Business Protection Bulletin

Performer insurance is not limited in what it can cover so much as who it can cover. Your basic performer policy is designed to cover a specific category of performer, that being: Performers who don’t do too much dangerous stuff in their act.

How that danger is defined is determined by a number of factors. For instance, if you’re insuring a movie star in a $250 million dollar blockbuster, then there’s a lot more money on the line than if you were insuring a fire-breather at a carnival. Some jobs are dangerous to the performer, some are dangerous to the insurer. The provider needs to calculate their risk accordingly in either event.

Typically, a basic performer policy is going to cover the less dangerous, less high-finance areas of the performing arts. A birthday clown, a celebrity lookalike, a comedian, a mime, a puppeteer, these are areas of performance that do not involve any immediate danger as part of the performer’s regular routine. On the other hand, a knife-thrower, a jouster, a stunt performer, a strength performer, a pyrotechnician, these are performers whose whole act involves playing with dangerous elements. That’s what makes them so impressive, and that’s why they typically need to seek out specialty insurance.

Typically, if you are working for a circus, a theater, a movie studio, then they’re going to have their own system of insurance lined up. The guys performing stunt shows at Universal Studios, for instance, probably aren’t buying their own health coverage.

One could reasonably think that, if their job isn’t particularly dangerous, then why bother getting insurance in the first place? The problem is that bodily damage or a liability case can completely derail a performer’s career. If you slip on stage and twist your ankle, then it’s hard to make it to your next belly-dancing gig. Performer insurance can help with things like lost wages and health issues that your health insurance might not cover so that you are not completely out of options if you find yourself injured on the job. Likewise, liability issues relating to your act can really take the wind out of your sails. For most working performers, it’s a nine to five job. For everyone who ever became a millionaire on their talent, there are ten thousand people who are just making a living. Most performers cannot afford a liability suit, and that’s where your insurance really comes in handy.

If you’re not covered by performer insurance, then it’s not a bad idea to look into specialty coverage. You want to make sure you have options should something go wrong.

A campground isn’t exactly the same thing as being out in the wild. Out in the wild, you’re on your own. You’re not going to find public restrooms and cookout grills a mile into a national forest. Campgrounds offer a few basic amenities in order to make that trip into the wild a little more comfortable. That’s why we don’t mind paying a few bucks to spend the night in one, and that’s why we expect the proprietors to carry some form of campground insurance.

If you run a campground, your customers are going to be out there playing with fire and using hatchets and pocketknives. Some element of danger is to be expected on a camp site, in truth, it’s part of the lure of a camping trip, getting out of your safety zone, putting yourself into a place where you’re going to need to rely on your own abilities. But, on a campground that you’ve paid your ten, fifteen dollars for, you do expect some sort of accountability. So in order to ensure that you don’t need to collect on your liability policy any time soon, what sort of safety should your visitors be able to expect?

The basic rule of thumb is: Whatever you offer, you have to make sure it’s in proper working condition. If you offer RV hookups at your campground, routine maintenance is a must. A careless camper has only themselves to blame, but septic backups and faulty water and electric supply are issues that rest entirely on the shoulders of the provider.

Campers might not mind a campsite with no public restroom, but if they walk into one to find a hornet’s nest, they might hold you responsible for the stings. If you don’t provide barbecue grills, campers can dig a fire pit, but if you do offer a grill, and the coals fall right out a hole rusted into the bottom and it starts a fire, that’s on you. It’s all about letting your visitors know what they’re getting so that they can plan their visit accordingly.

If something is out of order, make sure your visitors know that it’s undergoing repairs or cleaning or maintenance, post it to your Facebook and anywhere else you’re listed. Campers aren’t the most high-maintenance demographic, they don’t expect anything more than what you’re willing to promise them, so don’t promise them anything you can’t deliver, and they won’t ask anything of you that you don’t have available.

Foreclosure insurance is, by definition, going to be covering an empty home. So, if nobody’s living in the home, if it’s just going to sit dormant for awhile, then how comprehensive does the insurance really need to be? Well, the assessment process here is much like with any other insurance policy, it all starts with…

Evaluating Your Risks

Nobody’s living in the home right now, but the people living in a home are only one part of the risk that comes with insuring a home. A vacant home is just as, or more at risk than an occupied home when it comes to certain risk factors:

• Vandalism

Is there an easier target for vandalism than a house with nobody in it?

• Natural disaster

You probably won’t see a fire resulting from faulty wiring while the power is turned off, but lightning strikes, flooding, earthquakes, storm damage… Mother Nature isn’t specifically targeting occupied homes.

• Theft

Although nobody is storing possessions in the home, a vacant house is a prime target for theft of materials, like copper wiring.

