What effect does your choice of driver have on your premiums?

Who drives your trucks can have a profound effect on your premiums. The reliability of your driver probably determines the likelihood of an accident more than any other factor. If you want to minimize your premiums it’s essential to show commercial truck insurers you have drivers that are well experienced, and that have totally clean driving records and professional qualifications like a commercial driver’s license.

What effect do your vehicles have on your premiums?

The vehicles you operate do indeed affect the cost of your premiums. Vehicles that are relatively new, a well regarded and reliable model, and are regularly well maintained incur far lower premiums than cheap, old vehicles in a poor state of repair. You can lower your premiums further by installing extra safety features like reinforced plating, anti-theft devices, air bags, etc.

What is another way you can lower your premiums?

The other crucial way to lower your premiums is to work out a good deal with your insurance agent. Finding a good insurance agent is a matter of thorough research; look around online and see what people are saying about potential candidates. Go for someone with a good buzz about them; sometimes it’s best to avoid brand new agencies because their reliability hasn’t been tested.

Once you’ve found a good agency try to negotiate a good deal by purchasing coverage for many vehicles at once, combine your commercial vehicle insurance with insurance for your personal vehicle, or try paying your premiums up front for a long period.

Hello. I’m Ron Philleo with Philleo Agency Insurance, and welcome to philleo.com. Do you own a tanning salon, or do you have tanning operations as part of a larger business model, such as a fitness center or beauty salon? We can help you insure where others may not want to look at that exposure that you have. Tanning salons are a specialized type business. Many carriers are not comfortable with the exposure that comes along with insuring tanning salons. Here at Philleo Agency, we are very comfortable with it, and we insure many businesses that have tanning operations.

Some of the unique situations and coverages to tanning salons we are very familiar with. And again, we can do a stand-alone tanning salon, or we can do a larger business where the tanning is incidental to other operations in the business. We can insure the property, the beds themselves. We can insure your liability, in case somebody gets injured on the premises or gets injured due to the operations.

So as far as your tanning operations go, give us a call if you need help with that. If you have questions on that, more than happy to take a look at this, provide quotes and coverage recommendations for you. We will need some basic information about your operations and the tanning beds, the percentage of UV and so on, but with a few simple questions, we can have quotes and recommendations for you in a very short period of time.

Call us here at the Philleo Agency if you need help with your tanning salon insurance needs, and make sure to check out our other videos here at philleo.com.

Landscapers and lawn maintenance companies also usually need commercial auto coverage. They have equipment they need to get to and from job sites and there’s trailers involved. A lot of times they add snow plows to the policies. Certainly, there’s a lot going on with that.

We’re very familiar with commercial auto policies and we can help you what the coverages are that you need. Whether it just be a basic truck to get to and from the job locations, or heavy duty trucks, hauling, and trailers, and snow plowing, we can help you with all of those under the commercial auto need.

The next coverage that is very important to boat owners is the physical damage coverage. The damage for the boat itself, in case it’s damaged in a fire or a theft or a sinking or a collision, hail damage, those types of things, that’s what the physical damage coverage will protect you against.

Now, first what we need to do is determine the value of the boat itself. The boat, the motor, the trailer–that’s considered a package. And a good agent should be able to help you determine the value of your boat. Once the value’s been determined, then you decide on your deductible. The higher deductible you take, the lower your premium will be. But remember, you’re responsible for the deductible portion at the time of a claim.

So we have liability coverage and the physical damage coverage. There’s also coverages for added-on personal equipment. If you leave a lot of equipment on your boat or if you’ve added additional equipment to your boat, you’re going to want to make sure you protect against that as well. And a good independent agent should be able to help you discuss that and decide what coverages are going to be best for you.

There’s several other coverages involved with boating as well, some of them you may or may not need, and there’s other determinations on types of boats and what the boat is used for that will determine on how much you pay for a boat-insurance policy. If you need help with that, here at the Philleo Agency, we do a lot of boat insurance. We’re very familiar with that, and we’d be more than happy to help you. Give us a call here at the Philleo Agency if you need help with your boat insurance, and make sure to check out our other videos here at philleo.com. Thanks for watching.

The next thing is, you may want to consider a liquor liability. This will protect you in case liquor is maybe administered incorrectly, and a lawsuit results in something like that, depending on the laws in your state, some states you’re more prone to carry it than other states.

