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.

Collapse of the building – if the building collapses due to wind or something like that, the builders risk coverage again will provide coverage for that. Fire – fire is a real common cause of loss while buildings are under construction. Again, builders risk covers that. If you’re building a commercial building many times the builder that you hire will include the builders risk coverage underneath his policy and add it to the bid and you pay for it that way or else you can purchase it on your own.

There are several companies that write builders risk coverage just by itself for commercial project. We certainly can help you with that here at our agency. On a homeowners policy, the way builders risk coverage is typically purchased is that you buy a homeowners policy and then you add an endorsement on for builders risk coverage. Sometimes insurance companies charge a flat fee for this. Sometimes they charge based on how big the completed value of the structure is going to be. So sometimes it’s a sliding scale, sometimes it’s just a flat charge.

But you want to make sure you have this added if you are building at your home or if you’re adding on, your policy may not cover additions so you may want to add the builders risk coverage to cover the period during construction.

If you have questions about builders risk or you’d like to talk to us about what the cost may be, whether it be a commercial project or residential, feel free to call us. You can reach us here at the Philleo agency and through Philleo.com.

I want to talk to you today about a coverage that is very important. It’s called hired and non-owned auto coverage. It typically gets attached to either a commercial business policy or commercial auto policy. What’s this coverage do? Well, this coverage is very important. It protects you in case somebody is using their own vehicle and has an accident, while working on behalf of you.

A great example of this or a common example of this would be, let’s say you have an employee and they go to run an errand for you. Whether it be from a job site to go pick something up at a supplier, or whether it be an office worker that goes out to pick up lunch or go to the post office or pick up office supplies, these are great examples of what hired and non-owned auto coverage can do for you. That person is out on the road. They’re using their own vehicle, not a company car, and they have an accident while they’re working on behalf of you. Most likely they’re going to get named in a lawsuit if someone’s injured or property is damaged. And most likely you’re going to get named as the business owner.

How do you protect yourself against that? There’s a coverage that you can add to your commercial policy. It’s called hired and non-owned autos, and it protects you against that. It’s not a very expensive coverage. You can add it to either a commercial auto policy, or if you don’t have commercial autos, let’s say you don’t have any vehicles out on the road for your business, you can add it right to your business owner’s policy. We highly recommend this. I meet with many business owners, and I do not see this coverage on so many policies, and it can be devastating if you don’t have this and one of these accidents occurs.

To add this, again, it’s not a very expensive option. I really encourage you to put that on your policy if you ever have anybody that might run an errand on your behalf or might be in their vehicle working on your behalf. We can explain more about hired and non-owned auto coverage. Feel free to give us a call or sent us an email from Philleo.com.

Hello. I’m Ron Philleo with Philleo Agency Insurance. There’s lots of different types of business liability coverages. Today I’m going to go into some of the most common coverages, and check our website for future videos because we’ll go into more detail with some of these coverages I’m going to mention in future videos.

The most common one is general liability coverage. General liability is just that. It’s very general. It covers if people get injured because of your business activities or if you damage property due to your business activities. It’s a real important coverage. You want to make sure that’s on your policy.

There’s auto liability coverages. If you have vehicles out on the road or even if people are working on behalf of you and using their own vehicles, you want to make sure you have auto liability coverage or even an additional coverage called “higher denominal auto coverage.” Check our website because I’m going to go into more detail with higher denominal auto coverage on future videos.

There’s also errors and omissions coverage. That’s like a malpractice type policy. So, if you give someone some bad advice or you fail to do something that you were supposed to do and you get sued for an error or omission of your work, that protects you against that. That’s under the category of professional liability or malpractice type insurance.

There’s also work comp insurance. That’s coverage for if your employee gets injured on the job while they’re working on behalf on your business. Your workman’s compensation coverage covers that. We’re going to go into more details on work comp videos. So, check that as well.

There’s also product liability coverage. Product liability is your product fails to perform if somebody gets injured or a property is damaged in the result. Product liability will cover you with that.

