As business owners, you are often approached with advertisements and salespeople that state you can save 15% or more on your insurance premium from this company or that company. Some of these companies may actually have better rates and would save premium dollars for your business, but other companies will simply cut coverage to lower the premium. It is important to understand the coverage offered by different insurance quotes and how insurance premium is calculated.

Insurance premiums are usually computed using a predetermined rate that is multiplied by either your payroll or revenue totals for the policy term and then adjusted based on your business characteristics. For example, workers’ compensation insurance in Florida has rates predetermined by the state government and all insurance carriers in the state use those rates by multiplying it by your payroll in the appropriate classifications. Here is a link to an article with the 2009 rates for Florida landscaping businesses.

The insurance premiums for general liability policies are based either on your projected payroll or your projected revenues. This rating basis is then multiplied by a rate determined by the insurance carrier. When comparing premiums on these policies, you can look at the specific rate or make sure that both insurance carriers use the same payroll or revenue figures.

Equipment floater insurance typically has separate rates for the value of equipment that is individually scheduled on the policy and the value of unscheduled equipment that is protected under the blanket equipment coverage. As is the case for the other insurance policies, these individual rates should be listed on the ‘declarations page’ of the policy documents.

As a landscaping business, if you ever have questions regarding insurance rates and total premiums, please feel free to ask an insurance agent at BearWise Landscapers. We would also welcome the opportunity to walk through comparative insurance quotes received by your business to analyze differences in coverages and actual rates. Let us know how we can be of assistance to your business insurance needs!

In a previous article, I recommended insurance to landscapers with one owner and no employees. In this article, I will discuss how the insurance needs change when the landscaping business grows and adds two employees. The primary difference in recommended insurance coverage is that the landscaper should add workers’ compensation coverage to protect the company from the liability of injury to these employees.

For a local landscaping business with one owner and two employees, we recommend that the business carries four insurance coverages: general liability, commercial auto, equipment floater, and workers’ compensation.

1. General Liability: This policy provides protection to your business from many types of lawsuits. We recommend that you obtain limits of $1,000,000 for each occurrence and $2,000,000 for the policy period. For lawn maintenance companies, your premium for this coverage will be around 650 dollars for the year and if you install landscapes, your premium will be slightly higher at around 850 dollars. Depending on your business model and other variables, we have several insurance carriers that might be able to offer lower premiums.

2. Commercial Auto: This policy provides protection for your vehicles and the liability arising out of their use. It is important to move the vehicles you use for your business to a commercial auto policy instead of a personal auto policy. We recommend a limit on this coverage to be $1,000,000 combined single limit, and for small landscapers wishing to save money, we recommend that you should not go below $500,000 combined single limit. For a landscaper with two drivers, one truck worth around 10,000 dollars, and one trailer worth around 5,000 dollars, the premium will vary depending on your radius of operations and driving record. If your drivers have a good driving record, you are looking at a premium in the ballpark of 1,500 dollars to 3,000 dollars depending on all those variables. We have many insurance carriers we use for these policies, but have been very pleased with Travelers’ and Progressive’s commercial auto rates and service for landscapers with fewer than 5 vehicles.

3. Equipment Floater: This policy provides protection for your equipment against a variety of exposures with the highest threat being theft. Lawn mowing equipment and landscape installation equipment can be very expensive for a new business and you want to make sure this equipment is protected. For a landscaper with 15,000 to 30,000 worth of equipment, you can expect a premium on this coverage in the range of 200 dollars to 600 dollars. We often package this coverage in wit the general liability insurance policy, but we can also write it by itself through a few insurance carriers.

4. Workers’ Compensation: This policy provides protection for your business when your employees are injured during the course of employment. It will pay the state regulated hospital expenses and a portion of the payroll from missing time off work. Most states do not require your business to carry workers’ compensation insurance until you have over 3 employees, but we recommend that you carry it regardless. Even if you have one part time employee, our agents recommend that you purchase this coverage to protect your business in the event that an employee gets injured. In Florida, for two employees with an annual remuneration of 30,000 dollars, you are looking at a total premium of 1,470 dollars for your workers compensation coverage if your business operations are landscape maintenance and 2,250 dollars of premium if your operations are landscape installation.

With these four insurance coverages, your small landscaping business will have the protection it needs to avoid the losses that would otherwise end your landscaping career. These policies will allow your business to be protected from most loss exposures, so you can focus on expanding your clientele. For more information or to receive comparative insurance quotes, please contact us or complete the online quote request form. We enjoy working with landscapers of all sizes and look forward to being your insurance advisor as your business grows over time.

