Ground Transportation Duty of Care: The 2026 Guide for Travel Buyers

Most travel programs treat duty of care as a procurement problem: vet the supplier once, file the certificate, move on. Air and hotel mostly survive that treatment, because the suppliers are large, consolidated, and credentialed by regulators who publish. Ground transportation does not survive it. It is the one leg of the trip that is locally licensed, highly fragmented, and routinely performed by a company whose name never appeared in the booking.

Here is what duty of care actually requires on the ground, where programs break, and what to ask a supplier before you need the answer.

What duty of care means in ground transportation

Duty of care in ground transportation is an organization’s obligation to take reasonable steps to protect travellers while they are in a vehicle it arranged, which in practice means knowing that the operator is licensed to carry passengers commercially, that its insurance is in force on the day of travel, and that the company performing the trip is the one that was vetted. ISO 31030, the travel risk management guidance published in 2021, treats ground transport as a distinct risk category for exactly this reason: the exposure is concentrated in the segment travel managers have the least visibility into.

The obligation is not discharged by a booking tool. It is discharged by evidence — the ability to show, after the fact, what was known about the supplier and when it was known.

Why ground transportation is the weakest link in most travel programs

Ground transportation carries more residual risk than air or hotel because it is the only segment where a program typically cannot name every company that will actually perform its trips. Three structural features cause it, and none of them are fixable by choosing a better vendor:

• Licensing is local. Authority to carry passengers commercially is issued city by city or state by state — TCP in California, TLC in New York City, PSV and operator licensing across Europe. There is no global register a travel manager can check.
• The supply base is fragmented. A programme covering 40 cities is contracting with dozens of independent companies, most of them small, each with its own insurer, renewal date, and standards.
• Work is subcontracted by design. When an operator cannot cover a trip, it farms the trip out to a partner. This is normal, legitimate, and how the industry has always achieved coverage — but it means the company that meets your traveller may not be the company you vetted.

That third point is the one most programs have never examined, and it is where a duty-of-care file quietly stops matching reality.

The four things a duty-of-care program has to evidence

A defensible ground transportation program can produce four things on demand for any trip it arranged. Most programs can produce one or two.

• Operating authority. The company holds a current licence or permit to carry passengers commercially in the jurisdiction where the trip took place — not where the company is headquartered.
• Commercial insurance in force on the travel date. Not at onboarding. On the day.
• Driver vetting. Background and licence checks appropriate to the market, performed by the operator and attestable by them.
• The chain of responsibility. If the trip was farmed out, which company performed it, and whether that company met the same bar.

The fourth is the one that turns an audit into a bad afternoon. A programme that verified its contracted operator but has no view of that operator’s affiliates has verified the booking, not the trip.

Why a certificate on file is not the same as coverage in force

A certificate of insurance proves that a policy existed on the day the certificate was issued, which is a different claim from the one duty of care actually requires. Policies lapse, get cancelled for non-payment, and are renewed with changed limits. A COI collected at onboarding and filed in a shared drive tells you about a supplier’s insurance eighteen months ago.

This is the most common failure mode in ground transportation compliance, and it is invisible until it matters. Nothing alerts the travel manager when a supplier’s policy lapses in month seven. The file still looks complete. The evidence is stale and nobody knows.

The fix is structural rather than administrative: verification has to be tied to document currency — expiry dates tracked, renewals chased, status reflecting what is true today — instead of to a one-time review at onboarding. A supplier list that cannot tell you which operators are currently compliant is a list of who was compliant once.

What to ask a ground transportation supplier

Five questions separate a supplier who can support a duty-of-care program from one who cannot.

• How do I confirm a specific operator’s insurance is current today? If the answer involves emailing someone and waiting, that is not a control.
• What happens when the trip is farmed out? Ask directly whether affiliates are held to the same verification bar, and how you would know which company performed a given trip.
• What can I produce in an audit, and how fast? The useful test is a named trip from six months ago, not a policy document.
• Who is notified before a document expires, and when? Expiry monitoring is the difference between a live programme and a filing cabinet.
• Does this complement the tools we already run, or replace them? Most corporate programs already run GroundSpan or Deem for core routes. The gap is usually emerging markets, last-minute coverage, and specialized vehicles — not the core.

Where GNet fits

GNet is a B2B marketplace of 5,600+ verified ground transportation operators across 80+ countries, and verification is the product rather than a badge. Certificates of insurance are checked against insurance systems to confirm coverage is actually valid, not merely that a PDF was uploaded. Operating licences and permits are tracked by issue and expiry date. Operators are reminded at 90, 60, and 30 days before any document lapses, and verified status reflects whether documents are current today — so a supplier list stays accurate between renewals instead of decaying quietly.

Buyers see verified status without accessing an operator’s underlying files; operators control which partners can view a document itself. That balance is what makes the evidence usable in a duty-of-care program without asking small companies to publish their paperwork. For how the verification works in detail, see how GNet verifies operators; for the TMC-specific picture, including how it layers onto an existing corporate stack, see ground transportation for TMCs.

FAQs about ground transportation duty of care

What is duty of care in ground transportation?
Duty of care in ground transportation is an organization’s obligation to take reasonable steps to protect travellers in vehicles it arranged — confirming the operator is licensed to carry passengers commercially, that its insurance is in force on the travel date, and that the company performing the trip is the one that was vetted.

How do TMCs manage ground transportation duty of care globally?
By replacing market-by-market vendor files with a verified supplier network whose credentials are monitored continuously. Licensing is issued locally and there is no global register, so the practical control is a single source that tracks insurance and permit currency across every market the programme covers.

Is a certificate of insurance enough to satisfy duty of care?
No. A COI proves a policy existed when the certificate was issued. Policies lapse, get cancelled, and renew with changed limits, so a certificate collected at onboarding says nothing about coverage on the day of travel. What matters is whether currency is tracked between renewals.

What happens to duty of care when a trip is farmed out to another operator?
The obligation does not transfer. If the contracted operator farms the trip to a partner, the company meeting the traveller is not the company that was vetted unless the network holds affiliates to the same verification bar. Programs should be able to identify which company performed any given trip.

Does using a rideshare platform satisfy corporate duty of care?
Not on its own. Rideshare drivers typically operate under TNC permits rather than commercial livery authority, and the platform assigns whoever is nearest rather than a vetted supplier. Programs that rely on it usually cannot evidence operating authority or commercial insurance for a specific trip.

How do you evidence ground transportation compliance in an audit?
By producing, for a named past trip, the performing company’s operating authority, its commercial insurance status on the travel date, and the chain of responsibility if the trip was subcontracted. A programme that can only produce onboarding paperwork has evidenced the booking rather than the trip.

Verification mechanics last verified 1 August 2026. This article is general information about ground transportation risk practice, not legal advice — duty-of-care obligations vary by jurisdiction and by employment relationship, so confirm your program’s specific requirements with counsel.