One area of insurance that has grown significantly in our agency over the last decade is Charlotte food truck insurance. If you run a food truck in Charlotte, NC or are thinking about starting up a business in the industry, then you will have several insurance policy options to consider.
We have various carriers that specialize in these policy types and we can offer the most competitive rates in the market. We will discuss some of the most common policy types that you will want to protect you and allow you to complete contracts.
Auto Liability
Auto liability on a food truck is similar to a personal auto insurance policy and it will pay out in situations where you are involved in an incident while driving your food truck. If you hit a vehicle, person, or other object, your auto liability policy will pay for the bodily injury or property damage of the injured party. You can also include comprehensive and collision coverage, medical payments, etc along with your auto liability policy as you would your personal auto policy.
Auto liability limits chosen maybe be split limits like $100,000/300,000/50,000 or combined single limits of $1,000,000. The limits you choose will want to meet your minimum threshold to protect yourself and the limits being required by a contract.
General Liability
A general liability policy will pay out for losses outside of negligence while driving your vehicle. This could include claims of illness from the food that you serve or an individual being injured around your truck.
Typical limits for a general liability are $1,000,000 per occurrence. This is a common requirement if you plan to sell food in a public place.
Business Personal Property
Any business property that you use to serve, prepare, and deliver food should also be covered if you want protection for losses from fire, theft, or other losses. Your auto liability will likely have a cap on any of these items, even if they are permanently attached to the vehicle. Business personal property can included grills, coolers, products, and cash registers.
Workers Compensation
If you hire employees in your business, then you will also want to make sure that you have a workers compensation policy in effect. If your employees are injured in a workplace accident you can be sued not only for their injuries, but for their lost time at work.
There are laws in place that require workers comp coverage for your employees. In NC the minimum required limits for workers compensation is $100,000 each employee, $100,000 each accident, and $500,000 for the policy limit. You can increase these limits up to $1,000,000 for a nominal price increase.
Liquor Liability
If you serve alcohol, you will want to carry a liquor liability policy. These policies payout on claims that result from injuries caused by intoxicated patrons served by your establishment.
Aside from protecting yourself from catastrophic claims and being sued for losses, you will likely encounter a need for insurance due to contract requirements. NC counties, especially Mecklenburg County, have stringent insurance requirements for food trucks and vendors. In order to meet their requirements, you will need to prove that you have the minimum requirements by presenting an insurance certificate. It is not uncommon to see requests for insurance from other entities like building owners, landlords, restaurants, and festivals.
Some final thoughts on compiling food truck insurance quotes.
It is important to understand that you don’t need to combine all policy coverage types under one policy or carrier. In some cases, bundling these policies under one policy can be beneficial. In others, it can cost you more. You have to understand that sometimes insurance companies may offer you a lower rate on one coverage type, say auto liability, but make up for it by charging a higher premium on another policy type, say collision.
It is best to let an experienced insurance agent peruse all of the companies at hand and possibly piecemeal these policies together if it makes more financial sense for you.
Also, it is best to be prepared and present the needed information when getting quotes so you won’t have to go back and forth with the agent.
Below are some of the questions you may be asked when requesting quotes.
Vehicle info including VIN numbers
Driver info including date of births and license numbers
Total annual sales
Total annual payroll
Liability limits
Specific contract requirements
Mailing and garaging address
Please let us know if you have any other questions regarding insurance for food trucks and trailers. Our expert agents are here to help.
Cyber liability insurance is one of the fastest growing business insurance policies that NC small businesses are looking to protect themselves with. Because it is such a new policy type, there are several questions on what it is and what it covers. We will discuss exactly those things in this article so that you can make an educated decision if this policy is right for your North Carolina small business.
Everyone knows how much cyber is a growing concern, but it might surprise some businesses just how common it is. It is far from being a concern for only large corporations too. In fact 60% of cyber crimes are against small businesses. 60% of those businesses that are victims of these attacks go out of business within 6 months of the attack. The costs are staggering when they do occur and those without cyber insurance are left with 100% of those costs.
Are you exposed to the possibility of this happening to your business?
If your company has/does have any of the following, then the answer is a resounding yes.
Company Website
Social Media Accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linked In)
Accept Credit Cards
Uses Online Banking
Store Customer Data (Name, Address, Date of Birth, License Numbers, Credit Card Info, Social Security Numbers)
If you realize that you could be at risk, but are still confused on what types of things could happen to you, then you are not alone. It can be very complicated. We will discuss and clear up some of those common claim types below and explain the ways that a cyber policy will help cover those things.
