Coverage
The coverages that answer a warehouse or distribution loss
Seven core lines. The hard part is not buying them — it is knowing which one answers when the goods on your floor are damaged, and that turns entirely on whose goods they were.
Start with the map
Almost every coverage argument in this trade comes down to one question — whose goods were they? Three different lines answer three different versions of that, and owners mix them up constantly:
Commercial property — your building, your racking, your own inventory in a scheduled location.
Warehouse legal liability — a customer’s freight under your roof. Carved out of general liability by design.
Stock throughput — your own product from the supplier all the way to the customer.
Property covers what is yours and sits still. Warehouse legal liability covers what is theirs and sits in your care. Stock throughput covers what is yours and does not sit still at all. They are not substitutes, and they do not overlap.
The seven core coverages
Warehouse Legal Liability Insurance
The bailee line. Fire, water, theft, or a cold-chain failure in a CUSTOMER’S goods while they sit under your roof — the exact loss general liability’s care, custody, or control exclusion carves out. The signature warehouse coverage.
Yours, anywhere it movesStock Throughput Insurance
One marine-family form that follows YOUR OWN product the whole way — supplier, ocean or land transit, the port, the warehouse, the customer — instead of a property-plus-cargo patchwork with seams in it. The signature distributor coverage.
The harm you cause othersGeneral Liability Insurance
Third-party injury and property damage: the dock, the yard, the forklift traffic. And for a distributor or importer, the products-liability chain of distribution — you can be sued for what you SOLD, not only what you made.
Yours, and it stays putCommercial Property Insurance
The building, the racking, the material-handling systems, and — for a distributor — your own inventory sitting in a scheduled location, plus the business income you lose when the site goes down. It stops at the walls.
Your crewWorkers Compensation Insurance
The material-handling reality: powered-industrial-truck strikes, racking and stored-material falls, dock injuries, lifting and repetitive strain. Includes honest handling of the four monopolistic state-fund states.
Your fleetCommercial Auto Insurance
Route-delivery trucks, final-mile vans, and yard vehicles. One note of language this trade cannot avoid: your INSURANCE carrier is not the same thing as a MOTOR carrier or a freight carrier.
Above all of itUmbrella Liability Insurance
Excess limits over general liability, auto, and the other underlying lines — usually the thing a 3PL agreement, a landlord, or a national customer is actually asking for when the contract limits climb.
Not sure which line answers your exposure?
That is the conversation. Quotes in 1–2 hours during business hours.