Electrical Contractors – Don’t forget DOC coverage on your electrician insurance for your trucks

Most electricians did the basic set up work on their electrical contractors’ insurance years ago and few ever revisit the underlying structure of their insurance plan. As a result, there are electrical contractors out there, running around with a huge hole in their insurance policy protection. I call it the DOC trap and you can figure out if you are vulnerable to this problem by asking yourself a few easy questions.

First of all, to understand this problem, you have to understand that your electrician insurance policies cover the named insured on the policy. In many cases that is the name of your corporation or LLC, and if your personal name is not on your business auto insurance policy, then you can’t expect personal protection from that policy.

Here’s the problem. Let’s say you are at a party with a friend, who has had too much to drink. You kindly offer to drive him home but on the way home, you are involved in an accident that is your fault. For this example, let’s say the total damages, including injuries are $250,000. That’s not hard to do with medical costs the way they are these days. Now, if you have a personal auto policy in your name, then you will be protected for your liability in this accident as long as you have liability limits high enough to cover the losses. But suppose you don’t have a personal auto insurance policy because you just drive your company truck all the time. If your electrician auto insurance policy has your corporation as a named insured, then the basic policy will not give you any protection for this accident.

So what is the solution? It’s simple really; you should add DOC coverage to your commercial auto policy. DOC stands for drives other car coverage and this endorsement will add your name to the policy making you a named insured for this excess coverage. This endorsement usually costs less than $200 per year per person and is used to plug a dangerous hole in protection.

So to review, you should consider DOC coverage if the following statements are true.

1. Your electrician insurance policy on your trucks is in a business name and,

2. You don’t have a personal auto policy in your name

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we specialize in helping electrical contractors with their insurance needs. We want all of our clients to be informed insurance consumers so that they can make the right decisions for themselves and for their electrician business. If we can help you with your electrician workers compensation insurance, your electrician liability insurance, or any of your other electrical contractor insurance needs, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us online at our electrical contractors insurance helper page.

The information in this article was drawn from an article which can be found at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com