Auto Dealers Insurance – Are You Prepared For Hail Storms?

Used car dealers have a seasonal demon to watch out for and this is the time of year it rears its head. I’m talking about hailstorms. If one sweeps across your lot you are likely to suffer a huge amount of property damage. In fact, some of the biggest claims we see are from these Spring and Summer hailstorms. Do you know if you have the right protection?

Hailstorms are often local in their impact but if it happens over your lot, you can expect huge losses to your inventory. Most used car dealers have their inventory stored outside and are vulnerable to hail losses but this is the type of protection that many car dealers don’t think about until it is too late. So how do you know if you have coverage?

Well fortunately the garage insurance policy is a standardized form so it is easy to know if you have the coverage. Hail coverage is a part of your comprehensive coverage which is part of the dealers open lot coverage for your cars. The dealers open lot insurance coverage will have a section with a limit and deductible for both collision and comprehensive coverages.

Pull out your policy right now and check to see that you have a limit of coverage for comprehensive coverage on your dealers open lot section. Now, also check out how the deductible reads. The standard form has a per vehicle deductible and a maximum per loss deductible. The per loss limit is typically 5 times the per vehicle deductible. So, if you have a $500 deductible on your comprehensive per vehicle, then you probably also have a $2500 maximum deductible per event. There are a few companies out there that set their policies up so that the only deductible is per loss, not per vehicle. This is an important distinction. In my previous example this would increase your claim payment from the insurance company by $2000. For more information about per vehicle deductibles and what is available out there, read my earlier blog here.

If you need any help at all interpreting your deductibles or how they might pay in a claim, please feel free to give us a call, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us online at www.TheAutoDealersHelper.com. We specialize in helping used car dealers with their insurance needs all across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia

The source information for this article can be found on articles at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Garage Insurance – Used Car Dealers and Repair Shops Watch Those Symbols

Garage insurance is a much misunderstood policy form. Very few insurance agents understand exactly when to use it and more importantly exactly how. You can use a garage liability policy to protect a used car dealer, often referred to as dealer’s insurance, or you can use this same form to protect an automotive repair shop or to set up body shop insurance. The trick is to know the symbols. At Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, NC, we specialize in garage insurance and we understand the difference in how to set up used car dealers insurance and auto repair shop garage insurance.

As I mentioned earlier, both types of businesses, auto repair and or body shops and used car dealers both need the garage policy. But what is covered in these policies is driven by the symbols on the policy. This is very important. If you your business is automotive repair or body work but your policy is set up with symbols that would apply to a car dealership, you could find yourself without coverage in the event of a liability loss.

So how do you know if you have the correct symbols and thus the correct form? Pull out your garage policy and look at the first page. Beside each type of coverage, usually to the left, there will be a least one two digit number between 21 and 31. These symbols will describe what is protected by the coverage described beside the number. Here is a list of the most common symbols and what each one protects:

21 Any auto
22 All owned autos
23 Owned private passenger autos only
24 Owned autos other than private passenger
25 Owned autos subject to no fault laws
26 Owned autos subject to Uninsured Motorists law
27 Specifically described autos
28 Hired autos only
29 Non-Owned autos used in the Garage Business
30 Autos Left for Service/Repair/Storage
31 Autos on Consignment

As you have probably figured out, if you are an automobile dealer and you have code 30 on your policy, you would find yourself without coverage. So why not just put code 21 on all coverages? Well, since code 21 is the broadest coverage, you would have to pay more for this insurance policy and in some cases you might be purchasing insurance protection that you didn’t really need.

Take some time to look at your policy carefully and review the symbols for each line of coverage to make sure that they are appropriate for the work you do. If you need help with this process, please feel free to call Clinard Insurance Group, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at http://www.clinardinsurance.com/.

The source material for this article was pulled from http://www.insuranceanswerguy.com/.