Wildfire season and your fleet: parked trucks, evacuations and coverage

An evacuation order can give a crew minutes, not hours. Fleets that handle it well have usually decided in advance who moves which truck, where it goes and who holds spare keys when a driver is off shift. A yard with twelve units and four people on site needs that plan written down, because the morning the order comes is the wrong time to work it out.

Utilities can also cut power ahead of high-wind days to keep their lines from starting fires. A public safety power shutoff can leave an electric yard gate closed, a fuel pump dead and electric vans short of charge. Check whether the gate has a manual release, top off tanks when red flag warnings are forecast and know which vehicles can run a day without charging.

Smoke days are the quieter risk. Visibility drops, air quality alerts reshuffle crew schedules, and dispatchers squeeze the same stops into fewer hours. A rear-end crash in low visibility is typically a liability and collision problem rather than a fire one, and it can weigh on the loss runs like any other at-fault crash.

• A move list: each truck, the person who moves it and where it goes.
• Spare keys kept off site or in a lockbox a supervisor can reach.
• Photos of every unit, inside and out, taken before the season starts.
• Fuel and charge topped off whenever a red flag warning is posted.
• A call tree so drivers who take trucks home hear about an order near their street.

Tree crews often work defensible-space clearing right up to the hottest weeks, with chip trucks and chippers parked at the edge of dry brush; our page on tree service truck insurance explains how those rigs are written. And when the rains come, burned slopes above a yard can send mud and debris onto it, which our guide to flood and atmospheric river risks for fleets takes up.

Fire follows terrain, vegetation and wind more than county lines. These are the metros where wildfire planning matters most for the fleets we insure. The figures are CAL FIRE's and the Department of Insurance's, dated; where neither gives a local figure, we describe the ground instead.

North State. Forested canyons and long foothill roads run from the Sacramento River canyon above Redding to the ridges east of Chico and Oroville, and many yards sit where pasture meets brush or timber. Routes out of those areas can be few, so trucks left at remote job sites need the same move plan as the main yard. See North State truck fleet insurance.

Sacramento Region foothills. Growth has pushed job sites up I-80 and US-50 into the Placer and El Dorado County foothills, where oak woodland and dry grass meet new subdivisions. Crews commuting up from the valley floor should know the alternate routes back down before they need them. Our page on fleet insurance in the Sacramento region covers the wider area.

North Bay and Solano. Vineyard hills in Napa and Sonoma and the grasslands along I-80 in Solano County run right up to the towns where many contractors keep their yards. Rebuild work can leave trucks parked on hillside lots for months, which our guide on what changes for contractor fleets after a wildfire covers. For the metro itself, see contractor fleet insurance in the North Bay and Solano.

Los Angeles County. The Palisades Fire began in the Santa Monica Mountains and the Eaton Fire in the San Gabriel foothills on the same January day, and the Department of Insurance's auto claim count shows how many vehicles were caught in them. Contractors working canyon roads, hillside remodels and rebuild sites can treat a red flag forecast as the signal to stage trucks on flat, cleared ground. See Los Angeles County truck and fleet insurance.

Ventura County. Brush-covered hills line US-101, SR-118 and SR-126, and the county's farm and oil-field yards often sit in open country where wind can carry embers well ahead of a fire. Keep yard edges cleared and learn which roads close first. More on commercial auto in Ventura County.

Inland Empire. Warehouses and subdivisions now reach the base of the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains, and I-15 climbs through steep, brushy slopes in the Cajon Pass. A fire near the pass can close the main route between the valley and the High Desert, so map an alternate for loaded trucks. See Inland Empire truck fleet insurance.

San Diego County. Chaparral canyons and backcountry east of I-15 put rural yards, ranch work and East County job sites in fire country, and coastal fleets drive into those areas for service calls. Drivers headed inland on red flag days should know where they'll turn around. Our San Diego County fleet insurance page covers local roads and trades.

Go through the vehicle schedule one line at a time before fire season, not after the first smoke column.

• Comprehensive vs collision. Confirm which units carry comprehensive, since fire damage to a parked truck usually falls there and a liability-only unit typically lacks coverage for its own loss. Collision matters for the crashes that come with evacuations and smoke.
• Stated values. If a truck is written at a stated amount, update it for the upfit: racks, shelving, a dump body or a crane. A value set three renewals ago may not replace the truck today.
• Rental and downtime. Rental reimbursement is optional and generally pays up to a daily and a total cap. Income lost while a truck is out of service usually isn't auto coverage at all, so plan for that gap.
• Hired autos. If you rent trucks to keep jobs moving after a loss, hired auto coverage can protect the business while those rentals are on the road. Ask whether damage to the rented truck itself is included.
• Adding units early. Carriers can pause new vehicles or coverage changes near an active fire. Put a newly bought truck on the policy the day it arrives.

Our page on comprehensive and collision for work trucks explains how physical damage is written and valued. To compare options for the whole fleet, start a fleet quote and list every truck with the address where it parks overnight.