Insurance for warehousing and storage

Warehousing and storage log 4.8 recordable injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers, 109 percent above the private-industry figure of 2.3 and number 5 of the 37 trades on this site. That record is what an underwriter sees first, and it is why the checklist below leans on workers' compensation and liability limits.

Tailor the checklist

Inside a warehouse loading bay with yellow guard rails — Warehousing and storage at work. Photo: Tomwsulcer, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (resized)

1Warehousing and storag 4.8 per 100
2Private industry 2.3 per 100
3Rank of 37 #5

Injury rate against the private-industry baseline, drawn to the page's numbers.

Total recordable cases per 100 full-time workers, 2024: this trade against private industry and the 37 trades on this site. Bars to scale. Source: BLS SOII Table 1.

Recordable cases

4.8

per 100 FTE, 2024

Serious cases (DART)

4.1

85% of all cases

Fatal injuries, 2024

≈2 per 100,000 FTE

Workforce

1,610,521

full-time equivalents

What goes wrong in this trade

Forklift incidents, falls from racking and repetitive lifting give warehousing a rate well above average; warehouse legal liability covers customers' goods in storage.

The checklist for warehousing and storage

GL
General liability
Visitors, drivers and contractors on the premises.
Not required by federal law. Required in practice by most contracts, landlords and many state contractor licences.
WC
Workers' compensation
Required once you have employees; forklift and lifting injuries dominate the loss record.
Required by state law in nearly every state once you have employees; the employee-count threshold and exemptions are set state by state and are not reproduced here.
Cargo
Motor truck cargo
Warehouse legal liability for goods stored.
Not an FMCSA filing requirement for general freight carriers; required by nearly every broker and shipper contract.
Auto
Commercial auto liability
Yard trucks and shuttles.
State minimum auto liability applies to business vehicles. Interstate for-hire carriers of vehicles 10,001 lb GVWR and up must carry the 49 CFR 387.9 minimums ($750,000 non-hazardous property; $1,000,000 oil; $5,000,000 bulk hazmat).
Umbrella
Commercial umbrella / excess
Customers' contracts often require higher limits.
Not required by law; required by many general contractors and commercial landlords.

Red tags mark policy types that a law or licence usually requires; green tags are what contracts, landlords and clients ask for. Tailor the list for your situation (no employees, no vehicles, alcohol) with the checklist tool.

What the injury record means for the premium

Warehousing and storage: total recordable cases, cases with days away/restriction/transfer (DART) and cases with days away from work, per 100 FTE, 2024, columns to scale.

Workers' compensation is rated on payroll and class, then adjusted by your own loss history, so a trade with 4.8 cases per 100 workers starts from a high base rate before an underwriter has looked at you. Worse, 85 percent of those cases involved days away from work, restriction or transfer — the expensive kind. The practical consequence: a documented safety programme and a clean experience modifier are worth more here than shopping carriers.

The nearest trades by injury rate are waste collection (4.7), framing contractors (4.6), used household and office goods moving (4.3); the same payroll insured in those classes would start from a similar workers' comp base.

Legal, licence or contract?

Fixed by law

Workers' compensation once you have employees, in nearly every state (threshold and exemptions set by the state; not reproduced here).
Public liability of at least $750,000 for interstate for-hire carriage of non-hazardous property in vehicles of 10,001 lb GVWR or more; $1,000,000 for oil; $5,000,000 for bulk hazmat — 49 CFR 387.9. Details.
State minimum auto liability on any vehicle the business operates.

Asked for by contracts and licences

Getting quotes. Take this checklist to a broker who writes warehousing and storage — ask them to quote each line separately so you can see what the 4.8-per-100 class rate is doing to the workers' comp figure versus the liability lines. This site does not sell or quote insurance.

Sources: BLS Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, Table 1 (2024), incidence rates per 100 full-time workers; BLS SOII Table 3 (2024), hours worked by detailed industry; BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, Table A-1 (2024); 49 CFR 387.9 — Schedule of limits, public liability (eCFR). Fatal rate per 100,000 FTE is derived (count ÷ hours × 200,000,000) and approximate. Checked 2026-10-23.