You signed up to drive weekends, the app said you were covered, and nobody mentioned insurance again. That's how most people end up in this situation, and it's usually fine right up until it isn't.
I'm a Farmers agent in Richardson. This comes up constantly in DFW, where a lot of households drive for a platform part-time — and the honest picture is more complicated than either the platform or a personal policy will tell you on its own.
Does your personal auto policy cover driving for Uber or DoorDash?
The short answer: Almost certainly not — standard personal auto policies exclude carrying people or property for a fee, from the moment the app goes on.
A personal auto policy is priced for personal use: commuting, errands, family driving. Driving for compensation is a different risk — more miles, more hours, more time in traffic, more unfamiliar addresses — and personal policies carry an exclusion for it.
The exclusion is usually worded around carrying persons or property for a fee or compensation. It doesn't require you to be mid-delivery to bite; in many forms, being logged on and available is enough to trigger the question.
That matters because it creates a gap where people assume there's overlap: your personal policy steps back, and the platform's coverage may not have stepped forward yet.
What does Texas law require for rideshare drivers?
The short answer: $50,000/$100,000/$25,000 while logged on and waiting, and $1 million once you're engaged in a prearranged ride.
Texas set this out in Insurance Code Chapter 1954, which took effect in January 2016 and governs transportation network company drivers. Both floors sit above what the state asks of an ordinary driver, where the minimum is 30/60/25.
Between rides — logged on to the network and available to receive requests, but not engaged in a ride — §1954.052 requires liability coverage of at least $50,000 per person for bodily injury, $100,000 per incident, and $25,000 per incident for property damage. It also requires uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage under §1952.101 and personal injury protection under §1952.152.
During a prearranged ride — from accepting the request through completing the trip — §1954.053 requires coverage with a total aggregate limit of $1 million for death, bodily injury and property damage per incident.
Read that gap carefully, because it's the practical heart of this article. The hour you spend circling Legacy West waiting for a ping is covered at a fraction of the level of the twelve minutes you spend carrying a passenger.
What are the three periods, and who covers each?
The short answer: App off is your personal policy, app on and waiting is a thin middle layer, and carrying a passenger is the platform's $1 million.
| Period | What you're doing | Liability floor | Your car's damage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Off | App closed, personal driving | Your personal policy | Your comp/collision |
| 1 | Logged on, waiting for a request | $50K/$100K/$25K per §1954.052 | Usually nothing |
| 2 | Request accepted, driving to pick up | $1M per §1954.053 | Platform policy, if you carry your own |
| 3 | Passenger in the car | $1M per §1954.053 | Platform policy, if you carry your own |
Two things people miss in that table.
Period 1 is the weak link. It's the longest stretch of a typical shift and the thinnest coverage. If you cause a serious injury while waiting for a request, $50,000 per person is not far above the Texas personal minimum — and the average bodily injury claim is already close to it.
The last column is mostly empty. Liability protects other people. Repairing your own vehicle is a separate question, and it's the one covered below.
Is food delivery different from rideshare?
The short answer: Yes — Chapter 1954 governs prearranged rides for passengers, so delivery driving sits outside those statutory minimums entirely.
This distinction gets flattened almost everywhere, and it matters if you drive for DoorDash, Instacart, Uber Eats, Grubhub or Amazon Flex.
Texas Insurance Code Chapter 1954 is titled insurance for transportation network company drivers, and its requirements attach to prearranged rides — the carriage of passengers. Carrying a burrito is not a prearranged ride. So the $1 million floor and the $50K/$100K/$25K floor are not statutory guarantees for delivery work.
Delivery platforms typically do provide some liability coverage while you're actively on a delivery, and the amounts and conditions vary by platform and change over time. What they generally don't provide is coverage while you're logged on waiting, or coverage for damage to your own vehicle.
The question I'm answering for you is narrow and specific: what happens in the hours the platform doesn't cover, and what happens to your car. Those two gaps are where delivery drivers actually get hurt financially, and neither is addressed by the platform's liability coverage.
What is a rideshare endorsement, and do you need one?
The short answer: It's an add-on that extends your personal policy into the app-on periods the platform covers thinly or not at all.