There’s lots of different types of insurance. Make sure you talk to your agent or give us a call. I’d be happy to talk to you about your business and determine what coverages are right for your business.

But, make sure you talk to an agent that knows what they’re doing with business insurance because the coverages are very specialized and you don’t want to be left without the right coverage. After a claim, it’s just too late to add it.

Workman’s compensation insurance. You’ve heard me mention it before. I’m sure you’ve heard lots of people mention it before. I’m going to explain briefly what work comp insurance is, give you a brief overview of it and we’re all going to do additional videos on how you generate the premium for work comp, or how the premium is calculated.

But, to start off, with work comp insurance covers your employees in case they’re injured on the job. So, while they’re working on behalf of you, the employer, if your employees are injured while at your office, at a job location, or perhaps they’re traveling. The point is, if they’re injured while they’re working for you, the employer, they’re covered.

Now, states require this coverage. There’s a mandatory coverage usually called “statutory limits.” Those limits are the minimum insurance required for each state. Talk with your insurance agent. They can let you know what those are.

The point is, though, without this coverage, you will get fined by the state if you have employees who are working without work comp insurance. Or worse yet, if one of your employees gets injured and you don’t have work comp insurance, you can be sued. That’s going to be a big issue if you don’t have the right coverage.

Now keep in mind, as an employer you don’t have to carry work comp on yourself. So, you can save some money there. Many employers actually opt out of the work comp coverage for themselves because they may have coverage through a health plan or some other way to provide for their injuries in case they’re injured while on the job. So, keep that in mind that you don’t need that necessarily if you are the employer.

We’re going to do an additional video on how the work comp premiums are calculated. So, take a look at our Website at Philleo.com to see that additional video.

But again, work comp insurance is designed to protect the employees, paid for by the employer, very important. Have it or the state is going to fine you.

So, you understand you need to have Worker’s Comp Insurance because you viewed our video on Worker’s Comp Insurance.

Now, the biggest question to you is, “How much is this going to cost me and my business?” Well, Work Comp is not like a generic policy where you just go out and you buy a policy for Work Comp.

Work Comp is specifically rated and there’s two factors that go into rating it. The first one is what kind of work are your people doing? Someone that’s working inside of an office has a very, very low hazardous job. Someone that is a steel worker, trimming trees, putting on roofs, those are all very high hazardous jobs and the chance for those people to get injured are much more than, let’s say, the office worker.

So, the rate for those types of jobs is going to be much more expensive than an office worker. So, the first thing is what type of job they’re doing. That’s called the “classification” and there’s different codes for every job. Your agent should be able to help you find the appropriate code for your business.

The next thing that Work Comp is based off of, it’s based on payroll. The higher your payroll, the higher your Work Comp. Work Comp goes, it’s based on every $100 of payroll you have, they assign a figure to that and that’s how much they charge you for Work Comp.

When I say “they”, I mean state. The state sets the rate on this. So, it doesn’t matter which insurance company you go to because the rates are going to be the same with every single company. The insurance companies just administer the program.

So, how much is your payroll and what type of work are they doing? Those are the classifications that are going to matter to how much you pay. Now, an agent should be able to help you determine the appropriate classification and then help you get a rate on that.

A couple of quick things on which company you choose. If your payroll is large enough and your premiums are high enough, you may be eligible for what’s known as an “experience modification.”

So, if your losses are better or worse than the average of people in that classification, you may get a lower rate or you might get a more expensive rate depending on your experience.

Experience modification is only assigned after a company has been in business for several years and they have developed a track record.

The next thing is being able to get a dividend. Some insurance companies will give you money back from your Work Comp policy if you didn’t have a claim or if you didn’t have many claims. Those are called dividend.

Again, if your account is large enough, the insurance company may offer you a dividend. A good insurance agent will talk to you about that and incorporate that with the rest of your business insurance.