Foreclosure insurance is, more often than not, intended to protect an investment. REO insurance is there to ensure that, should something happen to a foreclosed home while you’re looking for a new buyer, then the money that you’ve put into the home doesn’t go up in smoke.

So you need to consider the risks with your particular property, in your particular area:

• What’s the weather like?

If you live in the Southwest, earthquakes might not be a major concern, but they certainly will be in California, and anywhere from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, you’re going to need to consider the risks of fire damage. Likewise you’ll need to consider flooding and storm damage in the South.

• How’s the neighborhood?

In a high-crime neighborhood, vandalism and theft are major concerns. Less so if you’re insuring a rural farmhouse.

• When was the last time you had the home appraised?

You need to make sure that you’re covering the home for what it’s worth, not what it was worth one, two, three years ago when you first started lending to the previous occupant.

Essentially you’re looking to cover your foreclosed-upon property through a lender placed property insurance policy to a point where you feel comfortable, and where your investment is protected. “Vacant” doesn’t mean “risk-free.” Plenty can go wrong with or without an occupant, and comprehensive REO insurance will keep you covered when it does.

A few years ago there was a story involving a truck broker and their driver hit with a $5.2 million verdict in a negligent hiring case. Following a serious accident, the courts found that the carrier did not do a comprehensive job of investigating the driver, who had been under the influence of illegal drugs and fallen asleep at the wheel.

It can be surprising what winds up damaging a company. A driver who uses drugs and falls asleep while driving might, in another instance, have been held solely responsible for the accident, or the freight insurance provider might have covered the costs involved. However, because the carrier did a poor job of vetting the driver, they wound up being hit with a $5.2 million charge of negligent hiring.

In short, a comprehensive, responsible approach to the entire process of managing your company is the best way to both prevent unfortunate accidents, and to stay out of the courtroom. Contingent motor cargo insurance is there to ensure that reasonable risks are covered. If you are not going to do your due diligence, then your contingent cargo insurance is a waste of money. Insurance can help you to cover your ends when doing business, but it’s not a magically binding contract or a bulletproof shield against any and all charges. Comprehensive insurance means that, if you cover your end, if you vet your drivers, if you maintain your vehicles and your equipment properly, then you are covered when something goes wrong.

Perhaps the most important factor in ensuring that your insurance policy will protect you is ensuring that you have hired the right people. There are a few simple ways to do this:

• Run background checks
• Verify credentials
• Conduct your own testing and additional training

You need to have the utmost faith in your staff, not just your drivers, but everybody to whom you’re signing a check. If something goes wrong and the incident leads to legal proceedings, you need to be able to prove that you have done everything that could reasonably be expected of you. If you’re investing in contingent cargo insurance, it means that there’s quite a bit riding on your shoulders. A comprehensive insurance policy and a comprehensive approach to hiring the right people. There’s no reason to take on whatever drivers will have you. There are more than enough qualified, competent professionals out there to keep your business running smoothly.

Contests like the Lumberjack Olympics in Hayward, Wisconsin are a great opportunity to show off your team’s skills, celebrate the American logging industry, and just have a real good time chopping wood. They’re also an insurance buyer’s worst nightmare if you don’t know what you’re doing. Logging contractors liability doesn’t cover it. If you’re hosting or attending a logging competition, then there will be a whole host of risks that you need to manage which simply won’t be addressed by your basic logging insurance policy, such as…

• Spectator Liability Insurance

When you’re cutting wood to sell to hardware stores and construction crews, you probably don’t have much of an audience watching you. When you host a lumberjack competition, you’re going to have hundreds of people standing around who don’t know the first thing about logging safety. Spectator liability insurance will help to ensure that you’re covered should anything happen to somebody who came just to enjoy the show.

• Competitor Insurance

If you’re hosting, then as long as your athletes sign a waiver of liability, you can hold them responsible for providing their own insurance. Generally this is going to be your best bet if you’re allowing all-comers to compete. You don’t know the individual level of training and ability and experience for each competitor, so your best bet is to let them provide their own coverage.

If you’re attending as a competitor, then you absolutely need to make sure that your health insurance provider knows that you’re entering a potentially dangerous competition. Whatever extra costs that may entail, it’s going to be cheaper than paying your own hospital bills after taking a fall from a tree.

• Equipment Insurance

Your timber logging insurance providers are covering your equipment for use in professional logging. Use a chainsaw to see who can hack a three-foot-thick tree down the quickest and they’re probably not going to pay out when the saw breaks down because you didn’t pace yourself. The equipment used in logging competitions is usually fairly simple: Chainsaws, axes and basic safety equipment. It’s not too pricey to cover your own equipment.

The best way to offset the costs involved with hosting or attending a lumberjack competition, both insuring your ends and providing the best equipment, is to look for sponsorship deals. Companies like Stihl, Remington and Timberland frequently sponsor lumberjack athletes, teams and contests if they feel that it will highlight their brand in a positive way.

