Garage Insurance – Body Shops and Spray Booths

The automobile body repair business is changing quickly. This industry has seen rather slow and evolved changes over the past 30 years or so but recently the pace of change has accelerated. These changes are shrinking your marketplace of clients as well as constricting how you perform your work. Staying ahead of these changes should give you a strong edge over your competition and help to insure that you remain in business for years to come.

One of the biggest systemic changes to affect body repair shop owners is the shrinking customer base. For instance, the high expense of replacing air bags in wrecked cars, combined with the greater availability of less expensive vehicles means that many wrecked cars are now considered a total loss by the insurance companies and as such are not repaired.

In addition, there are changes taking place in the auto body repair industry that drive the way that you operate. There are both environmental and safety issues that will force body shop owners to invest in new equipment and spray booths. Each step forward requires that you carefully evaluate the costs of improvements against future income.

Recent changes to the International Fire Code and the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) codes that the vast majority of states and local jurisdictions use now mandate that spray paint booths and mixing rooms have automatic fire suppression systems. This has been a substantial change, resulting in greater protection of spray painting operations, but it increases the cost of the spray booth system. Existing manufactured booths can often be retrofitted with automatic suppression systems, but even that expense can be high. These systems fall squarely in the realm of life safety of those who must work in and around the spray painting operations, where explosive fires are rare but very severe.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has made a new rule, National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) (Subpart HHHHHH), that mandates by January 10, 2011, those that engage in spray applications to motor vehicles must comply. These standards also mandate a spray booth that contains and filters the emissions from spray operations, as well as spray guns that comply and training to the operators of the equipment. The point of this regulation is to protect the environment, but it does mandate the use of an approved spray paint booth. A summary of these regulations may be found on the Internet at http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/area/paint_stripb.pdf and http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/area/autobodybs.doc.

All of these choices will also drive your insurance costs. If you take the time to keep your spray booth up to date and protect both your environment and your employees, then you will be able to qualify for body shop insurance programs that will offer you the best rates and wider protection. Over time, these changes will begin to pay for themselves in reduced insurance costs.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we want all of our clients to be informed insurance consumers. We specialize in helping automotive repair and body shops all across North Carolina and South Carolina with their insurance needs. If you need help with your garage insurance, your workers compensation insurance or any other insurance needs for your auto repair or body shop, please call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at NC Garage Insurance Helper.

The source information for this article was pulled from information which can be found at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Auto Repair Shops Workers Compensation Insurance – Protect Your Mod

Most automotive repair and body shop owners have at least a general knowledge of workers compensation insurance. They know that they need it and they know it can cost a lot of money. But only a few really understand the experience modification factor and what it could mean for their future work comp insurance policy costs. This little primer will help you understand just how important it is to protect your mod and how to do it.

The experience modification factor of workers compensation policies, referred to as the experience mod or just mod for short, is the insurance industry’s way of assigning higher rates to businesses with poor loss experience and lower rates to those who have had more favorable loss experience. Each business has its own unique experience modification factor and this factor is applied to the rates on their policy. For example, if you have had a lot of losses, or perhaps a few large losses, you might find yourself with a mod of say, 1.35. If this is the case, then your workers compensation insurance policy premium will be adjusted upward by 35% to reflect your bad experience. Likewise, if your company hasn’t has a work comp loss for several years, your mod might drop as low as .80 and this would mean a 20% reduction in your overall workers compensation policy premium.

So how is this mod calculated? Well, the first thing you need to know is that the mod is calculated based on past experience. That means what happens today will take several years to come back and bite you. Also, the experience period for the mod in North Carolina is 3 years, so once you get some losses in your mod calculation, they will stay there for a while. I want to leave a more detailed explanation of how the mod is calculated to a later blog, but for now, understand that it is not only the number of losses (called frequency) that plays a part, but also the amount paid out (called severity) that impacts the mod calculation. And a little of both, frequency and severity can really run up your mod.

