As an insurance agent that specializes in the needs of landscapers, I come across many different views and ways of approaching insurance. Some landscapers get as much insurance as possible, others only buy what their clients require them to carry, and some are extremely underinsured and are forced to close their business after a loss. I decided to write this article when a client asked me “What is the best way to figure out how much insurance I should buy?”

Let’s start with the basic view of insurance. Insurance is a cost of doing business in the United States. Our legal system is designed to protect the rights of individuals, and there is a high risk of businesses encountering lawsuits. Business assets such as lawn care equipment and vehicles also face the risk of being damaged from a number of different exposures. There are other ways to manage these risks outside of insurance such as pools, finite risk plans, captive insurers, self insured plans, and other creative ways of paying for the risk of future losses. All of these methods are not economically feasible for smaller businesses and typically are not very cost effective for landscaping businesses. If you are interested in any of these methods, please contact us for more information. For the far majority of landscaping businesses, you will find that insurance is very effective in facilitating the spread of hazard risk and gives your business the freedom of transferring potential losses to an insurance carrier.

The primary step in purchasing insurance is determining the insurance needs of your business. We created the business risks section of this website to provide specific information about typical exposures faced by landscaping businesses. The recommended insurance section describes the insurance policies we recommend to protect landscapers from these typical exposures. Our agents also take the time to review the insurance needs of each prospective client and offer their professional guidance to landscaping businesses. For most landscapers, a combination of general liability, commercial auto, equipment floater, and workers’ compensation coverages should provide ample protection for your business. Please complete our online quote request form or contact one of our agents for a consultation on the specific insurance needs of your business.

The Agent Articles section of BearWiseLandscapers.com allows our insurance agents to provide practical information for landscapers. These agents can also obtain quotes and establish a custom insurance program for your landscaping business through our access to a variety of insurance carriers. This agent article is filed under (1) Insurance, and you can follow comments to it through the RSS 2.0 feed. Feel free to leave your own response below: