Customer service, fast payment important at 1st Guard
ED CAMPBELL (The Trucker/Lyndon Finney)
By LYNDON FINNEY
The Trucker Staff
10/10/2007
DALLAS — In an industry known for its niches and nuances, a Florida company has carved out its own special corner writing insurance for owner-operators who lease to carriers.
1st Guard Corp. is a direct writing insurance company based in Venice, Fla.
“Our model is akin to what you might see at Geico,” Ed Campbell, chairman of 1st Guard said. “We are unique in that we are a direct writing insurance company. We don’t use insurance agents. We market directly to owner-operators and with that method to our madness, we are able to cut out the middle man who has his hand in pie and is not really providing that much value at the end of the day. As a result, we can pass those savings along to owner-operators.”
1st Guard Corp. started in 1937 as a Detroit-based insurance agency. Initially the company sold general lines’ insurance to small businesses and later created a truck insurance division to supplement its general lines' sales.
Campbell’s father, Edmund B. Campbell Jr., purchased the company in 1965.
Recognizing the potential of the truck insurance division, he eventually divested the general lines’ portion of the agency.
Campbell sold the business to his son in 1991.
“We are the only company that sells insurance to owner-operators that follows that [direct selling] kind of model,” Campbell said during an interview at the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas recently where his company was an exhibitor. “We want to connect eye to eye with our customers. It’s the way we relate to the guy in the truck. We deliver truck physical damage insurance and non liability insurance. Those are the only two products that we sell. We deliver them at a more affordable rate and more efficiently than anybody else and that’s what we are all about.”
1st Guard’s niche focuses on a particular segment of the owner-operator market, and his desire is to make the process fast and simple, Campbell said.
“If you call and say ‘I’m an owner-operator, we’re going to ask whether you are leased to a company or running under your own authority,” he said. “If you’re running under you own authority we are going to say, ‘God bless you, but we can’t help you.’ But if you are leased to a company we’re going to say ‘there are two lines of coverage you generally need to have —physical damage insurance and it’s also usually required by your lien holder, and non-trucking liability, or bob tail, insurance. We’re going to ask what the year and make of your truck is, ask you a little bit about your driving history and assuming everything checks out [this is all determined in the course of a two-minute conversation] and if the price is good we’ll get that policy out to you right now.”
The insurance industry is simply too inclined to make things so much more difficult than they need to be, Campbell said. He believes it also ranks poor in execution.
“What’s the only thing the insurance industry does at the end of the day? It delivers paper,” Campbell said. “You go in for a quote from your agent and they’ll give you a binder and maybe three months later you’ll get your policy in the mail. It comes in this wadded envelope that looks like no one cared about how to fold it in the first place. We just don’t perform that way. We are fortunate in that the standard by which the insurance industry operates is so incredibly mediocre that if you do a few little nuances to make it easier for the customer you really shine.
“I think the reason most people do business with our company is that they just like the way we approach the business. Call our office and you are going to talk to someone between 8 a.m. 8 p.m. That’s what you get when you call 1st Guard. Real people. Not some voice mail or punch 3 for help. With us it’s, ‘how can we help you?’ “
Campbell said he wants his company to be known for paying its claims quickly. “The biggest pressure that our claims office operates under is my calling the office and asking ‘why haven’t you got this claim settled yet?” he said. “And usually the answer is ‘Ed, if we call him one more time he’s going to get mad because he told us he hit that deer and he called to let us know, but he still has to run for a while and it’ll be a few months before he actually gets to a repair garage to get that estimate.’ “
In the end, it’s really service that his company is selling since the cost of premiums for owner-operators is pretty much the same throughout the industry.
“What we really sell is our claims service and the biggest cost for an owner-operator is not the premium at the end of the day,” Campbell said. “The biggest cost is that if he’s [the owner-operator] sitting in a repair shop or in a drivers’ room for another day or two because he can’t get that adjuster on the phone to find out when he’s going to get his check, or what should he do next, every day he’s not running is $500 or $1,000 lost revenue he might otherwise get.”
No insurance company today pays claims as fast as 1st Guard, Campbell believes.
“The whole culture in our company is that we are not into not paying claims and earning interest on the money we’re not paying you, we’re into paying that claim quickly so that you tell your friends ‘you wouldn’t believe how well 1st guard treated me,’ “ Campbell said. “They didn’t fuss about the value of my truck, they treated me fairly and they got that check in my hand faster than I ever expected.”