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Insurance For Landscapers

By March 8, 2023March 29th, 2023No Comments

We see a lot of insurance policies come into our office. By far the most underinsured policies are those for landscapers.

Like everything else, you don’t know, until you know.

A lot of landscapers that come into our office are severely underinsured. What usually leads to the most confusion is the classification of landscaping companies. There is a couple different classifications of landscapers.

The classification begins with lawn maintenance. That basically allows the landscaper to mow people’s lawns. You’re allowed to plant some bushes. You could trim some trees, but your feet have to stay on the ground. And there’s a lot of gray areas here as to what lawn maintenance is all about.

Many landscapers also do retaining walls, they’ll do tree trimming, and even excavating. That changes the whole policy. This is why it is so important that landscapers are very honest with their agent as to what kind of jobs are they doing. It is the only way to best protect you and your business.

Snowplowing. This is something that usually comes into play for landscapers on the “off” season.  That is typically a completely separate policy from the normal landscaping policy.  If you are a landscaper who is out there snowplowing, first of all, the vehicles have to have commercial insurance on them, which they should have in a landscaping operation anyways. Second, you do need a separate policy for snowplowing. Snowplowing comes with a whole new set of risks, and therefore a completely seperate policy to cover those risks.

These snowplowing policies can be more expensive than traditional landscaping policies, but you have to make sure you have it. There are actually many business policies that are sold that specifically excluding snowplowing. They are very specific about it.

So all your landscapers out there, be very careful with what your policy says it will cover, and more importantly, what the policy says it will not cover.