If you own a garage business in Kentucky, whether it’s part of your new or used dealership operations, you’re a service mechanic, body shop, transmission, or anything similar then you have at least one thing in common—you work on and fix other people’s cars. There are several different insurance coverages you need to protect you and your business financially and the reputation you’ve built. For this video, we’re going to talk about Garagekeepers Insurance.
One area of insurance we focus specifically on is insuring garage and dealership operations. From one-man shops to large franchise dealerships, we’ve built insurance programs for each level of your business.
What is Garagekeepers Insurance?
So…what is Garagekeepers coverage? This is different and a separate coverage from your garage liability coverage. Garagekeepers coverage is for garage businesses that work on other people’s cars meaning cars that don’t belong to you.
What Does It Cover?
On a basic level, it is coverage you get to protect against physical damage to vehicles you are working on, that are stored on your lot, your garage, etc., that are not yours. There are different versions of this coverage, specifically legal liability or direct primary coverage which we discuss in a different video.
If a vehicle is on your lot, or locked in your garage overnight, and they get damaged, this policy can provide you with that protection, and a covered claim with pay to repair those vehicles. The most common claims are fire, weather such as wind/hail, theft, vandalism, or you or one of your employees have a wreck in it.
Let’s go over a couple of claim examples:
- A fire destroys your garage in turn destroying the customer’s cars there were inside
- Someone breaks into your garage overnight and steals a customer’s vehicle
This coverage can pay to replace those cars.
What Does Garagekeepers Insurance NOT Cover?
It’s almost important to talk about what garagekeepers insurance does NOT do.
You, or your employees, fixed a customer’s car and, like you always do, you take it for a test drive to make sure everything is good to go before you call the customer to let them know their car is ready, right? Except for this time, you, unfortunately, didn’t see a car coming and pulled out in front of an oncoming car. Garagekeepers insurance will not pay to fix the car you pulled out in front of OR their hospital bills. Remember, this is only for physical damage to your customer’s cars.
Another example—is your employee changes the oil on a customer’s car but doesn’t put the cap back on well. The customer is driving down the road and their engine locks up. Garagekeepers insurance will not cover if a customer says you did faulty or bad work.
Another common question we see with this…say a customer leaves an iPad in their car while it’s in on your lot, and the iPad gets stolen or damaged. This coverage will not pay to replace that iPad. It does not protect the personal items of a customer they leave inside their car.
You want happy customers. There are ways to cover these claim examples we’ve mentioned, but it’s important to remember what garagekeepers insurance covers versus what it does not cover.
Do you have a dealership or garage business and have more questions about your insurance program? Give us a call, can email me at asheridan@rbisomerset.com, or visit our YouTube Channel. On there you’ll find more information and videos just like this one to help answer any questions you have. We look forward to working with you.