I read an article in a very old issue (July of 2005) of the Irrigation and Green Industry magazine. The title, ‘Liability Insurance… Read the Fine Print’, caught my eye on their website and the article had some great points. It discussed the costs of general liability insurance and things that had affected the rates. At the end of the article, the author discussed services that insurance agents should offer their clients and that landscapers should ask their insurance agent to provide for their business. Here are the eight services:

Help Reduce Payroll Rates: The larger your payroll, generally the larger are your payroll rates. But there are some guidelines and industry rules that are applied to payroll that most dont know about. You should check with your agent to make sure you dont overpay. For instance, there are different rates for those in the field and those in the office, for full- and part-time employees, and field workers can have lower rates if they also work part-time in sales, in the office, or come to the office for training.

Reduce Vehicle Rates: A lot of liability will fall on automobiles and trucks, says Cason. The more knowledge you have of how rates are determined, the more money you save. For example, where vehicles are garaged affects the rates. If they are parked overnight in a metropolitan area, the rates will be higher. However, if workers drive these vehicles to their homes in small surrounding towns, the rates can be considerably less.

Have Loss Control Service: Landscapers should ask their agents to implement a safety program for loss control, to control risks, and to reduce premiums, says Hartman. Many landscapers are resistant. They may feel they dont have the time or staff. And I think theres a feeling in some, though not all landscapers, that the agents are out to get them and might find something wrong. But if we do find something wrong, we want to help fix it. Were there to help. And if, as a result, you have less equipment theft and fewer accidents, your premiums will be that much less.

Have Your Contracts Reviewed: Theres no reason you should not have your agent review your contracts, says Graham. He should be able to identify areas of concern, make suggestions, strike harmful language, adding this or that. If a renewal is coming up, the carrier might not have certain coverage, so the agent knows perhaps that its time to find someone else. Youd be surprised at what youll find in contracts. Some installation coverage will state that trees, shrubs and plants will not be covered. How would a landscaper feel about that?

Have Your Agent Visit Job Sites: Your agent is a salesman to you, the landscaper, but also your salesman to the underwriter, Graham says. Ask your agent to visit your jobsites, and if he reports to the underwriter that your workplace is great, awesome, wonderful and safe, the cream will rise and that will impress the underwriter. You want an agent who will do more than just fill out forms.

Have Your Agent Provide a Quarterly, Or At Least an Annual Report: If you see where your losses are, especially if there are patterns, you can make adjustments, says Graham. We do what we rarely see anybody else do, and that is prepare graphs for the past five years for accidents, and track it. One landscaper studying the graph and data saw that he had higher claims at the start of the season. Thats when regular employees have been off for a while and are rusty, and new people are hired. He learned to have a special focus on safety at that time of year.

Have Motor Vehicle Reports Made: Expect your agent to flag the department of motor vehicles, says Graham. A stray ticket here and there may not be important. But you want to be aware if any of your employees are having serious driving problems.

Aggressively Manage Claims: Have your agent review all of your claims before they are turned in, Graham says. A lot of claims may not be your fault; they are so small they will give you more trouble than they are worth, as well as other reasons.

If you are unsatisfied with the service you are currently receiving from your insurance agency and would like to understand the variety of services offered by BearWise Landscapers, please contact our office today. We handle the insurance for many landscapers throughout the state of Florida and can provide specialized insurance expertise for your landscaping business.

Businesses of all types purchase general liability insurance for covering the premises and operations liability loss exposures and products and completed operations liability loss exposures faced by their business. Because general liability insurance covers a wide range of liability loss exposures faced by most organizations, it is the foundation for most organizations’ liability insurance programs. This is very true for landscaping businesses as well.

Most general liability insurance policies are based off of a standard occurrence coverage form designed by the Insurance Service Office, but many insurance carriers make changes to the policy wording, so it is very important to read your actual policy for coverage terms and conditions. These policies have three coverage sections:

Coverage A – Bodily Injury and Property Damage Liability

Coverage B – Personal and Advertising Injury Liability

Coverage C – Medical Payments

Most claims fall under the Coverage A section of the general liability policy and I will go into more depth at a later time about the practical ways that this coverage applies to landscapers.

In addition to general liability insurance, other insurance policies can be used to cover liability loss exposures. An umbrella liability policy or excess liability policy will increase the limits over a general liability policy and can increase the limits of other coverages as well. Umbrella and excess liability policies are slightly different in the type of coverage they offer. Commercial auto insurance has a liability section to cover the liability loss exposures associated with driving a vehicle. Even workers’ compensation insurance is a type of liability policy to cover the statute liability imposed by the government for employees that are injured on the job.

