Auto liability is the coverage your vendor requirements probably get wrong

A carpet cleaner backs into a resident's car in your parking lot. The van is titled to him personally and insured on a personal auto policy.

That policy almost certainly excludes the loss, because personal auto policies exclude vehicles used in a business. The resident's claim now looks for the next available policy, which is the property's.

Read the symbols, not the limit

Commercial auto certificates carry a set of checkboxes that most reviewers skip on the way to the combined single limit.

Any auto is the broadest. Owned, hired, borrowed, employee-owned. If this is checked, the auto section is essentially handled.

Owned autos only covers the scheduled vehicles and nothing else. A vendor whose crew drives their own trucks to your property has no coverage under this while they drive.

Hired autos covers rented or leased vehicles the vendor uses.

Non-owned autos covers vehicles the vendor does not own and does not rent, which in practice means employee-owned vehicles used for work.

The pattern worth learning is that a small vendor frequently has owned-autos-only, which is the cheapest form, and their crew drives personal trucks. That combination is a real gap and the certificate looks fine at a glance because the limit box says $1,000,000.

Hired and non-owned is the endorsement to require by name

For most property management vendors, hired and non-owned auto liability is the coverage that closes the actual exposure, and it is inexpensive because it sits excess of the driver's own policy.

Write it into the requirement explicitly rather than requiring "auto liability of $1,000,000," which a vendor satisfies with owned-autos-only.

The specific case this protects: a technician driving their own pickup to your property, on the clock, hits somebody in your lot. Their personal policy may exclude the business use. Without hired and non-owned on the vendor's commercial policy, the loss goes looking for a deeper pocket.

The MCS-90 is a federal filing, and it is not coverage for you

The MCS-90 shows up on certificates from vendors that haul, and it is one of the most misread endorsements in the set.

It is a federally required financial responsibility endorsement for interstate motor carriers hauling regulated commodities. It guarantees that a member of the public injured by the carrier gets paid up to a statutory minimum, even if the underlying policy would not have covered the loss.

Three things about it that matter to a property manager.

It protects the injured public, not you as a contracting party. It is a surety-like guarantee rather than first-party coverage, and the insurer that pays under it has a right to reimbursement from the motor carrier.

It only applies to interstate transport of the regulated commodity types. A local hauler operating intrastate is outside its scope entirely.

It is not a substitute for the auto liability limits in your contract. A vendor presenting an MCS-90 as evidence of auto coverage has answered a different question than the one you asked.

Where it is genuinely relevant: hazardous waste haulers, and any vendor moving materials that trigger the federal minimums. For those, its presence tells you the vendor is operating inside the federal framework, which is useful information about the vendor and is not the coverage your contract requires.

Pollution on the auto policy is its own gap

A vehicle carrying a load that spills is a coverage question most people never ask.

Standard commercial auto has a pollution exclusion with a narrow carve-back. Vendors hauling anything that can contaminate need the CA 99 48 endorsement, broadened pollution liability for covered autos, or a separate environmental policy.

This is the requirement that matters for waste haulers, fuel delivery, and pool chemical suppliers, and it is almost never in a standard vendor insurance requirement set.

Requirements should vary by whether the vendor drives on your property

Auto liability requirements written as one number for every vendor either overinsure the consultant who never visits or underinsure the hauler who is on site three times a week.

A defensible structure: any vendor who drives onto the property needs auto liability including hired and non-owned. Vendors hauling material need pollution on the auto policy. Vendors with heavy equipment need the equipment scheduled somewhere, either on auto or on inland marine, since a skid steer is neither an auto nor a building.

That last one is worth checking on your own requirement set. Mobile equipment falls between policies and frequently ends up covered by none of them.

What IDCore checks and what it does not

The AI reads the auto section, including which symbols are checked rather than just the limit, and matches that against a requirement set you can vary by trade. Requirements are configurable per trade rather than portfolio-wide, which is the mechanism that makes an auto requirement for a hauler differ from one for a consultant.

Where we stop: we do not interpret whether a specific endorsement form number satisfies a specific lease provision. That is a coverage question for your broker or counsel, and any compliance platform answering it is giving you advice it is not licensed to give.

Check one vendor's auto section

Pick your highest-frequency vendor, the one on site weekly. Look at their auto certificate and find which symbol boxes are checked.

If it says owned autos only and their crew drives personal trucks, you have found the gap, and it is probably not unique to that vendor.

Which boxes were checked?