Mobile mechanic insurance explained

The question each kind of cover is answering

These are the names you will meet and the question each one exists to answer. This is vocabulary, not a shopping list, and none of it is a statement that you need any particular item.

General liability. The question is who pays when your work injures somebody or damages property belonging to a third party. A customer trips over your jack and breaks a wrist. Fluid runs across a driveway and into a neighbour garage. It is the broad, everyday cover most trades start the conversation with, and its important feature for a mechanic is what it says about property in your own care.

Care, custody and control of a customer vehicle. Often discussed under names borrowed from shops, such as garage keepers cover. The question is who pays when the car you are working on is the thing that gets damaged, whether by fire, by theft while you have it, or by your own hand. This is the one people most often assume is included somewhere and most often is not.

Commercial auto for the van. The question is who pays for a collision, and for the harm it does, when the vehicle is being used for the business. A personal policy commonly draws a line around business use, and the only reliable way to know where yours draws it is to ask your own insurer in writing.

Tools and equipment. The question is who replaces the tools if the van is broken into overnight, or if something is dropped, or if a diagnostic unit is stolen off a driveway. Ask specifically how items are valued, whether expensive individual pieces have to be listed by name, and whether tools are covered while they are out of the vehicle and lying on somebody driveway.

Workers compensation. The question is who pays if somebody who works for you is injured. The rules around who counts as an employee, and what obligations follow, are state law and they are not the same anywhere, so this is one to ask about before the first day somebody helps you rather than after.

Faulty workmanship and the repair itself. The question is what happens when the failure is the work rather than an accident, and the general shape of the answer across the trades is that liability cover is aimed at accidental harm rather than at redoing a job that was done badly. That is what a warranty policy and a comeback process are for, and there is a separate guide in this cluster about handling those.

An umbrella or excess layer. The question is what happens when a claim is larger than the limit on the policy underneath it. Worth knowing the phrase exists so that a broker mentioning it is not mysterious.

The words in a policy that decide whether a claim is paid

A policy is mostly a long definition of when it does not respond. Reading it is unpleasant and it is where the actual answer lives, so it is worth learning the handful of phrases that do the real work.

Business use. This is the phrase that most often separates a personal policy from a paid job. It appears in motor cover and it appears in home cover, and it is why an honest conversation with your existing insurer before you start taking money is worth more than any amount of reading online.

Care, custody and control. If you see this in a list of exclusions, it is describing the customer vehicle. A policy that excludes property in your care is telling you plainly that the car on the driveway is not what it is for.

Named insured. The name on the policy is who is covered. If you have set up a company and the policy is in your own name, or the other way round, that mismatch is worth fixing while it is boring rather than while it is expensive.

Scheduled items. Some tool cover pays only for items listed individually with values. If your policy works that way, a scan tool bought after the policy started may simply not be on it.

Radius or territory. Some commercial motor cover asks how far from a base the vehicle operates. If you take a job two hours away, it is worth knowing whether that answer was on the form.

Prior work and retroactive dates. Some cover responds only to work done after the policy started. If you have been trading already, ask what happens about the jobs you did before.

Occurrence and claims made. Two different ways of deciding which policy responds to a claim that arrives long after the work. You do not need to master the difference, you need to ask which one you are buying and what happens if you change carrier.

None of this makes you your own underwriter. The point is narrower: these are the words that turn a vague conversation into a specific one, and a broker answering specific questions gives you an answer you can rely on later.

What a certificate of insurance is, and who will ask you for one

Sooner or later somebody will refuse to let you work until you send them a certificate of insurance. It surprises people the first time, usually on a job they have already promised to do.

The certificate is a one page summary issued by your insurer or broker that states what cover exists and what the limits are. It is evidence, not the policy itself, and you request it rather than write it.

The people who ask are predictable once you know the pattern. Apartment complexes and their property managers. Commercial fleets and any customer with a yard. Dealerships and auction houses. Some gated communities. Anybody who has been told by their own insurer to collect one.

Two follow up requests come with it often enough to be worth expecting. They may ask to be added as an additional insured, which is a change to your policy that your broker makes, not a box you tick. And they may ask for specific limits, which you either have or do not.

The reason this belongs in a guide about insurance rather than in a guide about paperwork is that it changes what you buy. If the work you want is fleet work or property management work, the requirement other people impose on you is a real input into the decision, and it is much better discovered before you have quoted the job.

Ask your broker how you request one, how long it takes and whether there is a charge, on the day you buy the policy. Finding out on a Friday afternoon that it takes two working days is a bad way to learn.