If you have any questions about the liability loss exposures of your landscaping business, or if you would like to speak with an agent about designing a comprehensive insurance program, please do not hesitate to contact BearWise Landscapers.

Regardless of what else they might know about the United States legal system, most adults and even many children know, from either their own experience or the mass media, that “anyone can be sued.” In the context of commercial risk management for landscaping businesses, this generalization can be restated as “every organization has liability loss exposures.” A loss exposure is any condition or situation that presents a possibility of loss, whether or not an actual loss occurs. In terms of liability, a liability loss is any loss that a person or business sustains as a result of a claim or suit against that person or business by someone seeking damages or some other remedy permitted by the law.

For example, any landscaping business with an office could be sued for injuries resulting from a dangerous condition on the office property. Holding the office open to the public for business therefore creates a liability loss exposure because having persons on the property presents the possibility that such a suit could occur.

Other examples of loss exposures for landscapers include bodily injury or property damage caused by lawn mowing operations, vehicle accidents, breach of contract, general negligence, intentional torts, strict liability torts, contributory negligence, libel and slander, interference with property rights, trade disparagement, unfair competition, fraud, nuisance, vicarious liability, liability based on statutes, and many other cases.

Liability losses can range from small nuisance claims to multimillion-dollar judgments. Improperly handled or covered by insurance, liability loss exposures can result in losses that prevent a business from reaching its goals and can even bankrupt the business. For landscaping businesses, the best way to manage liability loss exposures is through effective risk control and risk financing. Risk control techniques are intended to prevent liability losses from occurring or to reduce the amount of liability losses that do occur. Risk financing techniques provide ways of paying for losses that actually occur and the most cost effective way of doing this as a landscaper is through purchasing appropriate insurance to cover your exposures.

General liability is a coverage that every owner should purchase for his/her company. In the world that we live in, crazy situations occur everyday that result in some expensive lawsuits. Here is a recent example of lawsuit against a landscaping company.

At BearWise Landscapers, we strongly recommend that you obtain limits of $1,000,000 for each occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate for the entire year policy period. As I am sure you are aware, lawsuits are very expensive in the United States and can deplete your policy limits rather quickly.

For larger companies we recommend that you take out an umbrella policy in excess to your general liability. Larger companies have more exposures and more assets to lose, making you a bigger target for lawyers to feast on.

Do not let one unfortunate event take away all the hard work you have committed to building your company. Take the necessary precautions to protect your company and your employees. Click here to request a quote for your company online.

One of the most difficult aspects of starting a new business is accurately projecting expenses. At BearWise Landscapers, we want to assist new landscaping ventures and provide you with the information you need to make appropriate business decisions regarding insurance.

For a new landscaping business with one owner and no employees, we recommend that the business carries three insurance coverages: general liability, commercial auto, and an equipment floater.

1. General Liability: This policy provides protection to your business from many types of lawsuits. We recommend that you obtain limits of $1,000,000 for each occurrence and $2,000,000 for the policy period. For lawn maintenance companies, your premium for this coverage will be around 450 dollars for the year and if you install landscapes, your premium will be slightly higher at around 650 dollars. Depending on your business model and other variables, we have several insurance carriers that might be able to offer lower premiums.

2. Commercial Auto: This policy provides protection for your vehicles and the liability arising out of their use. It is important to move the vehicles you use for your business to a commercial auto policy instead of a personal auto policy. We recommend a limit on this coverage to be $1,000,000 combined single limit, and for new landscapers wishing to save money, we recommend that you should not go below $500,000 combined single limit. For a landscaper with one driver, one truck worth around 10,000 dollars, and one trailer worth around 5,000 dollars, the premium will range depending on your radius of operations and driving record. If you have no points on your license, you are looking at a premium in the ballpark of 1,500 dollars to 3,000 dollars depending on all those variables. We have many insurance carriers we use for these policies, but have been very pleased with Progressive Auto’s rates and service for landscapers with under 5 vehicles.

3. Equipment Floater: This policy provides protection for your equipment against a variety of exposures with the highest threat being theft. Lawn mowing equipment and landscape installation equipment can be very expensive for a new business and you want to make sure this equipment is protected. For a new landscaper with 10,000 to 20,000 worth of equipment, you can expect a premium on this coverage in the range of 150 dollars to 400 dollars. We often package this coverage in with the general liability insurance policy, but we can also write it by itself through a few insurance carriers.

With these three insurance coverages, your new landscaping business will have the protection it needs to avoid the losses that would otherwise end your landscaping career. For more information or to receive final quotes when you launch your new business, please contact us or complete the online quote request form. We enjoy working with new landscapers and look forward to being your insurance advisor as your business grows over time.