SOCIAL ENGINEERING
Social engineering is a predatory type of cyber crime where an employee is tricked into sending or uploading money to someone through false pretenses.
Cyber insurance will cover those lost funds from these types of schemes.
RANSOMWARE
This is a virus sent as a link in an e-mail. Once an employee clicks the link, the virus immediately begins to to encrypt computer files. The imposter will then demand funds in order to recover the company’s files. Typically bit coins will be demanded.
The cyber liability policy will cover the cost of the ransom in order to have your files recovered.
DATA BREACH
This type of attack gains the most media attention. Large organizations like Sony, Target, and Equifax have recently been in the news for being hacked. These losses occur when a cyber criminal breaches a company network and gains access to customer data.
Cyber policies will typically cover the following:
1. Fines by regulatory commissions and other penalties
2. Legal fees toward lawsuits from customers
3. Security expert assessments
4. Public relations firm services
5. Customer notification costs for those effected by the breach
MEDIA LIABILITY
Covers defamation or slander by an employee about a customer on social medial accounts causing a lawsuit.
Cyber insurance will cover defense in a lawsuit against your company.
FUNDS TRANSFER FRAUD
Hackers gain access to your system and transfer company funds to their account.
Your cyber policy will cover any losses incurred, not covered by your bank for fraudulent transfers.
NETWORK SECURITY
Your company site gets hacked making your system inoperable and not allowing customers access to their information.
Cyber insurance will cover lawsuits by customers for not being able to access their account.
One final myth we would like to dispel regarding cyber liability insurance, and that is that the premiums are too expensive for a small business. We write through some of the leading insurance companies in the industry, with the most competitive premiums. Premiums start as low as $800 per year depending on the business type, size, and exposure.
Please call us at 704-494-9495 with any questions, or if you would like a quote on this valuable insurance policy today.
A workers compensation audit is an inevitable part of all workers compensation policies. While many other commercial insurance policies may require them as well, it is not always done in every case. These policy types can include commercial general liability, commercial property, commercial auto, professional liability, etc. With a workers compensation policy, you can count on an audit being done for each policy term.
A lot of our clients may feel overwhelmed by these audits at first. However, after completing their first audit, they become less daunting in the future. The purpose of these audits is to accurately assess the correct premium based on the actual payroll versus the payroll that was estimated at the beginning of the policy term.
Quite simply, if you overestimate your payroll, then you will receive a refund. If you underestimate your payroll, then you will receive an additional premium bill. Coming up with an estimated payroll, in almost every industry, is really just a best guess. There are several factors that may cause your payroll to go up or down.
Some of the factors that may cause payroll to change are:
Terminating an employee
Hiring an employee
A rise or fall in business causing payroll to change
Hiring an uninsured subcontractor
Hiring an employee or sub outside of your normal class code
Work that changes depending on the season or the weather
In addition to assessing the correct payroll, the workers compensation company will want to confirm that the correct class code is chosen for that business. Class codes are the best description given to the actual work being done by that business. For some businesses, the actual class code is easy to determine. For others, it can be a little more tricky and the insurance company will have to accurately assess the risk based on the day to day work being done.
In some cases, one business may have several class codes. This is seen very often with construction companies where they may have painters, electricians, concrete construction, tiling, plumbing, HVAC, roofing,etc. Businesses with multiple class codes will want to separate their payroll based on these different classes or they will likely face their total payroll being lumped into the most expensive classification.
Class codes can range in scope from very expensive to extremely inexpensive. One of the lowest and most inexpensive class codes is clerical office employees. One of the most expensive classes is for roofers. The reason for this discrepancy is due to the risk level involved in each line of work. Not only will these rates be determined due to the chances of an accident, but also the severity of the accident. The more severe the accident, the more that worker will need more money to pay for medical bills and the longer he/she will be out of work.
Their are certain records will you need to produce to show the proper documentation in completing your audit.
Some of the items you will be asked to present to complete an audit may include the following:
Form 1040 Tax Return(this is for sole proprietorships)
Schedule C (this shows the profit or loss breakdown of expenses on your tax return)
Schedule SE (Self Employment Tax)
Schedule K1 (Shareholder’s Share of Income)
Form 1120 (US Corporate Income Tax Return)
941 Reports (Quarterly Federal Payroll Tax Reports)
You should know what payroll will be picked up on your premium audit.
Who will be included in my payroll?
1. Anyone that you paid as a W2 employee will be counted as payroll.
2. Any 1099 subcontractor that your business paid that you did not receive their workers comp certificate of insurance from.
