When you purchase a car insurance plan, one of the first questions the agent will ask you is whether you are purchasing coverage for pleasure use or commuter use. While the costs of these policies aren’t radically different—usually around $10 a year—it’s still important to understand the difference between the two so that your coverage makes sense.
The primary concern here is what you are using your car for. The most common uses are for pleasure or for commuting, although there are some other specialized options, like farm use and business use. Commuter policies may also vary depending on the length of your commute.
What’s The Difference Between Pleasure And Commute Use?
You can probably guess the differences between these policies by their names. Pleasure use cars typically are only driven occasionally, or only on the weekends. They aren’t the owner’s main source of transportation.
For example, if you take mass transit to work and reserve the use of your car for occasional trips, this might qualify it as pleasure use. Or, perhaps you have two cars—a daily driver, as well as a hobby car which you rarely use for transportation. In that case, your hobby car would be for pleasure use rather than commute.
Commuter car insurance policies apply if the car is your main source of transportation. While commuter may bring up the concept of driving it to work, it can also apply to driving the car to school or other obligations on a regular basis.
If you check out different insurance plans, you’ll see that usually, farm plans are the least expensive while business plans are on the higher end. Pleasure plans are somewhat cheaper than commuter plans. That is if you compare plans from the same insurer. However, if you shop around, you may notice more stark price differences.
Finding The Cheapest Policy
The real reason you need to know the difference between commuting and pleasure policies is so that you can make an educated decision about which insurance company to go with because it will change your quote. You want to be honest with your agent about how you’re going to use the vehicle, as this can impact whether or not you are covered in the event of an accident. However, the actual cost between policies at the same company is relatively trivial—usually.
That being said, some companies offer more competitive prices for certain types of policies, which can make a more significant difference. If you’re working with an agent, they should be willing to show you some comparisons between policy types from different companies to help you make an informed decision.
What Other Distinctions Should I Be Aware Of?
In addition to knowing whether or not you should be looking at plans for pleasure vs commuting, you should also talk to your agent about whether your plan should be a personal plan or a commercial plan. Generally speaking, this is a very cut and dried distinction, but there are situations where it can be a little more difficult to determine. For example, when you are using your personal vehicle but driving is part of your “work,” like if you’re driving for Uber, or if you routinely transport products in your personal vehicle as your main source of income, it’s worth having detailed conversation with your agent to make sure that your policy is correctly categorized. That way, you won’t have a nasty surprise if something happens and your insurance company is resisting paying out because they believe you were using the car for a different purpose.