So what can you, as a business owner, do to protect your mod? A lot of how your mod will affect you, both good or bad will be determined by which insurance company you choose for your workers compensation policy. I say this, because, although you may be as careful as you can to avoid injuries among your workers, there is no substitute for an insurance company that is actively working for you to help you prevent claims and reduce the severity of existing claims. So when evaluating which workers compensation policy to purchase, you should consider more than just the cost on the first policy. Find out what that insurance company and that agent are going to do to keep your costs low over the long term.

Choose a workers compensation insurance company that will work with you to help you with both prevention and severity reduction. Prevention can come in the form of safety inspections, and loss control techniques that the insurance company can share with you. Reduction can come in the form of programs that help your injured workers get back to work more quickly. Some of the best workers compensation insurance companies even have their own nurses and doctors. Also, you want to purchase your workers comp coverage from a company that assigns case managers to each claim to stay on top of all the medical bills and the disability payments to keep the payout as small as possible.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we specialize in helping the owners of automotive repair and body shops navigate the complex waters of insurance policy and insurance company selection. We can help you find a pro-active insurance company that will help you reduce the number of work comp claims and keep the claims that happen from spiraling out of control. We can also help you with your other insurance needs from garage insurance to commercial auto insurance for your wreckers or company trucks. If you would like help with any of your business insurance needs, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit our garage owners insurance help page.

The source information for this article was taken from other articles which can be found in their entirety at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Garagekeepers Insurance – How Much Is Enough?

Automotive repair shops and used car dealers both need a garage insurance policy. Included in this policy is a coverage call garagekeepers insurance. In the case of automotive repair shop insurance or body repair insurance, this is protection to cover loss and damages to customers’ cars left with the repair shop. In the case of the auto dealer insurance, this coverage is often referred to as dealers open lot coverage and provides comprehensive and collision protection for the inventory owned by the used car dealer. But how do you as an auto repair shop or body shop owner know how much garage keepers insurance to buy?

In this article I want to stay focused on the repair shop with true garagekeepers insurance and I will leave the dealers open lot question for another blog. Repair shops and body shops are all different in terms of how they deal with customers’ vehicles left with them for repair. Some never need to test drive the cars and some need to do extensive driving. Others are able to keep all vehicles inside their building at night while others may even have to park client cars out on the street. Each situation presents different dangers and exposures to the repair shop owner.

Garagekeepers insurance can be broken down into two coverage elements. One is collision coverage and the other is comprehensive. The collision coverage will pay for losses caused to client vehicles that are damaged by a collision. This happens most often when the car is being test driven. The comprehensive coverage provides protection against, fire, hail, water damage and a host of other losses that can happen to your clients’ cars while they are in your care. So how do you decide how much coverage to buy?

Let’s take collision first. I suggest that you carefully try and understand the worst case scenario for a collision loss to one of your client’s vehicles. Assume that your employee has a total loss with the most valuable car that you would ever work on. That should put you in the ball park of how much coverage you should purchase.

With comprehensive coverage on your garagekeepers coverage, you need to try and imagine the worst case scenario for this type of loss to your clients’ cars. If you keep them inside at night, what would it cost to replace the cars if you had a total fire loss overnight and every customer car in your garage was totaled? If you keep them outside, what amount of damages would be caused by a severe hailstorm or a flood if that is possible in your location? Don’t forget to consider vandalism in your worst case scenarios as well.

Once you have done this, you will need to take the largest of the two numbers that you arrived at and purchase that amount of garagekeepers coverage. The reason is that most insurance companies won’t let you purchase one amount of coverage for collision and another for comprehensive. There are a few companies that will allow this but they are few and far in between.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we specialize in helping owners of auto repair and auto body shops with their insurance needs. We work hard to help all of our clients become informed insurance consumers so that they can make the best decisions when it comes to insuring their businesses. If we can help you with your garage insurance, please call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us online at our auto repair and body shop insurance help site.

The source information for this article was pulled from an article which can be found at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.