3. Owners that have not rejected coverage as either owners, officers, members, etc where allowed by law.
Every state has different workers compensation laws and you will need to discuss with an insurance professional the laws within your state. You will also need to confirm if your workers compensation policy in the state where your business resides will cover you while doing work in another state. For instance, in NC, a policy purchased here will not cover even 1 employee that would be doing work in FL. Not even temporarily. It is very important that you discuss this with an agent before beginning work in another state. The penalty for not doing so can result in large fines from the state or you being responsible for paying out in the event of a claim if it is denied by your insurance company.
In closing, don’t let the workers comp audit scare you. As long as you maintain accurate records, you will be fine. We strongly urge our clients to not let any 1099 subcontractors do any work for you, without first getting a copy of their own workers compensation certificate. An audit can actually be a good thing. For a lot of our clients, they see a refund at the end of their audit term. This is a welcome surprise and it is a much better feeling then being hit with a large additional premium because you didn’t adequately plan or keep accurate and ongoing records.
If you have any further questions on this subject or on workers compensation policies in general, please feel free to give one of our friendly commercial agents a call at 704-494-9495.
We have had a lot of questions from our commercial auto drivers regarding the recent ELD mandate for NC truckers so we figured we would do a short article offering an explanation as to what that is and how it may effect you.
A new mandate has been put in place by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) that requires an electronic logging device (ELD) for most motor carriers and drivers that are required to maintain records of duty status (RODS). The deadline for this mandate is December 18, 2017. If you have a grandfathered automatic on board recording devices (AOBRD), then the deadline will extend to 12/16/2019 for these drivers. After this deadline, then all motor carriers and drivers will need to adhere to the ELD rule if they are registered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
Drivers who don’t use paper logs more than 8 times during a 30 day period
Driveaway or towaway drivers
Drivers who drive vehicles manufactured before 2000
Aside for the ELD mandate for NC truckers requirement, there are many reasons that an ELD will be beneficial to you.
Some of the benefits of having an ELD are shown below.
They make logging easier and quicker.
You can qualify for a discount from your insurance company.
They lower the likelihood of driver mistakes.
Helps losses due to employee fatigue.
Lets you better track driver location.
If you have any questions on this new ELD mandate for NC truckers or need to know where to get one. Please reach out to us at 704-494-9495 and we will be happy to go into more detail with you. Please remember to let us know if you have an ELD that you are currently using, because the discount on your insurance can be significant and we want to make sure you are receiving the proper premium credits on your insurance policy.
Cargo insurance is rapidly growing in the trucking industry in NC. Due to the increased popularity of Amazon delivery, package delivery has increased by quite a bit in the last couple of years. This coupled with freight delivery of all kinds, has increased a need for more cargo insurance companies.
We have an expertise on trucking insurance of all kinds. There are several factors that you should focus on when choosing the correct insurance coverage and commercial trucking insurance company.
You will want to make sure the insurance company that you go with can offer you your required limits at competitive premiums.
The limits you choose for each commercial auto liability coverage should be sufficient to the following parties:
Auto liability will cover anyone that you hit while driving your commercial truck.
The weight of your truck, the radius that you are traveling, and the type of goods you are hauling will all impact the minimum insurance requirement for auto liability. The most common limit though when crossing state lines, is $750,000 per the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
Keep in mind that your contract may require higher limits than the minimum FMCSA limits. Even if your contract doesn’t require it, you may want to consider higher limits to protect yourself further.
CARGO LIABILITY INSURANCE
Cargo liability will cover damages to the goods you are hauling due to your negligence.
The FMCSA also has cargo liability requirements for certain trucking risks. If you aren’t required to have this per the FMCSA, you likely will with any contract you enter into. We typically see a minimum cargo liability requirement of $100,000.
A similar coverage type is On Hook Liability which is more common on towing and auto hauler risks. If requesting On Hook Liability coverage on auto haulers, be careful, as there are certain coverage gaps when choosing this policy type. The premiums are usually less expensive, but you don’t want to be caught without the correct coverage.
MOTOR TRUCK GENERAL LIABILITY INSURANCE
A lot of contracts will require you to have a General Liability policy in force. This will cover claims outside of anyone you hit or damages to the freight you are hauling. Claims on these policy types are less common but they still can occur.
Losses for general liability can occur for delivery errors, driver negligence while loading or unloading, libel, and slander. A typical required limit of liability on this coverage is $1,000,000. Premiums for this coverage type are generally the lowest of the commercial cargo trucking polices.
