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.

Garage Keepers Insurance for Used Car Dealers

Most used car dealers understand that they need a garage insurance policy for their business. And some even understand that they need dealers open lot coverage for their inventory. But there are some dealers out there who perform a hybrid function for their clients and we often find that these dealers have overlooked a garage coverage that leaves them wide open for an uncovered loss. If you are a used car dealer who does some repair work, you really owe it to yourself to read this article, and then check your policy to make sure you are covered properly.

The hybrid dealer that I am referring to is one who not only works on his own cars, but who works on cars owned by others. In this situation, the dealer is performing a double function from the insurance company’s perspective: a seller of cars and a repairer of cars. And this creates the need for a coverage endorsement to the garage policy that is often unfamiliar to a used car dealer.

The coverage that you need to add to your dealers policy is called garage keepers insurance. This coverage is designed to protect you for losses to your clients cars that are left in your care, custody or control. Garage keepers insurance can be broken up into two main coverage areas. One is called garage keepers collision coverage and the other is called garage keepers comprehensive coverage.

The comprehensive coverage is for fire, theft, windstorm, flood and other loss types that could occur to your customers vehicles while you have them in your possession for repairs. The collision coverage is for damages caused by collision to your clients cars while they are in your possession.

Within the broader category of garagekeepers insurance there is additional information you need to make a good decision about how much and which type to purchase. I have written other blogs on those issues and you can read them by clicking on the links below. There are also some video links if you prefer watching videos.

How much garage keepers insurance to buy – blog version

How much garage keepers insurance to buy - video version

Garage keepers Insurance explained Part I blog

Garage Keepers Insurance explained Part II blog

At Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, NC, we specialize in helping used car dealers with their insurance needs. We insure hundreds of used car dealers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia. If you would like help with your dealers insurance, please visit us online at www.TheAutoDealersHelper.com or call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557.

Much of the information for this article was sourced from www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com

Garage Liability Insurance and Garage Keepers Insurance – What’s The Difference?

The garage insurance form is a specialty form used only for the automotive industry, specifically motor vehicle repair and motor vehicle sales. Because of this, many insurance agents don’t fully understand this policy form. And if the insurance agents are often confused, you can imagine what the business owners in the motor vehicle industry might feel. Here’s a short explanation to help you understand this policy a little bit better.

Garage liability insurance is the term used to describe liability insurance protection for both repair shop owners and new and used car dealers. This is the part of the policy that essentially protects the business from liability claims for bodily injury or property damage as a result of an at fault accident in a vehicle covered by the policy. Which vehicles are covered by this garage liability section is determined by the symbol code showing on the policy itself. For a complete list of possible symbol codes, please read my previous article about garage insurance symbols by clicking here.

Garage Keepers insurance is also part of the garage policy. However, this coverage is not for liability insurance and this coverage would not be appropriate for a car dealer unless the dealer is also repairing vehicles that are not owned by the dealership. That is because garage keepers is designed to protect against physical damage losses to vehicles that are in the care, custody or control of the repair shop. So, for example, if you are repairing a customer’s vehicle and you test drive that vehicle, you have an exposure for garage keepers collision insurance while you are out on the road with that vehicle. Likewise, if your clients leave their vehicles with your overnight, you have an exposure for fire, theft or even windstorm or hail damage to these vehicles. You would need garage keepers comprehensive coverage to protect against these types of losses.

The garage insurance policy is an unusual form and if you are in the business of buying, selling or repairing motor vehicles, you are best served purchasing your garage insurance policy through an agent who specializes in this type of policy form. At Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, NC, we specialize in helping used car dealers and automotive repair and body shops all over North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. If we can help you with a second opinion on your garage insurance needs, please feel free to call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at http://www.clinardinsurance.com.

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

The Dealers Open Lot Deductible Trap

Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, specializes in handling the insurance needs of used car dealers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Tennessee. With so many clients in this industry, I thought I should speak out about a little known provision in the dealers open lot coverage that creates a nasty surprise for many dealers after a claim has occurred. I call it the comp deductible trap.

Any dealer that has a substantial investment in his or her inventory should carry dealers open lot insurance as part of his or her Garage Liability Policy. This will provide comprehensive and collision coverage for the inventory on the lot and out on the road and it is the least expensive if you add it to your garage policy. Just like your personal auto insurance, the comprehensive and collision coverage in the dealers open lot protection has deductibles. These deductibles are the first dollar amount that the dealer must pay before the insurance company pays out for the claim. But here is the catch….. the deductible on the comprehensive coverage is almost always a per car deductible. And that can add up.

Let’s say you have 20 cars on your lot and a hail storm hits your dealership. 10 of your cars are very badly damaged. You know that you have comprehensive coverage on your dealers open lot so you pull out your policy and see that you have a $1000 deductible. Okay, you think to yourself, this is bad but I guess I can cough up $1000 since I have 10 cars that are in awful shape. When your claims adjuster shows up to start working on this claim for you he reminds you that the deductible is $1000 per car with a 5 car limit. This is the way most open lot coverages are written. Suddenly your $1000 deductible has turned into $5000 and you are really singing the blues. Your cash flow is wrecked for months.

How can you protect yourself from this trickery? Well, first of all, be sure that you read and understand your policy completely. Also, only do business with an agent that specializes in the garage policy and used car dealers. Your business is very unique in the insurance world and you can’t afford to let and agent that has handled the insurance for 5 or 10 dealers in his career protect you. Let’s face it, your business is one of your most valuable assets and it can lead to your largest liability risks. Don’t let an inexperienced agent practice on learning the garage policy and its one of a kind ins and outs at your expense.

As I mentioned earlier, Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, NC, handles the garage insurance needs for hundreds of used car dealers in 4 states. And the best part is we have found a company that does not have a per car deductible on comprehensive coverage in the dealers open lot insurance. So in the example above, if you were insured with Clinard Insurance Group, you would only pay $1000 for that devastating hail storm and not $5000. You can see how doing business with a specialist can be extremely valuable for you and your company. If you would like more information or help insuring your used car dealership, you can visit us online at www.theautodealershelper.com or call us, toll free at 877-687-7557.

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