Passenger Authority Insurance: $1.5M and $5M

When passenger authority is required at all

For-hire transportation of passengers in interstate commerce requires operating authority and the financial-responsibility filing that goes with it. Private carriage of your own employees, in narrow cases, is not the same as selling seats to the public or to a charter customer. The moment you are paid to carry people who are not your private operation, stop using a property-carrier mental model.

Airport shuttles, charter vans, church trips you charge for, and contracted employee shuttles for another company are where new operators get quoted like dry vans. The vehicle looks small. The schedule does not care that it looks small. It cares that you are a for-hire passenger carrier and how many passengers the vehicle is designed to carry.

Intrastate passenger rules can be stricter and are state-run. This page is the federal floor for the operations 49 CFR Part 387 Subpart B covers. Do not tell a state regulator that eCFR was enough if their statute says otherwise.

15 passengers or fewer versus 16 or more

49 CFR 387.33 is the financial-responsibility minimum for for-hire passenger carriers. The schedule splits on seating design, and the driver is included in the count. Vehicles designed or constructed to transport 15 passengers or fewer, including the driver, sit on the $1,500,000 public-liability floor. Vehicles designed or constructed to transport 16 passengers or more, including the driver, sit on the $5,000,000 floor.

Including the driver is the detail agents miss when they count butts in the back. A van advertised as 15 passenger plus driver is not a 15-or-fewer vehicle. Read the manufacturer's seating design, not the number of seatbelts you removed to haul luggage. Taking seats out to drop into a cheaper federal bracket is a design question for the vehicle and a fraud question for you if the vehicle is still built for the higher count.

Quote 387.33 the week you bind, which is what this page did. The same $1,500,000 and $5,000,000 figures are printed in 49 CFR 387.33T. The eCFR carries an effective-date note that section 387.33 was suspended effective January 14, 2017 (82 FR 5307). The dollars did not change. Use whichever section your filing counsel treats as the live text, and do not shop a third number. One exception this page will not flatten: 387.33(b) sets a different rule for certain grant-funded transit service providers, who must meet the highest level required by any state in which they operate under 49 U.S.C. 5307, 5310, or 5311. If that is you, the general seating table is not the whole answer. If a later rulemaking changes the dollars, the section number is still the source and the eCFR figure replaces this one. Do not cache a forum post.

Why $750,000 is the wrong floor

The $750,000 figure is the general-freight line in 49 CFR 387.9 for for-hire carriage of non-hazardous property in a vehicle with a GVWR of 10,001 pounds or more. It is a real number. It is not your number if the commodity is people. Agents who write trucks all day paste it onto a shuttle quote because the application looked similar in their system.

Filing $750,000 on a passenger docket does not satisfy 387.33. FMCSA will not treat a short filing as close enough. A broker or a hotel that copied any auto $1,000,000 from a freight packet is also short of both passenger floors. Meeting the contract and missing the regulation still leaves authority unfiled. Meeting the regulation and missing a higher contract can lose the account. The regulation is the one that keeps the authority.

Property carriers who occasionally throw a rider in the cab are not passenger carriers by that fact alone, and this page will not invent a joyride rule. If you sell transportation of passengers, you are on this schedule. Read primary liability insurance only for the property side of a mixed company, not as a substitute for 387.33.

Filing form and who transmits it

The insurer files the proof. A binder PDF does not put the filing on the docket. Passenger filings use the BMC series FMCSA prescribes for that authority, transmitted by a registered insurer. You cannot upload the certificate and call it filed, any more than a freight carrier can upload a BMC-91.

The named insured has to match the passenger application exactly. A DBA on the van door and an LLC on the docket will reject the filing while the 20-day window runs. Give the filer the legal name by pasting it, and check the public insurance record yourself after they transmit.

Down payment and passenger loss history are why these quotes stall. None of that changes who is allowed to transmit. If the agent cannot file electronically with FMCSA, you need a market that can, before publication day 20, not a louder email.

New-entrant treatment of passenger carriers

New-entrant monitoring still applies. Passenger operations get a closer look than a one-truck property carrier because the consequence of an unfit carrier is a bus, not a trailer of paper. Expect the safety audit to ask for driver qualification, hours, drug and alcohol testing, and the insurance filing, and expect less patience for a file that is still in a shoebox.

The audit mechanics, the 18-month window, and the failures that revoke a new entrant are written on the new-entrant safety audit page. This guide will not clone that checklist. It will say that buying the $5 million policy and then skipping driver files is how passenger authority dies after the grant.

A new USDOT does not hide a prior passenger carrier that was put out of service. Affiliation questions on the application are a fitness test. Answer them. A second company with the same vans and a new name is the fact reviewers are paid to notice.

What a broker COI demand changes and what it does not

A contract asking for any auto $1,000,000 can be below the federal passenger floor. The contract does not lower the regulation. If you are the 15-or-fewer carrier, the filing is at least $1,500,000. If you are 16 or more, it is at least $5,000,000. Show the customer the schedule if their packet was written for freight.

Additional insured wording, waiver of subrogation, and a certificate holder block are commercial requests on top of the filing. They do not appear as a higher number on the FMCSA insurance screen by themselves, and they do not replace the filing. Issue them only if the policy actually grants them.

Do not start the first charter on a quote. ACTIVE passenger authority plus the posted filing is the screen that counts. Until then, a venue that says load the van anyway is asking you to operate without the registration and the security the statute requires.

What to verify before you act

Count seats the way the regulation counts them, including the driver, off the vehicle's design rather than off a photo of today's trip. Write that count into the insurance application so the $1,500,000 or $5,000,000 choice is made before anyone quotes $750,000 out of habit. If you operate both a 15-or-fewer van and a larger bus, you have two floors. The cheaper vehicle does not discount the larger one.

Ask the agent, in writing, for the date they will transmit the passenger filing and for the legal name they will use. A charter contract that starts before that transmission is a contract you cannot legally perform. Venues and hotels do not have the power to shrink 49 CFR 387.33. Show them the schedule if their certificate sample says $1,000,000 any auto.

Put the new-entrant file together while you wait for the filing to post. Driver qualification, drug and alcohol enrollment, and hours records are what the closer look will ask for. Buying the right limit and keeping the driver files in a cab is how passenger authority survives the first year. The limit alone is the floor, not the whole safety program.

Frequently Asked Questions