Commercial industry
Mailing Service and Lettershop Insurance
A mailing service holds other people’s lists, letterhead, and sometimes a warehouse of collateral the customer still owns. The file is property and equipment breakdown on the inserters and the meters, bailee or warehouse-legal coverage on customer stock, general liability, and commercial auto for the drops. Treating a lettershop as a generic warehouse or as a printer is how a destroyed customer mailing and a late-drop claim miss the form.
We place commercial lettershops, fulfillment houses, and mailing services that are still admitted Main Street accounts. If you are a full commercial printer that also mails, start on the printers page and we will add the mailing exposure. If you only meter and drop for a related company, say so — the bailee story shrinks.
Customer stock and data are the two bailee problems. A sprinkler discharge on a staged political or nonprofit mailing is a deadline claim as well as a property claim. We schedule bailee or warehouse-legal limits for the peak drop, not the average Tuesday, and we ask who owns the paper sitting on the floor. Lists and data files are a cyber and a professional conversation if you also do data hygiene or list brokerage. A pure lettershop that only hits a file it is given still has a breach problem if that file lives on an unencrypted server.
Equipment breakdown on inserters, meters, and a small press is a production-day claim. Business income and extra expense decide whether you make a election-week or catalog drop after a mechanical failure. Inland marine covers stock in transit to the USPS or a private drop. Commercial auto covers the box trucks; hired and non-owned covers employees in personal cars on a overflow day.
If you also do light printing, addressing, or kitting, we describe those operations instead of letting a coder guess “warehouse.” Printers and wholesale are the related pages for a reason. Washington plant and drivers stay with L&I for WA-situs payroll; we place stop-gap and private WC for competitive-state locations. We do not replace L&I.
This is not a last-mile courier page and it is not long-haul trucking. Local drops to a postal facility are commercial auto. If you run over-the-road routes for other people’s freight, that is a different, and usually declined, conversation on this site.
Risks we actually schedule
- Sprinkler, fire, or handling damage to customer stock staged for a dated drop.
- Inserter or meter breakdown in the week a catalog or ballot mailing has to leave.
- A customer-list breach on a file you were only supposed to hit and return.
- Box-truck and hired-auto claims on drop days.
Frequently asked questions
The customer says their insurance covers the brochures. Are we fine?
Their policy is for them. If the loss is your sprinkler or your forklift, they will still come to you. Bailee or warehouse-legal is how you answer that without a fight about whose form is primary.
Are we a printer or a mail house?
If ink and bindery dominate, start on printers. If inserting, metering, and drops dominate, start here. Many shops are both — we split the receipts so the class code is honest.
Do you write political mailers?
The print-and-mail operation, yes, with the peak values disclosed. We do not write campaign committees or PACs as the named insured on this page.
Related coverage, industries, and locations
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Industry pageIndiana
Licensed commercial insurance broker serving Indiana.
State page