Average Food Truck Insurance Cost (2026 Report)

The right bundle depends on how you run your truck, what you carry, and whether you have employees. Match your operation to the closest profile below, then use the monthly rate as a budgeting estimate.

• Starting Bundle (You just want to cover the requirements): Commercial auto meets your state's requirement to put the truck on the road, and general liability covers the customer and property claims that event organizers and commissaries usually require. This fits a solo operator with a simple menu and no employees. You'll spend an average of $406 per month.
• Recommended Bundle (You want to protect your equipment too): Once your truck is built out, your fryers, grill, generator, and refrigeration are worth real money that your road and customer coverage won't replace. Adding commercial property protects that gear, which is why this bundle fits most owners with an equipped truck. Expect to pay an average of $443 per month.
• Growing Bundle (You process a lot of card payments): If you are running steady volume through a system like Square or Toast, you are handling a large amount of customer payment data, and a breach gets more expensive the more transactions you process. Cyber insurance helps you recover if that data is exposed, so this bundle fits a busy truck taking payments all day. Your monthly cost becomes about $520 per month on average.
• Comprehensive Bundle (You have employees on the payroll): Once you hire staff, a burn at the grill or a slip at the window becomes your responsibility, and most states require workers' compensation as soon as you have employees. This bundle adds that coverage for a team. Expect to spend an average of $592 per month.

A business owner's policy (BOP) combines general liability and commercial property into one policy, usually cheaper than buying them separately. For most food trucks I recommend a BOP, since it covers both your customer risks and your equipment in one package, and most insurers knock about 10% off for bundling this way. The average cost of BOP is about $165 per month.

Commercial auto covers accidents involving your truck, including damage to other vehicles and injuries to other people. Because you stop and serve customers in busy spots, insurers see more road exposure per mile than a vehicle that just drives from A to B, which is part of why food trucks pay more than standard commercial vehicles. Commercial auto costs $259 per month per truck on average. Your truck is your business, so this is usually your largest insurance cost. It is almost always required, since most states require auto liability coverage to put a commercial vehicle on the road, and event or licensing rules may ask for higher limits.

General liability covers claims from people outside your business, like a customer who slips near your window or gets sick from your food, or property you damage that isn't yours. It averages $147 per month. Many cities and events want to see it before they let you operate, and a commissary or property owner may ask for it too, which is why most trucks need it from day one.

Commercial property covers your equipment and gear, like fryers, grills, a generator, and refrigeration units, if they are damaged or stolen. Your equipment value matters more than your location here. A custom-built kitchen needs a higher limit than a basic cold-prep setup, so if your build is expensive, the value you declare on your policy matters more than the state average. The average cost of commercial property insurance is $37 per month. The law rarely requires it, but a lender or commissary might.

If you take card payments through a system like Square or Toast, you're handling customer payment data, and cyber insurance helps you recover if that data gets exposed in a breach. It can pay to investigate what happened, notify your customers, and restore your systems. Cyber insurance costs $77 per month on average. No law requires it, but a payment processor or event contract sometimes will.

Once you hire staff, workers' compensation covers their medical care and part of their lost wages if they get hurt on the job, like a burn at the grill or a slip at the window. It's priced per employee, so your total grows with your team. The average cost of workers' comp is $34 per month per employee. Most states require workers' comp as soon as you have employees, though the exact point that kicks in varies.

Depending on your setup, you might want a few add-ons beyond the coverages above. These are usually endorsements rather than standalone policies, which keeps them relatively cheap. These estimates come from outside research rather than our own data.

If you bundle general liability and commercial property into a BOP, expect $115 per month in West Virginia at the low end and $256 in Washington, D.C. at the high end. The swing comes almost entirely from the general liability side, since property costs stay flat between states. So the states where a BOP costs the most are the same high-litigation markets where standalone general liability is expensive.

This is where your state hits hardest. Commercial auto runs $115 per month per truck in Pennsylvania at the low end and $439 in Michigan at the high end, nearly four times as much. The gap is about state rules more than your driving. States with no-fault systems or higher injury-benefit requirements, like Michigan, build in higher costs no matter how safely you run. Cheaper states like Pennsylvania, Hawaii, and Vermont sit at the low end because their auto claim rules are less costly.

General liability ranges from $95 per month in West Virginia to $243 in Washington, D.C. Insurers price it around what a claim tends to cost locally, so places with higher jury awards, busier courts, and dense city foot traffic, like D.C., California, and New York, sit at the top. Rural, lower-litigation states like West Virginia and Mississippi land at the bottom.

This one barely moves. It runs $32 per month in North Dakota and tops out at $44 in New York, the narrowest range of any coverage here. There's no litigation driving it, just local property crime rates and repair costs, which don't change much between states. Your equipment value matters far more than your location.

Workers' comp runs $19 per month per employee in Indiana and $79 in California, and the gap has almost nothing to do with how risky your kitchen is. State regulators set the benefit levels and payout rules, so a part-time worker costs about four times more to insure in California than in Indiana simply because California mandates higher payouts. Note that North Dakota, Ohio, Washington, and Wyoming run their own state funds, so you buy comp directly from the state rather than a private insurer.

Cyber is another tight one, from $65 per month in states like Alaska and North Dakota to $96 in Washington, D.C. Payment-processing risk is about the same everywhere, so what moves the price is each state's breach notification laws. States with stricter disclosure rules and penalties push the cost up, which is why high-regulation markets sit at the top.

Underwriters use revenue to assess how much liability exposure your customer volume creates. Higher revenue signals more transactions, more customer interactions, and more potential claims across all coverage lines. A significant jump in revenue from one year to the next, such as a new catering contract or a busy festival season, is worth disclosing to your insurer since it can affect your coverage limits at renewal.

Past claims are the most direct signal insurers use to assess future risk. A clean record builds pricing leverage at renewal. A fire, a foodborne illness claim, or a road incident each stays on your record and affects your rate tier for multiple policy cycles. New operators without claims history typically pay more until a track record is established.

More employees mean higher payroll, which directly increases workers' comp premiums. It also affects liability insurance pricing since having more staff leads to more customer interactions and greater operational exposure lines.

Where your truck is garaged and where it operates both feed into your premium. State insurance regulations, local litigation environments, and regional repair and replacement costs all affect what you pay independent of how you actually run your operation. This is the factor you have the least control over, but it's one of the most significant drivers of state-level variance in the tables above.

Higher limits increase premiums, while higher deductibles generally lower them. The basic logic is that a higher possible payout increases insurers' risk, which increases costs. Limits and deductibles set the most direct measure of this.