The next coverage that you want to look at is your property coverage. Do you own the building you are in, or do you rent the building? If you own the building, then obviously we’ll need to insure the building. If you rent a lot of times an owner of a bar or restaurant will build out the interior so you want to cover that you’re responsible for building out.

Also there is some specialized equipment that go with taverns and bars and restaurants such as compressors and coolers. We want to make sure we add on a coverage called equipment breakdown coverage. So, if you get a power surge and it blows out the compressors, that insurance will be able to cover that for you and get you back up and running again soon.

There’s many other coverages that go along with bars and restaurants such as employment issues, and all those other items that come alone with running a business. Business income coverage in case, let’s say, there’s a fire and you can’t operate your business until it’s rebuilt.

Here at Philleo Agency we are very familiar with insuring bars, taverns and restaurants. If you need help with your coverage, we’re more than happy to do that for you. We’ll supply quotes and coverage recommendations for you. Give us a call here we’ll be happy to discuss your needs for any bars, restaurants or taverns that you need help with, and thanks for watching this video, and make sure you check out our videos at Philleo.com.

One of the first things you need to be aware of is liability coverage. Liability is what is going to protect you in case you injure somebody or damage something during the course of your business activities. You want to make sure you have liability coverage for your contracting business.

The other type of coverage you want to have is property coverage. Property coverage can be–a broad definition of it–it can be your tools and your equipment. It could be equipment that you rent; rented tools and equipment. It could be a building that you own. Talk with your agent. Let him know what type of equipment, what type property you have to insure.

There are also coverages that you may or may not need. You may need business vehicle insurance. That’s going to cover you in case you have vehicles on the road and they injure somebody or they damage other people’s property. You may need coverage if your employees are using their own vehicles. You may want to add a coverage called hired and non-owned auto coverage, and that’s an extension of liability protection to protect you while your employees are using their own vehicles.

You also may need work comp insurance. You may be required to carry it under the state that you’re in. Work comp insurance protects your employees if they’re injured on the job. There’s a variety of other coverages; a lot of specialized coverages for contractors. We recommend that you talk with an independent agent. They can assess your situation and make recommendations and shop around for you. We at the Philleo agency can do all those for you as well.

If you’re a contractor, give us a call. We’d love to talk to you about your business. Thanks for watching this video and make sure to check out our other videos at Philleo.com.

We recommend doing that, but one of the things I want to remind you to do, is to update your jewelry list. If you do have your jewelry scheduled, or even if you don’t, now is a great time to review that because the price of gold has gone way up and the price of silver has gone way up.

We recently had a client who lost an expensive gold bracelet. He has not updated his jewelry list in years. Considering the bracelet was almost all gold, the value had changed dramatically from when he insured it several years ago to what it would cost to replace that item of jewelry today. Now since he only had it insured for a set dollar figure, that’s all he can collect under his insurance policy.

So again, we want to remind you to call your agent. If you don’t have your jewelry scheduled, get it scheduled. If you already have your jewelry insured, now is the time to talk to your jeweler, get a new appraisal, and make sure you have the correct values on that. Now, gold may change again in value, so you’ve got to keep an eye on this. If the values go up or down, you want to adjust those, too. You don’t want to pay for more insurance than you need, but you obviously don’t want to pay for less insurance than you need, too. Update those jewelry lists for your gold and silver pieces.

If you’ve had an auto accident, the first thing you need to do is render aid to anybody that’s injured. If you can physically help them yourselves, great; if not, call 911 and try to get them help as soon as possible if injuries occurred.

If there’s no injuries involved, then what you want to do is call the police if the accident took place on a public road, and it’s a substantial accident. If it’s a little bit more than a fender bender, you want to make sure the police are involved. If it’s a smaller accident or took place in a parking lot, those types of things, you can usually handle it on your own.

Either way, the step that you want to take next is to start gathering information and exchange information. The information exchange is very important after an auto accident in order to help the claim go smoothly. You want to get the information from the other party: their name, their address, their license plate number, their driver’s license number, and all of their contact information. You want to do that with everybody involved in the accident if there’s several parties involved.

The next thing you want to do is get witnesses, if there’s somebody that saw the accident but wasn’t involved. Whether they are in another vehicle or a bystander, you definitely want to get their information because they will be invaluable — especially if you were not at fault in this accident – to help your case and let everybody know what they saw.

