Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Tow truck operators: commercial motor requirements in Victoria

Cover for vehicles used for business, including utilities, vans and trucks, and liability for damage they cause.

Data as at

Verified for Victoria

  • Licence liability condition: No insurance requirement of any kind, and this is the cleanest negative in the entire estate: the word "insurance" DOES NOT APPEAR ANYWHERE in either the Act or the Regulations. Both instruments were read in full — every Part, every Schedule. They cover licensing, accreditation, tow truck vehicle specifications, record-keeping, accident-scene rosters, demerit points and offences in detail, and impose no public liability, on-hook or other insurance obligation on a licence holder, operator, depot manager or driver. THE CROSS-BORDER POINT, and it is a real one: New South Wales DOES require tow truck operators to hold public liability and "on-hook" liability insurance, with certificates per vehicle. On the full text of the governing instruments, that requirement is a New South Wales outlier and does not generalise. An operator who assumes the NSW rule applies interstate is buying cover nobody is asking for; an operator moving the other way is losing cover they had. VIC · effective 2019-12-01 Building and Plumbing Commission · 2026-08-17
  • Licence evidence required: None. Nothing to evidence. VIC · effective 2019-12-01 Building and Plumbing Commission · 2026-08-17
  • Licensing body: The Victorian Secretary responsible for transport, under the Accident Towing Services Act 2007 (Vic) and the Accident Towing Services Regulations 2019 (Vic). Victoria licenses the VEHICLE — a tow truck licence, regular or heavy — and separately accredits the people: towing operator accreditation, towing depot manager accreditation and tow truck driver accreditation. VIC · effective 2019-12-01 Building and Plumbing Commission · 2026-08-17

What contracts commonly ask for

Principals and head contractors set their own insurance requirements, and those are frequently higher than a licence condition. The requirement that binds is the higher of the two, and both have to be read from the actual document.

What this cover costs

This site publishes no cost benchmark for this cover. A benchmark needs a real sample of documents, and none is published until the sample is large enough to compute a median honestly. A benchmark from a handful of policies is a guess with a decimal point.

Sources