Usually, the best way to do that is make sure your Worker’s Comp insurance is with the same carrier that you have the rest of your business insurance with.

A coverage that is often overlooked when a commercial insurance policy is being put together is business income coverage or business continuation coverage.

What this coverage does for the client is it protects them in the event of a disaster where they are put out of business. It will give them an income stream to continue their operations in the meantime until they can get back on their feet.

An example might be fire at your office or at your shop location or a tornado, and it puts you out of business. Obviously you can’t service your clients during a period when your business has been destroyed.

So what the business income coverage does is it will give you money to replace those expenses and pay the employees and get back up and running so you have some money there in the meantime.

There is also an additional coverage that goes with business income coverage called Extra Expense. Extra Expense will pay for the additional things you normally wouldn’t need during this period of restoration. If you have to lease additional space perhaps, or perhaps additional vehicles, this will pay for that extra cost that you incur while you are getting your business restored and back to normal.

There are two ways you can go about this, too. There is a stated amount of coverage where you have X amount of dollars for X amount of months and then your coverage expires, or you can go with actual loss sustained.

Actual lost sustained is the way we prefer to do it. It gives you your actual losses on income, and it goes typically for one year or 12 months after the date of the occurrence that caused the damage.

We prefer the actual loss sustained, but sometimes we do need to go with the stated value depending on the type of policies and products that we are using. Typically you will be asked to offer proof of income and profit and loss statements or tax statements in order to verify what your income was prior to the loss. The insurance company claim reps will work with you and help you come to the figures that are correct for your business income or your business continuation coverage.

It is a very important coverage. Do not accept a commercial policy that does not include this. Most of them do include this. Some of them need to be added on there. But make sure you have this. Without this coverage, and a disaster strikes, you certainly can be put out of business.

If you have any questions, feel free to call our agency, and make sure to browse the other videos on Philleo.com.

Thanks for visiting.

Hello. I’m Ron Philleo with Philleo Agency Insurance. Insuring a commercial building can be difficult. Today I’ll go through a few items that’ll make it a little bit easier for you. The first thing we need to know is what kind of building did you buy? Is it an apartment building? Is it an office complex? Is it a restaurant? Some buildings combine a little bit of everything; those are known as mixed-use buildings. So we’ll need to know what kind of building you bought and what the occupancies are going to be.

The next thing we need to determine is what should we insure that building for? Typically, we insure for replacement coverage. Replacement coverage is coverage that, if the building is destroyed, whether it be a fire or a tornado or something like that, they will be able to replace the building. That’s usually the best coverage.

The next coverage you could also go with, an alternative coverage, is known as actual cash value. That’s a depreciated coverage. We usually don’t recommended that, but in some circumstances it may be necessary. So, replacement coverage is usually the way to go, though.

The next thing we need to determine is, is this an owner-occupied building, or are you going to be leasing it out? Or maybe there’s a mix of both. Maybe you’ll be there and there will be tenants as well.

If you have tenants in the building, we want to make sure we have loss-of-rent coverage or loss-of-income coverage. This will help you if, let’s say the building is damaged due to a claim. We’ll pay for the loss of income that you endure during the period that the places can’t be occupied, until it’s rebuild. So that’s very important. Make sure you have loss-of-rent or loss-of-income coverage.

The next coverage is liability. Liability is so important. In a commercial building, there’s a lot of activity, typically. Someone can slip and fall. Make sure you carry — we recommend — at least a million dollars of liability coverage, in case something happens or somebody gets injured at your commercial building.

You also want to make sure that any built-in items on the building–there might be coolers that are built-in, or there might be features of the building that are built-in–you want to take those into account with your replacement coverage as well. A good independent agent will be able to come out, survey the building with you, talk about the features, talk about what’s going on, all the occupancies, and determine the correct policy for you. Again, we recommend using an independent agent because they’re going to have more resources and be able to shop around for you and make sure you’re getting the best deal.

I’m Ron Philleo with Philleo Agency Insurance. Make sure to check out our other videos.