The leaves are changing and that means that winter is almost upon us. Contractors, landscapers, and many others with seasonal professions are getting ready to add plows to their vehicles in preparation for the winter snow removal season. Are you properly protected?
Here’s a scenario: your employee, using the F350 plow truck, clears your customer’s lot of snow in the early morning. He leaves the snow in a pile and rushes on to the next customer, knowing that in the afternoon he will return with an end loader to remove the snow. In the mean-time, a driver slams into the snow pile and is severely injured.
A month later you get a letter from the driver’s attorney asking for $532,000 for the now needed neck surgery, pain, and suffering your snow pile caused. You call your insurance agent for help only to find that your auto insurance company will not pay because it contains an exclusion for “completed operations” and that your business insurance company will not pay because its policy contains an exclusion for damages that result from the operation of an auto.
If you plow snow in the winter, let your agent know so that they can make sure you are protected properly. There is a simple endorsement, most of the time free, that fixes this gap in coverage.