For questions of any kind on commercial cargo insurance, please feel free to give us a call at 704-494-9495. We can also offer free quotes with all of our various commercial trucking insurance carriers.
We will discuss policies for short term rental insurance or seasonal homes. This can commonly be referred to as Airbnb insurance, VRBO insurance, or vacation rental insurance. The policy is similar to a personal home insurance policy with slight variations.
Short term rental insurance is not a new phenomenon, but there has been a large increase in these as of late. This is due largely to the advent of companies like Airbnb and VRBO. These companies make the job of leasing your home out a breeze. A lot of people don’t want to turn down the opportunity to make the extra income on their seasonal or secondary homes. If you own a home that you use as a seasonal or vacation home and also rent out, then you should make sure that your insurance policy covers you accordingly.
A lot of people don’t understand that you need to have a specific policy in place to make sure short term rental properties are covered. You need to notify your home insurance company if you move out of your home and lease it to a tenant or have it unoccupied or coverage can be denied. You also need to notify your insurance company of any changes in usage of your secondary home as well.
Most home insurance policies will exclude coverage for business pursuits on your home. This makes your standard home insurance policy inadequate for covering such losses on short term rental properties. Further, if you have a commercial policy in force, but you also use your home as secondary residence for yourself, a commercial policy won’t be sufficient coverage either. This is why you need a specialized policy that acts as sort of a personal and commercial policy hybrid.
Quite frankly, most insurance companies have yet to offer coverage for such a risk. That is just one of the reasons that a large percentage of people do not have proper insurance on their short term rental properties. Another reason is consumer education. Don’t fret though. We have multiple markets that will take on this risk and we are able to close the knowledge gap on this topic.
There are many properties that can constitute a short-term rental policy. Some of the more common types are listed below.
Common Seasonal Homes and Short Term Rental Types
Beach house or condo
Lake house
Mountain house or cabin
City condo
Golf course house or condo
Most Important Types of Coverage
What coverage types should you focus on when getting a policy? There are several endorsements that should be considered. The 4 most important types of coverage for short term rentals are listed below.
Dwelling
Contents
Liability
Business Income
DWELLING
The dwelling is the structure you want to cover. For your home or condo to be covered it is important to make known the use of the building. Like your primary home insurance, this will cover things like fire, water losses, falling objects, lightening, wind, etc. If you use it as a vacation home and a temporary rental, this should be disclosed to your agent. Insurance companies may deny coverage even on these losses if they discover you are renting your house out, even on a short-term basis.
In many cases you can also cover detached structures such as sheds, barns, guest houses, and garages. You want to make sure to tell your agent about these to make sure they are listed on your policy. Some policies will cover up to 10% of the primary dwelling amount. Some, but not all. You may also find that these detached structures need to be covered for more than this amount.
CONTENTS OR PERSONAL PROPERTY
These items include clothing, appliances, furniture, lawn care items, etc. It is highly recommended that you add a replacement cost endorsement to your policy so these items can be replaced instead of just receiving the depreciated actual value of them today if there is a claim. That way if you had a fire loss, you could truly replace everything with like items that are brand new.
LIABILITY
This might be the most important coverage type. If you are leasing out your home and you are sued for negligence of any kind, your liability coverage will protect you. Keep in mind you don’t even have to be at fault to get sued. Lengthy court battles can get expensive and your liability will cover these expenses. They will also cover settlements if the courts rule in favor of the plaintiff.
Do yourself a favor and choose the highest liability limit the company will offer. The cost differential is not that much and the reward for having the higher limits can be huge. Many companies will offer a limit up to $1,000,000 for liability.
BUSINESS INCOME
Sometimes referred to as loss of use coverage, business income covers expenses you would incur by not being able to rent a property due to a covered loss. For example, if you had a fire and the home had to be renovated or replaced, your business income coverage would pay for loss of rental income during this time of reconstruction. This is not always standard so be sure to ask for this if you want the coverage.
Two final recommendations.
If you plan to rent out a property of any kind, you may want to consider transferring that property into a business name or LLC. This will further protect you from anyone being able to access any of your assets in your personal name. Just make certain your insurance policy is in the same name as the property owner.
Consider an umbrella policy that will pick up where your underlying property policy leaves off. Again, make sure you have the correct name listed as named insured on this policy as well.
For any questions on anything discussed please feel free to give us a call at 704-494-9495. Our agents can help explain these matters to you and get you a free quote on this coverage.