The other thing that’s very important to remember is: do not admit fault at the scene. Even if you think you are at fault, do not admit fault. You want to talk with your insurance carrier first, and let them straighten it out. Admitting fault on the scene can make it very difficult down the road if perhaps you want to file a claim with another carrier or if something wasn’t quite the way it may have appeared and you’ve already admitted fault. So don’t admit that.

The next thing you want to do is contact your carrier as soon as possible, because they’ll help you walk through the claim and help you start to file the auto claim. If you’re interested in seeing how to file an insurance claim, watch our other video on “how to file an auto insurance claim.”

I’m Ron Philleo with Philleo Agency Insurance. Thanks for visiting philleo.com. Make sure to check out our other videos.

If you have a snow plow business, there are basically two ways we can operate. One of them is, I have a snow plow on my vehicle, I only plow for myself and my own properties and I’m not plowing for anybody else for money.

Under your typical commercial auto policy and a lot of times under a personal auto policy you do not need to do anything or add any coverage. Your liability is going to extend to your vehicle as long as you’re not plowing for money.

Let’s talk about the snow plow business that is plowing for money and going out and doing jobs for hire and for other people.

Very important, your personal auto policy most likely is going to exclude those types of activities. You are going to want to have a commercial policy that covers you for snow plowing operations.

There are a couple ends to it. We want to cover the truck for liability in case you injure somebody or damage someone’s property. This is the most important part of the policy for a snow plow company.

If you damage other property or injure somebody your liability is going to pick that up. Make sure you care carrying enough liability coverage. A good independent agent can help you figure out how much coverage you need.

The next thing is, do you need coverage for the truck and the plow itself? If it’s a newer vehicle and a newer plow setup those can get very expensive to replace. So if they are damaged or stolen you want to make sure that the insurance company would reimburse you for that.

That coverage would come under physical damage coverage. It is also sometimes separated out as collision and comprehensive coverage under the auto policy.

Talk with your agent about that. It’s usually based on the value of the equipment and the truck. But very important, if you want coverage for that you have to request that.

The other thing with this is hired and non-owned auto coverage. If you have a snow plow business and there are other people out plowing for you on your behalf using their own trucks, make sure you add a coverage called Hired. That is for vehicles that you hire and non-owned vehicles. That is for vehicles that you do not own that the liability from your policy extends to the operations for people that you hire.

Being from Wisconsin, we are very familiar with snow plow insurance. If you need help in covering your plow operations many times it is a landscape operation and then in winter they plow. We are very familiar with these types of operations, and we can help you with your coverage. Talk to a good independent agent. They can also help you as well.

So you had an “at fault” auto accident, and now you need to get the collision damage repaired. There are a few things you want to do. First of all, contact your carrier right away. They’re going to need to talk to you. They want to get a statement from you, what happened in the accident and find out all the details. If there’s another vehicle at fault, they’ll need that party’s information as well.

The next thing to do is to assess the damage. How much damage did the car get? Either the insurance adjuster from your insurance company can come out and take a look at the vehicle and let you know how much damage it is, or you can go and get an estimate. Sometimes there’s an in between area that you can kind of do where the insurance company has a preferred shop and that preferred shop can actually do the estimate for you and they can repair the vehicle right there for you, as well. So check with your carrier and find out if you need to talk to an adjuster or if you need to get an estimate from an auto body shop or if there’s a preferred shop you can work with through your insurance carrier.

And remember that if you have rental reimbursement on your vehicle policy that you can get a rental vehicle and the insurance company will pay for that. If you opted to purchase that coverage ahead of time, that’s what it does cover, rental reimbursement. If you do not have that coverage, you can arrange with an auto body shop to get a rental vehicle. Some of them provide free cars, some of them you have to pay an additional fee for.

So you want to make sure that you contact your carrier, get some estimates, and then get the vehicle repaired. If you have a deductible on your policy, typically a five hundred dollar or a thousand dollar deductible is very typical on a collision coverage, talk to you carrier and make sure you found out what deductible that is. You’ll be responsible for paying that deductible portion when you pick up your vehicle.

An instance would be: let’s say you have three thousand dollars worth of damage and you have a five hundred dollar deductible. The insurance company would write a check for twenty five hundred dollars. It would be three thousand, and they would deduct the five hundred dollars off of there. Your portion would be the five hundred dollars when you go to pick up the vehicle. So talk to the insurance carrier about that, make sure you know what your deductible is so that you can plan for that when you do pick up your vehicle.

Thanks for watching philleo.com, and make sure to check out our other videos at philleo.com.