What Is Used Car Dealer Insurance?
Used car dealer insurance offers coverage to protect auto dealers from incidents that may result in extreme financial loss.
For example, if some of your vehicles are vandalized, an employee steals expensive equipment, or a customer files a claim against your dealership for damages due to a faulty vehicle, your company may be on the hook for the expenses.
To avoid bearing the brunt of these difficulties, it is important to take out a comprehensive used car dealer insurance policy package that includes important coverage such as workers’ compensation, general liability, product liability, and more, depending on your needs.
What Does Used Car Dealer Insurance Cover?
A typical used car dealership insurance policy will cover:
- Bodily and personal injury
- Property damage
- Loss of income due to robbery, burglary, theft, embezzlement, etc.
- Stolen business property
- Vandalism
- Product liability
- Medical costs and missed wages for employees injured on the job
Depending on your specific needs and risk factors, your policy may include more or less coverage than described above. Be sure to review your policy closely to fully understand your coverage.
Who needs garage insurance?
If your business performs services, repairs or preventative maintenance on vehicles that are owned by customers whom pay for these services or have their insurance company pay for these services, then your business fits the profile of a business needing Garage Insurance; Garage insurance coverage is similar to medical malpractice insurance, but is specific for automotive businesses.
New and used car dealers have much more to worry about than meeting quarterly sales quotas. Garages and dealers whose operations include the sale and service of automobiles and motorcycles are subject to numerous risks. Auto collisions during test drives, injuries to drivers and physical damage to inventory caused by vandalism, fire, flooding will all contribute togarage insurance coverages.
Insurance Corner offers an array of garage auto services, and dealership insurance solutions.
- GARAGE KEEPERS LEGAL LIABILITY INSURANCE, Garage Keeper’s Legal Liability policy is intended to coverage damage to an auto held by a garage in their care, custody or control. This is while a vehicle is for sale, service, repair, parking or installing equipment into the vehicle.
- Garage Keepers Direct Primary responds regardless of fault – if the coverage is not written on a direct primary basis then the at fault party’s insurance responds first at the time of a claim.
- General Liability or Garage Liability is the coverage that responds to on premise Liability exposure, which would work best for your business operation?
What Other Insurance Policies Should Auto Dealers Consider?
While garage liability and garagekeepers insurance are the key policies for auto dealerships, here are a few other types of policies to consider:
- Commercial auto: Your dealership likely owns company vehicles, such as courtesy shuttles or other cars used for business purposes. A commercial auto policy generally offers liability coverage, comprehensive coverage, collision, towing and labor costs for disabled vehicles, and loss of use/rental vehicle coverage.
- Commercial property: This provides coverage for your buildings and other property used as part of your business.
- Professional liability: This protects your dealership against lawsuits related to claims that work provided by your business was not completed properly or to professional standards.
- Business interruption: If your dealership or service department suffers damage and must close temporarily, business interruption insurance will cover the loss of income and a temporary space to operate the business in the interim.
- Workers’ compensation: This coverage, required in most states, pays for medical bills, loss of income, etc., when an employee is hurt on the job.
Buying a Car: How Do You Add Insurance If You Buy Over the Weekend?
Even if you’re sure that you’ve considered everything when you’re buying a car, it’s easy to forget about a few small items. One example is insurance. Sure, you probably know which insurance company you’re going with, but how do you add a car to your policy if you’re buying it over the weekend? Since many dealers don’t let drivers take home a new car without proof of insurance, this minor issue may possibly prevent you from driving home in your brand-new car. Fortunately, we have a few tips to make sure that doesn’t happen. Find a new car for sale near you
Check Your Policy
Before you start thinking about how to add your new car to your insurance policy, we suggest checking the terms of your current policy. For many drivers, a newly purchased vehicle is automatically covered for a certain number of days before you ever add it to your policy, precisely to account for situations like this.
Before you visit a car dealer, we suggest asking your insurance agent if your policy has such a clause. If he or she tells you that it’s OK to buy a new car and add it to the policy later, you may want to get this in writing so you can prove to the dealer that leaving the lot without proof of insurance isn’t a problem. If you choose to go this route, however, we strongly suggest that you call your agent as soon as he or she opens his office on the next business day, since many drivers — and even law enforcement officers — can be unfamiliar with this rule.
It’s also important to note that the dealer may not let you leave with your new car just because your insurance company offers a grace period for adding a new vehicle to your policy. This is especially true if the dealer helped you secure financing, since it’s likely that the dealer or the dealer’s bank will want to verify insurance rather than trust that you’ll add it when your agent’s office opens on Monday.
Add It Before You Buy
Yes, it’s possible to add a new car to your insurance policy before you sign the papers. Here’s how: Call your insurance agent the Friday before you buy the car and provide him or her with all the details. This will include the vehicle identification number (VIN), the purchase price and various other important items, including the policy’s effective date. Be sure to set this for the date you buy the car, and you’ll be ready to go.
Of course, you’ll need to know all these details in order to add the car to your policy, meaning you’ll have to be completely set on the exact car you’re buying before you call your agent. As a result, we don’t recommend using this strategy if you haven’t reached an agreement with the dealership, as you don’t want to be locked into a certain vehicle before completing negotiations.
Call the Hot Line
There’s one last resort for drivers interested in taking home their new car the weekend they buy it. Knowing that many shoppers interested in buying a car do so over the weekend, most insurance companies have hot lines (typically using toll-free phone numbers) that allow you to add a car to your policy over the weekend. The downside: If you call the toll-free number, what do you do about the agent you usually work with?
The good news here is that you can usually call your agent when he or she opens on Monday and explain the situation. Typically, they’ll be able to easily access your files, allowing them to transfer the car to your normal insurance policy.
While buying a car can be a stressful process, insurance doesn’t have to be. Our tips ensure that you’ll always be able to drive home happy — and fully insured — in your new car, even if you buy it on a weekend.