The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released its 2026 Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking on July 15, and for the first time in the report’s history it broke litigation expense out as a formal component of a fleet’s cost of risk. The headline number was the marginal operating cost: a record $2.336 per mile in 2025, up 3.4% year over year. The number that matters for reserves is smaller and newer. ATRI now measures the defense and litigation load that self-insured fleets have long buried inside a single flat percentage.
The divergence that reframes the benchmark
ATRI’s data separates two costs that move in opposite directions as a fleet gets larger. Small fleets of 25 trucks or fewer paid 20.3 cents per mile in liability premium in 2024, nearly double the 10.4 cents paid by mid-sized fleets of 101 to 250 trucks. Large fleets running more than 1,000 trucks buy far less premium per mile because they retain more risk, but they carry the litigation. Those carriers spent an average of 5.4 cents per mile on out-of-pocket claim costs and 3.6 cents per mile on litigation expense alone. Plaintiff firms target the deep-pocket carrier, and reptile-theory tactics push defense spend up regardless of fault. The most expensive half of trucking litigation awards has been rising 5.7% per year, faster than indemnity broadly.
Who it affects
This lands squarely on self-insured and high-retention trucking fleets, private carriers running their own auto liability through a captive or a large deductible, and the public entities and construction firms that self-fund a commercial fleet. Any organization that retains the working layer of auto liability now has an external yardstick for a cost it used to estimate blind.
Where this shows up in your reserves
The reserve lever is allocated loss adjustment expense (ALAE), not frequency. Most self-insured fleets fold defense cost into a single flat percentage applied to indemnity, then trend the whole load at the indemnity severity rate. If litigation cost is growing at 5.7% while your indemnity severity trend is set at, say, 4%, a flat ALAE percentage applied to IBNR understates the reserve, and the gap compounds in the tail years where cases go to trial. ATRI’s breakout lets you select an ALAE trend separately from indemnity severity and test your retained litigation cost per mile against the large-carrier benchmark. On the actuarial report, this is the ALAE-to-loss ratio and the paid-ALAE development factors in the auto liability exhibit; on the loss run, it is the defense-and-cost-containment column your TPA reports next to indemnity.
What this means for your next review
Ask your actuary whether your reserve model selects a distinct ALAE trend or folds defense into indemnity severity. Have them reconcile your retained litigation cost per mile against ATRI’s figures and flag whether your selected severity trend reflects litigation outpacing indemnity. The pattern here is the same social-inflation curve documented in the ATRI premium-versus-crash-rate divergence and the $4 billion industry reserve deficiency; a flat defense load is the quiet way it slips into an under-reserved triangle.
Decision-maker checklist
- Confirm your actuary selects a separate ALAE trend rather than applying one flat load on indemnity severity.
- Pull your retained litigation cost per mile and compare it to ATRI’s 3.6 cents large-carrier benchmark.
- Ask whether your severity trend selection reflects litigation growing faster than indemnity.
- Check that your TPA’s extract reports defense-and-cost-containment expense as a distinct field, not netted into loss.
- Revisit tail-year ALAE factors, where trial-bound cases concentrate the defense spend.
Sources
- ATRI, 2026 Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking
- Heavy Duty Trucking: ATRI reports record $2.336 per mile operating cost
- FleetOwner: ATRI releases 2026 operational cost report for fleet benchmarking
- Commercial Carrier Journal: nuclear verdicts and litigation costs surge
- Bulk Transporter: rising litigation costs drive trucking insurance spike