5 Most Important Types of Insurance for Your Lawn Mowing Business

5 Most Important Types of Insurance for Your Lawn Mowing Business.

When you start a lawn mowing business, Insurance is usually the last thing on your mind. However, the moment something happens is suddenly, front and foremost, in mind.

If you do not have insurance, then your business could fail overnight. 

When you start, you need insurance for your lawn mowing business. 

Imagine that you have lots of lawns and are working out daily. One day, while you are out the back of a customer’s house, your vehicle gets stolen, along with your trailer. 

Or even if there was an accident and your trailer got written off, along with all your machines. This has actually happened to me. I was parked at a set of lights when a trailer ran into my trailer from behind and completely demolished the trailer. 

Either way, if you did not have insurance, then you would need to be able to go out and rebuy everything. That would be more than painful. 

Insurance for starting.

When you think about it, insurance is not that expensive and having good insurance coverage will help you sleep better at night. Despite what people say, you do not need insurance for absolutely everything. Some things make good sense to cover yourself. 

There are two things to consider when taking out insurance for your lawn mowing business. 

• The known
• The unknown

What do I mean by that?

If your van is worth 10K, you might have that in the bank and be able to cover it. However, if your brakes failed and you hit a car worth 100k, the chances are you will not have that sitting in the bank.

The whole idea of insurance is to protect your business against unexpected events. 

You can self-insure the small stuff.

Sometimes with the minor stuff, it is not worth insuring. Since our excess is $500, we insure everything that is worth $1000 or more. It is simply not worth us insuring the small stuff. 

We have a fund of $1000 to cover any small losses. It allows us to replace small gear immediately and avoid claiming too much and increasing premiums. 

This can only go wrong if something happens to all your equipment simultaneously. However, our small machines are covered if they are in the vehicle or the shed under the vehicle and home insurance policies. The chances of losing all our gear on a job are remote enough for us to be comfortable with that risk anyway. 

Larger machinery

We ALWAYS insure the big stuff. Don’t leave that to chance. Where it’s not too difficult to dig up $1K if you need it, 10k is a whole different story. When you buy a piece of equipment for over a thousand dollars, let your insurance company know you have new gear. 

Vehicle

It is essential to have vehicle insurance. Even if you are starting and you’re driving an old Junker. As I said earlier, It is not just your vehicle you may have to replace. If you are dead against insuring your vehicle and you figure it’s just not worth it, at least get third-party insurance. This will at least cover your butt if you hit someone (or something) else. 

We also have a handy free window replacement for our vehicles. My wife never needs it, but I have lost three windows in the last couple of years. And those factory-tinted back windows on vans can get pretty pricey. 

Also, do be aware that if you are using your private vehicle in your business, you will need to let your insurance company know. If you have an accident with all your tools in the vehicle or have signwriting on your vehicle, it may make your policy invalid. 

Home insurance. 

Many insurance companies will cover your equipment when locked up at home if they know that you store your gear there. Just be honest with them from the start. 

A lot of insurance companies will accept everything you tell them without question when you take out a policy. They will only require you to prove what you told them was true in the event of a claim. This means that if you missed out on an important fact to save money on premiums, you might, in fact, be uninsured. 

Public liability insurance

This should have gone first on the list as it is one of the most important (and the cheapest) forms of insurance for your lawn mowing business. We have a couple of million dollars worth of public liability insurance, never claimed. 

It has only cost us a few hundred dollars a year, and I am glad we’ve got it because it removes the chances of us getting wiped out. Imagine if a spark from a mower catches a house on fire. This would be the end of your business. 

When I started my first business in the early eighties, I did car graphics. I had a friend with a whitewall business. He would jack up cars on car yards and put white stripes on the tires. 

One day he had a car jacked up on a yard in Western Springs. He didn’t engage the handbrake properly, and the call rolled off the jack and down the yard. Unfortunately, the yard was on a hill, and the car rolled off, hitting expensive European cars all the way down. I don’t know the total damage, but he wasn’t insured, and it wiped him out. 

I went out and bought public liability insurance the next day, and I’ve had it ever since. 

Income protection and health insurance. 

This is good insurance to have, but it is pricey. It also gets reviewed yearly, and the price increases (i wish we could do that with our lawns, lol). The older you get, the more expensive it becomes, and normally, by the time you hit fifty, it’s unaffordable. I think this is by design. 

Sometimes you can get insurance that ties income protection with some health insurance, but it does watch those conditions. Some of them require you to be off work for a month or more before they will pay out. 

If you were only looking at income protection insurance, you might be better off just having three months’ worth of income in an emergency account. 

Accident insurance. 

Here in New Zealand, they cover accidents using a government insurance plan called ACC. This is available for self-employed people and will cover a percentage of your income if you injure yourself and are off work. 

When you register for Acc, they will automatically start you off on a plan called CoverPlus. However, you can choose to go on a plan called CoverPlus Extra which will allow you to choose your coverage and lower the levies that you pay. We find this the best option for our lawn mowing business. 

Finding a broker

When looking for insurance for your lawn mowing business, don’t go with the first company that you find. Compare prices and offerings. Business insurance can be extremely complicated, so I recommend you find a good Insurance broker. 

A good broker can compare apples with apples and get you the best overall deal. We have been using a “bridges insurance” company for around fifteen years, and we find them pretty good. 

Read your policy

When you receive your policy agreement, please read it. This is a vital step that I see so many lawn-mowing businesses need to pay attention to. You need to know that you are covered correctly. 

Little gems of information you may find if you read your policy may include things like.

• Your insurance does not cover you if you are over three meters off the ground. Gutter cleaning and high ladder work may be off the menu. 
• Your insurance may not cover you when spraying unless you have a chemicals licence. 

I knew an elderly man who looked after the lawn at a kindergarten. He mowed the lawns, trimmed the hedges and sprayed the lawn for weeds. On one occasion, he accidentally mixed up his spray bottles and killed the entire lawn. He was insured, but his insurance company declined his claim because he did not have a chemical license. 

He lost his business. 

So now you know the most essential insurance types for Your Lawn Mowing Business. 

In closing, remember that it is much better to be safe than sorry. I am sure that your business is far more critical than an insurance premium. 

Business insurance is not compulsory in New Zealand (apart from Acc), but if you want a healthy business that will be around for a long time, good insurance is a must. 

Stay safe, healthy and insured, everyone.