I'm just getting started, I have a job I need to rent an excavator for, so it's time to get business insurance. The rental agreement stipulates as follows: • GeneralLiability:$1,000,000/occurrence,$2,000,000/aggregate. • AutomobileLiability:$1,000,000 (only required for certain street-legal vehicle types). • Equipment Floater: The limit must be at least $250,000 to replace any equipmentleased or rented at manufacturer’s suggested retail price with blanket coverage.An authorized Mashburn Equipment manager is required toapprove alloverrides to this requirement. Any advice for where to look for this coverage as a new business? I incorporated less than a year ago. I'm in Georgia if that matters. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks! (eta: I don't think the auto liability will apply to an excavator rental)
Usually, the rental company will provide a "loss and damage waiver" insurance policy. The cost of this is added to your rental charges. This is the route we always go, as it is cheaper than getting our own insurance. Jeff
As MM said Mashburn should offer rental insurance as a line item of the rental for the size of their operation and equipment spread, heck I saw one of their hoes with a hammer on a job over here a couple of weeks ago. For our operation it's cheaper to have a rental rider on your insurance policy for the value of the equipment you are renting instead of going through the rental house. We can add and drop the coverage as needed during the rental period so we're not paying for coverage we don't need. Throughout a normal year we rent occasionally enough to justify a rider however in 2020 our rental bill was close to a $100K so having our own policy was a significant savings. My advice for the first job is to use Mashburn's insurance if it's available. If they don't offer it you'll need to find a local commercial insurance agent and go from there. Throughout my 25+ years of being in business I've found a local agent that can shop multiple nationwide insurance companies is the best route. Your insurance agent is one of the trinity that is vital to a successful small business, the other two are a good attorney and great accountant. Our GL is through one carrier, Inland Marine and Auto through another and WC through a third - all shopped for the best price for the coverage we need. We carry $2/2M GL, $2M auto and $500K on rental. The rental coverage is flexible as I described above and can be expensive if you are not using it.
Another thing of note commercial insurance requirements required by a general are getting completely out of hand on three separate contracts this year we have had to negotiate the coverage requirements down to what are policy actually is and my insurance is on par with cm but if you sign a contract and start work it's really hard to get paid without the actual insurance stipulated
No doubt. The largest GC we work for requires all sorts of GL endorsements, so many that I add a $1,500 line item for "Job site specific ABC Inc required endorsements" on each project we do for them. The endorsements usually run $350-800 per job so the extra $$ is for our time to do the paperwork. These endorsements are above and beyond our $2M GL policy. All the GC's we work for will not pay us unless we have current insurance certs with all coverage requirements. We make sure all insurance coverage requirements are met before signing a contract.
Thanks guys. I finally got in touch with an agent who writes these policies. He may have a quote for me tomorrow.
things sure git complicated when ya get past 18
I just signed up for a new policy. I got general liability, coverage on rentals up to 150k, "comprehensive" coverage on my skid steer, and liability on my dump truck for less than my spit ball estimate for dump truck insurance when I first started dipping my toes. The project I needed the 250k rider for got solved by another involved party which was a best case scenario for me. I'm see myself as a small time guy, at least for the near future. I'm not trying to do "big machine" type jobs. I'm sure you know what I mean. I was invested in making it happen,...but....