A rideshare or transportation-network endorsement modifies your personal policy so it keeps working while you're logged on. Availability and exactly what it covers vary by carrier, so this is a question to ask about by name rather than assume. What it adds to your premium varies by carrier and by the same rating factors that set the rest of the policy — those are in how much car insurance costs in Texas.
What a good endorsement typically addresses:
Period 1 liability
Extends meaningful liability coverage through the logged-on-and-waiting stretch, rather than leaving you at the statutory floor.
Your own vehicle
Keeps your comprehensive and collision responsive while the app is on — which is usually the coverage the platform leaves alone.
No coverage seam
Removes the argument about exactly which period you were in when something happened. Seam disputes are slow and unpleasant.
A familiar number
Platform physical-damage deductibles can be considerably higher than your personal one. Your own coverage responding means your own deductible.
Disclosure handled
Adding the endorsement is itself the disclosure. The carrier knows what you're doing and has priced it.
Not for everything
Heavy commercial use, courier work, or driving a vehicle you don't own can exceed what an endorsement contemplates. That's a commercial policy conversation.
What about damage to your own car?
The short answer: This is the gap that actually bankrupts people, because the platform's liability coverage does nothing for your vehicle.
Liability coverage — including the $1 million figure in §1954.053 — pays other people for what you did to them. It is not there to repair your car.
Platform contingent physical damage coverage, where it exists, typically requires you to carry your own comprehensive and collision first, and often applies a deductible substantially higher than yours. During Period 1, it frequently doesn't apply at all.
So run the scenario: hail comes through Richardson while you're parked waiting for a ping, or you slide into a barrier on a wet Tollway between rides. If your personal comprehensive and collision have stepped back because the app was on, and the platform's physical damage coverage doesn't reach Period 1, the repair is yours. In North Texas, where hail is the defining risk, that's not a remote scenario.
Without an endorsement: the §1954.052 floor of $50,000 per person responds to their injury, leaving roughly $40,000 pursued from you. Your personal collision may decline the repair because you were driving for a fee, and Period 1 physical damage usually isn't covered by the platform — so the $9,000 is also yours.
With a rideshare endorsement: your personal limits and your own collision coverage both respond, subject to your usual deductible.
Figures are illustrative and coverage varies by carrier and platform; the shape of the gap is the point.
What happens if you just don't tell your insurer?
The short answer: A denied claim at the worst possible moment, and potentially a cancelled policy on top of it.
I understand the temptation. Telling the carrier may raise the premium, and plenty of people drive for a year without incident and conclude it was unnecessary.
Here's the arithmetic of that bet. The saving is a modest premium difference. The loss, if a serious claim happens while the app is on and the carrier discovers it, is a denied claim plus a policy unwound for misrepresentation — which then follows you into every future quote as a coverage lapse and a cancellation.
And discovery isn't hard. Platforms keep detailed trip records, and a claim investigation of any size will establish what you were doing at the time.
The honest route is also the cheap one: tell your carrier, add the endorsement if they offer it, and if they won't write you at all, let me check my markets. Being declined by one company on this is common and says little about what's available.
The bottom line
The short answer: Personal policies exclude driving for a fee, Texas's statutory floors leave a thin Period 1, and nothing in either fixes your own car.
If you drive for a platform in Texas, three things are true at once: your personal policy excludes the activity, the statutory minimums are real but modest between rides, and neither addresses damage to your own vehicle.
The fix is usually small. A rideshare endorsement, where your carrier offers one, closes most of the gap for a fraction of what a single uncovered claim costs. And if you deliver rather than drive passengers, the statutory floor doesn't even apply to you — which makes the conversation more important, not less.
Tell me which platform you drive for and send me your declarations page. I'll tell you exactly where your coverage stops and what closing it costs. I'm in Richardson, I do this in English and Spanish, and there's a $10 e-gift card just for letting me prepare the quote.
Last reviewed by Jaime Mendez on September 18, 2026. This guide is educational and is not legal advice or personalized insurance advice. Platform coverage terms change frequently and vary by company — read your platform's current insurance disclosure, and confirm your own policy's exclusions and any endorsement with your carrier. This guide is refreshed quarterly.