Something many a landlord has pondered: Do I need to buy habitational insurance if I don’t actually have any renters living in my apartment and condominium complexes right now? If you’re doing renovations, if you’re just sitting on the property right now and not actually leasing it out, do you need habitational coverage, or is there some other policy that will protect your property until you’re ready to start looking for renters? After all, doesn’t “habitational” mean that someone’s living in it?

Habitational policies are there to cover you against general liability claims should a renter suffer injury or damages while on the premises, so it stands to reason that that protection isn’t really necessary for an empty complex.

The short answer: Habitational insurance is only required when you are actually renting to people, but you’ll want to make sure it’s in place before you start looking for tenants. Until you’re actually looking for renters and filing your taxes as a landlord, an apartment complex is kind of just a really, really big house. You can cover an apartment complex under various policies including general liability, property insurance and vacant housing insurance.

The real question is whether or not that’s more hassle than it’s worth.

It’s unlikely that you’re going to be sitting on a vacant apartment complex for any longer than absolutely necessary. The upkeep on an apartment or condo complex is a lot more time, effort and money than it’s worth if you’re not making a return on your investment by renting your units out. If your renovations are finished on the 7th, you might find yourself waiting a few weeks, unable to rent to any new tenants until your habitational policy kicks in at the end of the month.

Ultimately it comes down to whether you’re saving enough to be worth the extra work of creating a whole new insurance package and spending any amount of time without a habitational policy in place. Obviously if you’re building a complex from scratch, you don’t need to worry about habitational insurance until you’re putting the finishing touches on the building. If you’re only going to be out of business for the week or two that it takes to fix a gas leak, then switching your policy up is going to be a lot of extra headaches for no good reason.

So no, you probably don’t need habitational insurance if you’re not renting to any tenants at the moment, but you’ll want to take a moment to think about it before you cancel your coverage.

Railroad insurance is required for covering general liability concerns, and since railroads stretch from state to state, railroad companies generally go for a fairly robust policy in order to ensure that they’re covered no matter what the local laws dictate.

Here’s one thing they’re not required to cover in any of the fifty states in the nation: Cargo.

If you’re new to shipping cargo by rail, this might come as something of a shock. Ships, truck drivers and delivery services typically cover what they carry. Railroad protective liability might not cover cargo at all, unless the company shipping your goods choose to do so of their own accord.

In other words, if you’re shipping through a railroad company, you may wind up needing to provide your own insurance to keep your cargo safe. You have two basic options here:

• Ask About Getting Covered Through The Railroad’s Policy

Although railroad companies are not required to insure the cargo they carry, they might have an option for covering your cargo through their provider. The upside to this is that it’s neat and simple and you usually wind up paying less than if you covered it yourself. The downside is that the coverage might not be as comprehensive as if you were to cover the cargo through your own provider. Your best bet is to look at what your provider can do for you, compare it to your shipper’s deal, and see which plan you like better.

• Cover It Through Your Provider

Most business insurance providers have policies set up to cover cargo as it is shipped by rail. The major upside to covering your cargo through your business policy is that you can get it covered for the entire trip through a single plan. A railroad doesn’t drop your cargo off right at the retailer’s back door, rather, it has to get there by truck. Covering the cargo through your provider will make it easier to cover it for the whole trip.

In that the railroad company is not likely to be held liable for any lost or damaged goods along the way, the general rule of thumb is: The more comprehensive your coverage, the better. An excess coverage policy, for instance, may be a little pricier than letting your umbrella policy handle the job, but it also ensures coverage to a higher value, and against a wider range of mishaps.

One of the tricky things about snow plowing liability is that adverse weather conditions are a defining component of what you do for a living. If it’s really snowing outside, you can take the bus to work instead of driving there. But if your job is to get the snow off the road  so that the bus driver can do their job, then, well, you’re going to be driving in the snow. Without seriously adverse driving conditions, there’d be no need for snow plows in the first place.

Snow plow insurance will generally cover your basic liability considerations, of course, including bodily and property damage. If you have employees, then you’ll be looking into workers compensation, and of course you will need a business owners policy as well as full coverage for the vehicle itself. Some insurers will offer you a better deal than others, but the bottom line is that you’re looking for a robust policy to cover some moderately dangerous work.

Here’s the good news: The stuff that you do to stay safe on icy roads is the same stuff you can do to help get a good deal on your insurance policy. Every provider has their own discounts, their own way of evaluating you as a safe driver and business owner, but in general, just as with driving your car, the safer you are, the less you are likely to wind up paying each month for your insurance.

