How much of your business involves your staff driving? How much of it involves interacting with customers’ vehicles? If your rates are fairly high, you may need motor trade insurance.
What Is It?
Motor trade insurance is coverage designed to be used by companies that deal with a number of different vehicles. From car dealerships to breakdown firms, it’s fairly common. Valet-parking companies even use it. Sometimes called traders’ insurance, it helps to cover the business and their staff when they’re driving or handling customer or company vehicles. It helps protect against accidental damage or any problems that result from dealing with customer vehicles.
Often these policies are tailored specifically to meet your needs. For example, if you’re simply a roadside tire replacement service, you may need a fairly low level of coverage. If, however, you run a full-service shop and your employees routinely drive customer vehicles, you’ll likely need a higher level of coverage. Much can be involved in coverage depending on what works best for your company. There are two parts, though, that aren’t optional. If you employ anyone else, you’ll want an employers’ liability policy. Whether they drive the vehicles or not, it will help protect you in the event they’re injured. Public liability insurance is also required if people are in and out of your place of business on a regular basis. Other add-ons are optional.
- Road Risk: If you plan to drive a customer’s vehicle on a public highway for any reason, you’ll want road risk coverage. It can cover anyone who is injured in the event of an accident, the vehicle in the event of fire or theft, or you can select a comprehensive policy that covers absolutely anything that happens while you’re on the road in a customer’s vehicle.
- Product Liability Insurance: If you add a part to a customer’s vehicle, but the part itself is defective, this type of coverage would handle any damages that occurred without passing the cost on to you.
- Material Damage: Imagine you run a dealership when the impossible happens. Every unsold vehicle on your lot will be covered by an add-on like this one. It can even increase and decrease with the amount of your sales.
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Traders’ insurance isn’t a one size fits all product. Instead, many pieces are involved to create the right coverage. As you shop for quotes, you’ll want to think carefully about how your business handles customer or commercial vehicles and exactly what you might be liable for at some point in time. The last things you want are claims against your business that you hadn’t even considered possible. To make certain that doesn’t happen, you may want to sit down with an agent, explain what you do from day to day, and discuss the types of coverage they have available. Don’t just consider the premium cost. Instead, look at the very real risks your business is facing now and well into the future.
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