Food Truck Insurance

Food truck insurance in Florida is not a single policy. It is a combination of commercial auto insurance (coverage for the truck while you are driving it), general liability insurance (covers injuries and claims around your truck), and workers compensation (workers comp) if you have employees. If you operate a food truck in Jacksonville or anywhere in Florida, you will need proof of insurance before your DBPR license is issued, before your commissary will sign an agreement, and before any festival or brewery will let you serve.

Augustyniak Insurance Group is an independent insurance agency in Jacksonville. We do not work for one company. We compare food truck insurance from Progressive Commercial, GEICO, Auto-Owners, Markel, Hiscox, and other specialty markets that actually write mobile food vendors in Florida.

Whether you run a single taco truck in Riverside, an ice cream trailer working St. Augustine and Jacksonville Beach festivals, or a small fleet hitting events from Northeast Florida down to Tampa, we can help you build the right policy.

How Much Does Food Truck Insurance Cost in Florida?

Most Florida food trucks pay between $2,000 and $5,000 per year for a complete insurance package. The biggest single expense is commercial auto. General liability and a small property limit are usually a smaller piece of the total. If you have four or more employees, workers comp gets added on top.

Your rate depends on the value of the truck, what you cook, where you operate, your driving record, claims history, and whether you have employees. A small coffee trailer is a fundamentally different risk than a 24-foot truck with deep fryers, propane, and a generator working downtown festivals.

Food truck insurance in Florida varies widely depending on your truck, how you operate, and which insurance company you are with.

Here is what we actually see across Florida food truck policies we quote and write:

These ranges reflect real quotes and active policies we have placed for Florida food trucks, combined with current 2026 pricing from the specialty commercial markets we use (Progressive Commercial, GEICO, Auto-Owners, Markel, Hiscox). Workers comp typically averages around $940 per year per food truck per Insureon 2025 data, but varies based on payroll and class code. Your actual premium depends on your truck, location, and claims history.

For more on what drives commercial vehicle premiums specifically in Florida, see our commercial auto insurance page.

What Actually Moves Your Food Truck Insurance Price the Most

Two factors drive the biggest price swings on a Florida food truck quote.

Other factors that move premium up or down:

• Driving record.
  Tickets and at-fault accidents in the last 3–5 years drive the commercial auto piece higher.
• Cooking exposure.
  Open flame, deep fryers, and propane tanks over 100 pounds add significant premium versus light cooking.
• Festival vs fixed location.
  A truck working downtown festivals every weekend rates higher than one parked at a brewery on a steady contract.
• Number of employees.
  Adds workers comp at four or more, and adds general liability premium based on payroll size.
• Years in business and claims history.
  A new truck with no track record pays more than an established operator with three clean years.

Is Commercial Auto Insurance Required for Food Trucks in Florida?

Yes. If your food truck has its own engine, Florida requires commercial auto insurance. A personal auto policy will not cover you while you drive the truck for business, and most personal policies will deny a claim outright if the vehicle is wrapped, lettered, or has a hood vent on top.

Florida sets the legal floor at $10,000 in Personal Injury Protection (PIP) and $10,000 in Property Damage Liability (PDL). That is the same minimum required of every Florida driver.

For a working food truck, those limits are nowhere near enough. One serious accident with another vehicle can blow through $10,000 of property damage in an afternoon, and the truck itself usually has well over $10,000 in equipment bolted to it.

What we usually recommend for a Florida food truck:

• Bodily Injury Liability of $250,000 / $500,000 at minimum, with $1,000,000 as a common upgrade.
  This covers you if you injure someone while driving the truck. We recommend 250/500 as the floor, and many of our food truck clients choose a $1,000,000 combined single limit. Once you are catering at corporate events, breweries, or large festivals, those venues often require $1M auto liability on the certificate of insurance, and the price difference between 250/500 and $1M is usually small. Florida does not require bodily injury on a regular driver's policy, but you should never run a commercial vehicle without it.
• Property Damage Liability of $100,000 or higher.
  Hitting another car or a building can easily exceed the $10,000 state minimum.
• Comprehensive and Collision on the truck itself.
  Pays to repair or replace the truck after an accident, theft, vandalism, fire, or hurricane damage. Items permanently bolted to the truck (your hood, fryer, grill, generator, sinks) are usually included here.
• Hired and Non-Owned Auto coverage.
  Picks up liability when an employee runs to the warehouse store in their own car for ice or last-minute supplies.

Do Florida Food Trucks Need Workers Comp?

Florida law requires workers compensation for any non-construction business with four or more employees, including the owner. That comes from Florida Statute 440.02. If your truck has three or fewer people working it, you are not legally required to carry workers comp. If you have four or more, you are.

