Insurance for Lawn Care Business

If you’re starting at lawn care business you will need insurance to cover yourself, your equipment, damage that you might cause to customers property and your employees. If you decide to run the business just by using your own personal labor evaluate the risks. Not hiring anyone else reduces the risk of not having any kind of insurance coverage. However if you cause some damage to someone’s property there’s a good chance you’ll have to pay for it. If you are not incorporated, you also put your personal assets at risk as well.

The  insurance that you will need to consider will include liability insurance, disability insurance, optional equipment insurance and healthcare insurance. Healthcare is required for your employees in case they get hurt or injured on the job. All of this insurance can be expensive. Some serious decisions must be made regarding how you will proceed with your business. It basically must generate enough cash to pay for all of this increased expense.

The amount that your insurance is going to cost will be substantial. You will have to generate sufficient business to pay for the insurance. This is in addition to all of your other expenses.

Evaluate Your Insurance for Lawn Care Business Options

The first step  is to get several quotes and go through the details very carefully to make sure that the quotes are providing you with the same kind of insurance. You then want to evaluate the risk that you’re taking of  not having insurance and also how much the deductible will be if you decide to take a higher deductible to lower your overall insurance costs.

In addition to deductibles, equipment items such as lawn mowers and other miscellaneous equipment should really be excluded since the replacement cost will likely be below your deductible. Major items such as trucks and trailers will already have insurance just to get them on the road. If you have major pieces of equipment such as tractors and other equipment, you must decide if it is worth having insurance on these items vs. self insuring them.

Liability insurance is probably the single largest item and most important. This insurance would cover any damages that you might cause to a clients property. Again the larger the deductible, the lower your payments for insurance are going to be. Basic decisions here will determine your overall costs of the insurance and also prevent your company from going bankrupt by a claim against your company for damages.

Health Care Costs

Consider Healthcare costs. Finding and paying for a reasonably price healthcare package is pretty difficult. Many business owners will hire employees with no benefits provided. However there is still is your family and your own personal coverage to consider. You may decide to funnel your own health care benefit through your company. Charge it as an expense. Write this expense off against your income. Check with an accountant before proceeding with this step.

This is an important business decision that you must consider to protect yourself and your business. If you’re not incorporated also your home and family. Give it some thought and discuss the issue with your colleagues and partners in your business.