If this were a piece of clickbait, this is the part where we’d tell you the “1 weird trick” to keep your premiums low:

• Verify Your People

If your new driver comes in with an impressive resume, the quickest way to check their references is to put down the phone and take them to the nearest parking lot. See how they maneuver a snow plow in a controlled environment, hit them with a pop quiz. You can fake references, you can lie on a resume, but you can’t fake ability behind the wheel.

This applies to any sort of business where you’re hiring drivers, but especially when the job also entails the operation of heavy machinery. Basically: Just don’t take your drivers’ abilities for granted. Test your new drivers, and make sure your current drivers take a refresher course around the parking lot to shake off the rust before you put them out on the streets.

Here’s rule number one for managing injuries whether you’re running a youth soccer team, high school football or a rugby team: Don’t even run a practice game unless somebody on hand is trained in first aid.

The easiest way to handle this: Get trained in first aid, or, if someone else manages or coaches the team, have them get training. Now there will always be somebody on hand who knows what to do in the event of an injury.

If you run a sports team for any length of time, injuries are a given. Athletes are going to pull a leg muscle, take a fall or sprain a wrist now and then. Immediate, informed response to these injuries can make the difference between your star player being out for the season, or back on the field in a week. Not only that, it can make the difference between how big of a claim you need to make on your sports team insurance.

• Learn to Identify Concussions

The most immediately recognizable symptoms of a concussion include headache, loss of consciousness, confusion, balance problems, nausea and dizziness. You can check for a concussion by looking at your athlete’s eyes. If the pupils are of unequal size or if they stay dilated (larger) no matter their exposure to light, then you may be dealing with a concussion. Get them to an emergency room as soon as possible, and make sure that they stay awake.

• Muscular Injuries

Dealing with muscular injuries is, thankfully, not as complicated as dealing with a broken bone. If a player complains of difficulty or discomfort moving an arm or a leg, look for swelling or redness, and make sure they stay comfortable until you can get them medical attention.

• Bone Fractures

A broken arm or leg always looks a lot scarier than it really is. With proper medical attention, broken limbs can heal up as good as new within a few months, but you need to act fast. Make sure the athlete stays awake, use smelling salts if you need to. It’s best not to move them, but if you need to get them out of harm’s way, do it carefully. Don’t worry about setting up a splint or anything. You’re not lost in the woods, that’s the paramedics’ job.

• Cuts and Scrapes

Disinfect, clean and bandage cuts and scrapes. Even if it’s going to need stitches, cleaning the area right away is important. Most cuts you can shake off with a band-aid and some ointment. Others may require a visit to the doctor’s office. Keep a first-aid kit on hand and be glad that cuts are pretty easy to manage.

Not only will basic first aid keep your team safe, it will also keep football team insurance premiums low by reducing the number and severity of adult or youth sports insurance claims you need to make.

Most people who drive passengers for a living do so as independent workers. You look at a taxi company and you might assume that those guys are pulling in an hourly wage from the company itself. In truth, a taxi company usually functions more like a rental agency with the drivers actually leasing the vehicles they drive. A cabbie typically spends the first half of the shift making enough to pay off the rental costs, insurance and associated fees, and then the second half of the shift earning money for themselves.

There’s very good money to be found in delivering passengers to their destinations, but there’s a reason why most people who do it do it full time, or at least regularly enough to be worth the cost. If you’re only going to pick up a passenger now and then, then there’s no reason to get involved with Lyft or Uber or to become a taxi driver. You can make gas money for a road trip by soliciting people on Craigslist to pitch in if they’re going the same way. If you want to drive in a professional capacity, you need to consider the costs that go into that, and whether or not you’re willing to work hard enough to cover them and turn a significant profit.

Insurance Costs

If you’re delivering passengers, your normal car insurance policy won’t cover you, and you’re going to need to look into uber driver insurance. Some providers won’t even cover Uber drivers simply because there are so many variables when driving passengers where they need to go. If you’re leasing a cab from a company, the company will provide insurance, but depending on how your state’s DMV regulates the industry, you may or may not wind up needing to buy taxi driver insurance for yourself through the company’s taxi cab insurance provider, much like with a rental car.

Rental Fees

Most cab companies do not use a flat fee, but a percentage. This is typically around one third of the taxi driver’s fares for the shift. If you only make, say, $120 for the shift, it can be tough watching that turn to $80 once you drive back onto the lot. A talented cabbie can make hundreds of dollars in a single night, however, and the company does not get a percentage of your tips.

Fuel

Whether driving a cab or picking up Uber passengers, you’re going to burn through a lot more gas than you would otherwise. A typical ten mile cab ride might cost $30, your cut being $20, and the average fuel efficiency for a 2016 model car being around 30 mpg, so we’re looking at maybe $4 to $6 for every $60 you earn. So around 10% of your take-home pay before taxes.

Driving for a living can be fun and rewarding, but it’s difficult to make a worthwhile profit as a part-timer.