That sounds simple, but in practice, food truck staffing is messy. A spouse who helps on Saturday counts. A teenager who works the window counts. A friend you pay cash to run drinks at a festival counts.

You do not get to call them an independent contractor just because they are not on payroll. If they are doing the work and you are paying them, Florida treats them as an employee for workers comp purposes.

The cost of food truck workers comp in Florida averages around $940 per year per truck per Insureon 2025 cost data, but actual cost varies based on payroll size, class code, and claims history.

Florida workers comp rates are filed by NCCI and approved by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, so every company starts from the same base rate. The 2026 NCCI Florida rates took effect 1/1/2026, with a 6.9% statewide decrease.

For a deeper breakdown of how Florida workers comp pricing works, see our Florida workers compensation page. The companies we use most for food truck workers comp are Markel FirstComp and Auto-Owners, with The Hartford, Travelers, AmTrust, and Nationwide also in the rotation depending on payroll size and class code. For a related look at workers comp pricing for food service businesses, see our guide to how much workers compensation costs for Florida restaurants.

What Does General Liability Cover for a Food Truck?

General liability insurance handles the things that happen around the truck, not on the road. That is the line every food truck owner needs to understand.

Your commercial auto policy covers the truck while you are driving. Your general liability covers the customer who gets sick from your food, the kid who burns himself on the side of the truck, or the lighting rig you knock over while setting up at a brewery.

The most common general liability claims we see for food trucks fall into four buckets:

• Slip and fall around the truck.
  A customer trips on a generator cord, an extension cable, or a wet patch of grass at a festival. They go to the ER. They sue. General liability pays the medical bills and the legal defense.
• Foodborne illness or allergic reaction.
  Product liability, which is built into most general liability policies, covers claims that someone got sick from food you served. Even if you did nothing wrong, defending the claim costs money. The policy pays.
• Burns and contact injuries.
  A child touches the hot side of the truck. A customer gets splashed by hot oil from your fryer window. These happen more than people think.
• Damage to a venue or property.
  You back into a brewery patio, your generator damages a sidewalk, your grease spill stains the parking lot the festival rented. The venue's insurance pays them, then comes after you.

Standard limits for a Florida food truck are $1 million per claim and $2 million total per year (aggregate). Most events, festivals, and commissaries will require those exact numbers, and they will want to be listed as an additional insured on the certificate. We issue COIs for Northeast Florida vendors working Riverside Arts Market, Jacksonville Beach Friday concerts, St. Augustine festivals, and brewery events across Duval, St. Johns, Clay, and Nassau counties, usually same day.

Why Food Trucks in Florida Do Not Qualify for a BOP

A Business Owners Policy (BOP) bundles general liability and property into one package at a fixed premium. It is a great policy for low-risk small businesses like accountants, hair salons, and small offices. Food trucks do not fit.

The reason is simple. BOP markets do not want cooking exposure on a vehicle. Open flame, propane, deep fryers, and the constant fire-and-driving combination push food trucks outside what most standard companies are willing to insure. Most standard BOP carriers decline food trucks when we send the application in due to cooking and vehicle exposure.

So food truck insurance in Florida gets built one of two ways:

Some commercial package policies are audited at the end of the year. The company estimates your liability premium at the start of the year using your projected revenue or payroll. At the end of the year, they check the real numbers. If you sold more than projected, you owe a little more. If you sold less, you get money back. A stand-alone GL policy does not do this. The price you sign up for is the price you pay all year.

For most single-truck Florida operators, the stand-alone stack is cheaper, simpler, and easier to switch pieces of when one company raises rates. We will quote both options when both make sense.

Why We Use These Companies for Food Truck Insurance

Not every insurance company will write food trucks in Florida. Many standard small-business companies decline them outright because of the cooking exposure, the propane, and the fact that the policy covers a moving vehicle. Food truck insurance lives in specialty commercial markets that understand the risk. Here is who we use most for Florida food trucks and why.

For trucks that do not fit any of these standard programs, we have access to specialty E&S markets through wholesale brokers. These are non-admitted companies that write hard-to-place risks like older trucks, trucks with prior claims, and unique builds. They cost more, but they keep trucks insured that would otherwise be turned away.

Frequently Asked Questions About Food Truck Insurance in Florida

Susan Augustyniak, CIC

Vice President · Augustyniak Insurance Group

Susan holds the Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) designation and has 25+ years of insurance experience, including prior carrier-side work as a commercial underwriter at Nationwide. She has led the agency since 2012 and has personally placed thousands of commercial policies for Florida small businesses, including food trucks, restaurants, and contractors. This page was reviewed and updated in May 2026.