual | Other Liability — General Liability | 3 / 5 | 1,671 | Nov 15, 2026 |
Also on the radar
Two Great American filings show how far a rate need can run: a Utah sports and wellness book takes 52% against a 126% indication (Med Pay cut from $25,000 to $10,000), and a Nevada BOP takes 43.8% while tightening church and restaurant eligibility. Underneath, a wave of severity-3 ISO loss-cost adoptions is squeezing contractors: 6,318 policyholders at Acuity in CO, 3,252 at Travelers in CO, and 1,671 at Federated in TX — Federated's third double-digit contractor hike in three years, now with Experian credit tiering.
The bigger moves this month weren't rate numbers — they were new scoring models and carriers leaving the market.
Same region, the changes a rate percentage hides: filings whose real story is a new algorithm pricing your account, or a carrier walking away from a line entirely. Third-party data — CARFAX, LexisNexis, TransUnion, Experian — is now underwriting Southwest commercial risks. And in commercial auto, three separate carriers just announced they're done.
Industries in this page's filings
Lead Filing · Market-Wide Signal
Farmers rebuilds how it prices a $710M California BOP book — and the average barely moves
Approved June 18, effective October 1. The headline number is a tame 3.5% average across 61,303 California policyholders — but that number is a decoy. Farmers layers on a new Smart Plan ROS scoring model, an 85% habitational occupancy floor, a 30-year building-systems rule, a 35%-of-receipts restaurant alcohol cap, a 12-month wildfire business-income cap, and a 'late shopper' penalty that charges more if you quote inside 14 days of renewal. Auto-service risks alone see individual moves up to 20–25%. When a $710M book re-prices this quietly, the average tells you almost nothing about your client's renewal.
New Scoring Models — The Data Is Pricing You
Acuity scores the truck's history, not the driver's record
A new TransUnion/CARFAX Vehicle History Score is 'revenue-neutral' on paper but hides individual swings of up to 55% between the best and worst vehicles. Fleets with high-mileage, multi-owner or damage-history rigs pay up to 25% more even with clean driving records; clean vehicles can save 30%. The scoreboard just moved from the driver to the VIN.
Federated drops experience rating for a CarFax-and-credit GLM
Federated retires its Accident Experience Rating Plan for a new GLM that scores CarFax damage counts (even non-claim incidents), vehicle-ownership duration and LexisNexis driver scores. Newer businesses (under 5–10 years), high-turnover fleets and auto dealers with fast inventory churn get sorted into costlier tiers — a clean loss run no longer protects you.
Farmers launches BOP360 in Texas — contractor loads up to 1.75x
A second Farmers scoring launch, this time a $285M Texas book. The new modular BOP360 GLM (benchmarked against Hartford and Travelers) loads specialty-trade contractors up to 1.75x and habitational risks 1.60x, surcharges buildings and roofs over 50 years up to 1.53x, and prices apartments on a Financial Responsibility Score built from their occupants.
Carriers Heading for the Exits
Berkshire's AmGUARD ends its KBK towing program in four states
AmGUARD (Berkshire Hathaway GUARD) discontinues the KBK Towing Program and non-renews every policy in it across Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and California, first wave October 28. This one's a distribution split — administrator KBK moved the block to an unaffiliated carrier (Novacore) — but towing operators still need new paper and shouldn't wait for the notice.
Two more carriers quit for-hire trucking
Shelter General exits for-hire trucking (Truckmen) in Colorado and 13 states, non-renewing ~121 CO motor carriers and — critically — cancelling the Form E and MCS-90 filings tied to each policy at expiration, an authority landmine. The same week, Harco National (IAT) block non-renews its entire California motor-carrier program, its second straight monthly retreat from CA trucking.
Grain Dealers pulls its church, funeral and printer programs from Oklahoma
Grain Dealers Mutual (American Family) withdraws its entire Commercial Package line from Oklahoma, taking three niche programs with it: the Church Focus Program (specialized property, clergy and sexual-misconduct forms), the Funeral Directors program, and the Printers program with Printers E&O. Self-storage operators also lose a 20% rate deviation. Specialized coverage like this is hard to replace.
GuideOne drops its California artisan-contractor program
GuideOne withdraws the NIF Artisan Contractors Program in California, non-renewing about 516 small specialty-trade contractors and dropping the cyber-liability component bundled into those GL and package policies. The carrier calls it a strategic-fit decision, not a fixable underwriting problem — so there's no remediation path to stay.
AF Group withdraws Williamsburg National from California comp
AF Group pulls Williamsburg National out of California workers' comp, non-renewing 24 named policies and offering a 'renewal' with an affiliated AF Group carrier — subject to fresh underwriting, which makes it a new application. The affected book skews to trucking, ag and farm-labor contractors, food manufacturing and janitorial risks.
Coverage Contraction
ICW pairs a 40% GL hike with four mandatory exclusions
ICW Group's 40% California GL increase comes with real coverage loss: a mandatory New Residential Construction exclusion for all contractor classes (that's the work), a mandatory Punitive Damages exclusion, a mandatory Human/Sex Trafficking exclusion, and full withdrawal of the GL Broadening Endorsement that carried a dozen coverage extensions. New businesses under five years old are penalized in a new scoring tier.
Great American cuts sports Med Pay from $25K to $10K
On the Utah sports-and-wellness book from page 2, the 52% rate hike is only half the story: the mandatory Medical Expense limit drops from $25,000 to $10,000, and cryotherapy, cold plunges and saunas draw new $250–$1,000 per-unit charges. Youth-sports and fitness operators are paying more for less. Effective December 1.
Great American's Nevada BOP hides a cyber reporting trap
Alongside the 43.8% Nevada BOP increase, a new cyber clause excludes any loss incurred before a breach is actually reported to the carrier — report late, and the early damage is on you. Places of worship with full kitchens or event centers become ineligible, internet retailers are cut off above 50% direct sales, and full-service restaurants face new size and catering caps. Effective January 1.
Also on the radar
The scoring wave is broader than these cards: Columbia Insurance Group and Sentry/Middlesex both built Texas commercial-auto rates on LexisNexis credit and driver scores this cycle (page 1). Alaska National adopted 2018 ISO auto rating plans in California with internal samples showing some trucking manual premiums up ~70%, and layered new underwriting onto logging and waste haulers. And Pie Insurance, the region's only notable comp move, tiered Texas construction +15% and trucking +30% — the workers-comp echo of a commercial-auto story.
