There are many different kinds of insurance you can get for a business. Not all companies will need every insurance variety. It’s probably best, if you’re starting a company, to talk to an insurance broker about the kinds you’re most likely to need.
You probably already know you’ll need things like general liability insurance and commercial property insurance. Commercial car insurance is one that you might not normally think about, but it can certainly come in handy as well.
Let’s take a moment and discuss the reasons why your company might need to invest in commercial auto insurance.
What Exactly Does Commercial Auto Insurance Cover?
There are tons of different vehicles on the road and you have no way to tell who is driving them. Some drivers might not have the insurance they need. If they hit one of your company’s vehicles, getting the driver to pay for the damages will be challenging.
There are motorcycle accident lawyers who specialize in commercial truck accidents, and so forth. If you do have to bring a lawsuit against another driver because they don’t have insurance, it’s helpful to have a commercial car insurance policy in place that protects you.
The typical commercial car insurance policy will cover collision. That means, if you hit an object such as another car, or an inanimate object like a tree or mailbox, the policy protects. This way, you will not pay for the damaged work vehicle out of your pocket, and you can fix it faster.
What Else Does a Commercial Car Insurance Policy Include?
You need more than just collision for your work vehicles though. That’s why these policies also usually include comprehensive coverage.
Comprehensive coverage handles things like theft, falling tree branches, or vandalism. If you ever leave your work vehicles in a parking lot or on the street at night, you will feel a lot safer knowing that you’re covered if something damages your vehicles where you have parked them.
You also get coverage under the policies for when you are loading and unloading the vehicles. This is a time when your workers may be moving heavy equipment.
It’s easy to imagine that they might injure themselves or a bystander. Your coverage will handle those expenses as well if a problem ever arises during loading and/or unloading.
Medical Coverage and Uninsured Motorist
These policies generally also cover workers if they’re driving one of your company vehicles and a collision injures them. Your drivers will be a lot more willing to drive for you if they know the policy will pay for their medical care if there is a mishap while they’re on the road.
Earlier, we mentioned how you might have to contact a lawyer to sue an uninsured driver who hits one of your vehicles. Your policy also covers uninsured individuals, though. This way, you’ll never have to fear a driver who hits one of your company cars or trucks and doesn’t have the money to pay for the damaged vehicle or your employee’s medical bills.
Why Else Do You Need Commercial Car Insurance?
You should also know that commercial car insurance is good for businesses of all sizes. You might feel like a smaller business does not need it, but frequently, it’s the smaller companies that need it the most.
That’s because if one of your drivers does get in an accident, it can bankrupt the company if you lose a court case and you didn’t have commercial car insurance in place to protect you. If your driver caused the accident, you will be glad you had that insurance policy set up beforehand.
Small businesses have so many expenses, and attaining balance can be difficult, especially early on. Can you imagine what it might be like to lose the company because you have to pay in a civil lawsuit if one of your workers caused a car accident and injured someone or multiple people? You would have to shut down the business you love.
Can You Afford It?
Like most insurance policies, the average business should be able to afford the monthly cost. It should not be prohibitively expensive. Also, you can write off that money, just as you can for most other business-related insurance policies.
This policy protects you from the unexpected. That could be a jaywalking citizen who decides they will sue your company even if your driver did nothing wrong. It could be a tree that falls over and crushes one of your trucks where you parked it in your parking lot.
Life throws the unexpected at you all the time, and that happens with businesses just as much as in your personal life. These car insurance policies are like the armor your company wears that will repel a potential disaster.
Minimizing risk is something that you should know to do before you open your business, not after. You should not think you can get away with not having this type of insurance or that you can get it a few months after you open your company when you have some profit coming in.
That’s a dangerous way to think since the unexpected can occur anytime. It’s best that you have this policy in place before you ever open your business, rather than sometime afterward when you have more money available.
If you talk to various insurance companies, you can often find one that will offer you commercial auto insurance along with some of the other kinds you need. If you can bundle multiple insurance varieties, that should serve you well since these companies often offer a discount if you buy several policies from them at the same time.
Once you have this policy in place, you can open your business’s doors confidently and start trying to gain ground in your niche. With your automotive needs taken care of, the sky is the limit for your business endeavor.
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