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.

Now, snowmobile insurance, the biggest thing you want to protect yourself against is liability coverage. That’s if you injure somebody or if your actions cause somebody else to be injured or if you damage someone’s property under the course of riding your snowmobile. You’re going to want to carry liability insurance.

There are different levels of coverage you can buy. Typically it starts at 50,000 and goes up. If you have an umbrella policy, you can add a snowmobile under your umbrella policy to give you upwards of a million dollars of liability coverage. But again, you want to make sure you have liability coverage.

You also have the option to purchase uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. That covers you in case somebody hits you while you’re riding your snowmobile, and they don’t have any insurance or not enough insurance to cover your injuries. You can talk to your agent about that or you can talk to us here at Philleo Agency as well.

There’s a couple of other coverages that you may want to add to your snowmobile too. And they fall under the headline of physical damage, physical damage for the sled itself. It would cover if the vehicle is damaged while you’re riding it. It can cover it while it’s in storage. So if you have it stored in a garage and there’s a fire there, or a theft.

So physical damage is going to be a wide array of coverages. It could be damaged while it’s being towed, if you’re taking the sled from one place to another and it’s damaged. Again, physical damage is what’s going to protect you on that.

Typically you select a deductible, anyway from 250 all the way up to a $1,000 is common, and the higher deductible you take, the lower your rate will be. You do not have to have the physical damage coverage on your snowmobile policy. You can get a basic policy with liability only and that will protect you as well when you’re riding, but make sure you have the minimum policy of liability coverage when you’re out riding. You have to have that to protect yourself.

Again, being from Wisconsin we’re very familiar with snowmobile coverage. If you’d like to learn more about snowmobile coverage or your particular situation, what the cost may be, or how to protect yourself best, just give us a call here at the Philleo Agency, or you can reach us through Philleo.com.

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.

“How much home insurance should I buy?” It’s a common question. There’s several different ways to look at this.

If you want to insure for what is known as “replacement coverage,” you need to keep in mind several different things. The biggest thing is: “how much is it going to cost me to rebuild this home or this building if there’s a total loss?” Your insurance agent can help you determine that: what’s known as cost estimates for construction. What we take into account is square footage, features of the home, site locations, and there’s a couple other items that we take into account, but those are the largest ones. What you want to do is you want to work with your agent, give them as much information about the home as possible so they can come up with an idea of what it cost to rebuild this home if there’s a total loss, fire, tornado, whatever.

There’s some other ways to go about it, too. If you go with a policy known as “actual cash value,” you’re basically insuring for what the building’s actually worth and claims will be paid on a depreciated value. That is a less preferred way than replacement. Replacement is always the way to go if you can get that coverage. It’s a little bit more expensive usually, but it’s usually worth it, because there’s no depreciation involved when the claim time comes.

A common people mistake make when they’re insuring their home is they think the assessed value or what they purchased the home for. Those are completely different things. With the insurance, we’re concerned about what it cost to rebuild the home. The assessed value is basically a fair market value. What you purchased the home. It was the purchase price. Those are different things than what the reconstruction costs are and that’s what you want to go off of. A good agent should be able to help you develop the cost of what it would cost to rebuild that home if there’s a total loss.

If you have any questions about how much insurance you need for your home, certainly you can feel free to call us here at Philleo Agency.

There are several different ways to insure items, whether it be buildings, your personal property, business property. Two of the most common ways are replacement coverage or actual cash value. I’m going to help you decide which one is right for you, and I’ll give you a little information on both.

Let’s start with actual cash value. Actual cash value is a depreciated value. It’s what the item is worth today. A good example would be most auto policies are settled on an actual cash value basis. Let’s say you buy a car for $30,000 and three years later it’s totaled up in an accident. Well, that car might only be worth $15,000 at that time. So they pay you the value of what it’s actually worth at the time of the loss. That would be an actual cash value settlement. It’s the value of the vehicle minus the depreciation or value of any item minus depreciation.

Replacement coverage is a little different. Replacement coverage is the preferred method of insuring buildings and business property and personal property. Most auto polices and boats and motorcycles are all set on an actual cash policy. Real estate and other policies are settled on replacement if possible. The way replacement works is you buy an item, and we give you the value of not what it’s worth when you bought it, not what it’s worth at the time of the loss, but what it costs to replace that item for you.

Whether it be rebuilding a home or whether it be replacing some personal property. So if you bought a TV and it was ten years old and maybe it was worth 50 bucks if you sold it, but to replace it maybe cost you $800, we’re going to give you the value for replacing the item if you have what’s known as replacement coverage on your property. It’s usually the preferred method to insure some item. Some items have to be settled on an actual cash value basis. Talk to your agent. They’ll help you decide which coverage is right for you, whether it be replacement or actual cash value, because there are some price differences and there are some requirements to meet for each coverage.

You know, sometimes the most basic concepts are the most important concepts. I wanted to talk to you about why you should have insurance. A lot of people ask that question, “What should I insure?”, or “Why should I have insurance?”

Well, let’s start with the most basic premise of what insurance is. Insurance is a tool to transfer risk. And typically, the risk you want to transfer is a risk you couldn’t afford to absorb yourself. Let’s say if you injure somebody in an auto accident, or if your home burns down to the ground.

Those would be very expensive items to have to pay for out of your own pocket. So what you do is, you transfer that risk to an insurance company. The insurance company sets a premium, you agree to pay for it, and if one of those occurrences takes place, then the insurance company will reimburse you for your loss.

That is the true point of insurance. Now many people sometimes start to insure for things they can afford to lose. And at that point, we try to advise our clients to maybe reevaluate their insurance needs and say, “Do you need to pay a premium for something that you can actually afford to pay for out of your own pocket?”

Now, no one ever wants to suffer a loss, but sometimes you are better off not insuring for a loss, and absorbing that yourself. In return, you get to keep the money for yourself, instead of paying a premium to an insurance company.

So what we do with our clients is, we evaluate their risk to see if they have a need to insure all of the items that they want to. Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but we want to make sure that we’re not wasting our money or insuring items that you can certainly afford to manage the risk yourself.

And that’s the true definition of insurance. Make sure you have an agent though, that can work with you regarding that. If you have any questions of what to insure, or how to insure it, you can always visit us here at Phileo Agency, or go to the website at phileo.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.