FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Educating brokers on proper coverage for shippers’ high-risk, high-value cargo.
DETAILS: Mark Vickers is executive vice president and head of international logistics for insurance company Reliance Partners. Vickers spent years on the 3PL side handling high-value and high-risk shipments within the U.S. and to and from Mexico. Vickers spoke with FreightWaves reporter Grace Sharkey about the common mistakes brokers make when evaluating different coverages, especially for high-risk, high-value shipments.
BIO: Vickers spent seven years with Total Quality Logistics, a large North American brokerage. He then joined MacroPoint, a shipment visibility provider. In 2017, he founded Borderless Coverage, which provides companies with automated access to all-risk shippers’ interest cargo insurance. From 2017 to 2021, Vickers worked at Sedlak Supply Chain Consultants, where he focused on distribution center design and supply chain optimization. He joined Reliance after it acquired Borderless Coverage in February 2021.
Key quotes from Vickers:
“Visibility is difficult into Mexico. There are a lot of hands, there are a lot of movements, and it’s very scary.”
“Close to 99% of cross-border shipments go uninsured. There is no cargo insurance at all. Shippers are self-insuring those shipments at their full value and are taking a very large deductible.”
“A lot of brokers are not getting the exact value of the [shippers’] freight, especially with LTL. And they are not looking at the LTL’s cargo insurance policy.”
“The way to mitigate this entire issue is implementing a shippers’ interest, all-risk cargo insurance program that can be valued all the way up to $2 million and give flexibility on the commodities covered. That used to be almost impossible domestically, and it wasn’t possible to get that kind of insurance in Mexico.”