Did you know that there were 5,333 worker fatalities from a related injury in the U.S. in 2019? Every owner of an auto workshop must guarantee the safety and health of everyone who works there. Therefore, it is highly recommended for workshops to be adequately covered with the right type of auto repair shop insurance.
Your employees may face risks, such as chemical exposure. Even your clients could become injured by slipping on wet floors or tripping over electric cords. Your business could be damaged due to fire or catastrophic weather. That is why an auto shop should carry the right auto shop insurance policies to cover all business aspects.
Fortunately, your customers, employees, and small business property should be covered when you carry the right auto shop insurance types.
Keeping Safe in Your Auto Repair Shop
Automotive repair work carries a certain degree of danger for mechanics since it is done all-around dangerous machinery, tools, and chemicals. As a workshop owner, you will not one hundred percent guarantee that your workers will never get hurt. You can lower the risk of an injury by ensuring they receive regular basic safety training on the job.
Protective Gear and Equipment
Apparel worn on the job should be long-sleeved shirts and long pants that will protect the arms and legs from cuts, scratches, and burns.
Wear well-fitting clothing as loose clothing can get caught in equipment or running motor.
Tie up long hair and no wearing jewelry as these can cause potential injuries if caught in running engines and equipment.
Supply protective clothing and equipment to all employees, such as goggles, gloves, kneepads, and the most essential, safety glasses.
Workshop Chemicals
When you first enter the auto repair shop, you may not anticipate seeing containers filled with hazardous substances, but they are there. Different harmful materials are needed for particular repairs in engine parts.
Mechanics get exposed to these workshop chemicals day in and day out. If they get exposed to these chemicals, that can prove to be a serious health issue.
How do they get exposed, you ask yourself? Well, by breathing in dangerous fumes and spillage which could come into contact with their skin.
What are the symptoms of exposure to chemicals? Skin rashes, chemical burns, poisoning symptoms, and organs’ failure like kidneys, eyes, and lungs.
Electrical Safety
Auto repair shop owners and workers must always enforce and obey suitable safety protocols and regulations. Protection policies effectively safeguard staff, their co-workers, clients, and cars from unintended accidents and injuries. Here is a general electrical safety tips list:
- Don’t smoke near or in auto repair shops. Flammable and fuel fluids in cars can be readily set alight
- A clean and organized work area is a must. Any potential materials lying around could be a fire hazard
- In case of a fire, auto technicians need to have easy access to fire extinguishers. There are extinguishers filled with various types of materials that help combat different kinds of fires. i.e., diesel fire, petrol fire, and electrical
- Batteries should be disconnected when technicians are working on electrical systems or around electrical wiring. Even when the car is off, there is still a potential fire hazard when the battery is connected
- Remove ignition keys before working on the electrical wiring of a car. If the key is in the ignition in the ‘on’ position, it can draw an electrical charge from the battery
In addition to the above safety rules, government standards for electrical safety in auto body repair shops lie with the business. The owner or manager’s responsibility is to periodically inspect the auto shop and train their staff on electrical safety.
What Auto Repair Shop Insurance Do I Need
Auto repair shop insurance is essential for the livelihood of your car repair shop. It can be challenging to choose which type of insurance policies to subscribe to.
That being said, every auto repair shop needs the following:
General Liability
Accidents and injuries happen at the drop of a pin, and the harm it does to your business is devastating, especially when you do not have insurance.
What is general liability insurance? It is a form of insurance to cover customers’ claims or any public member against your company. These claims could be anything from injuries, property damage, an illness caused by something at your company, or sold by your company.
Let’s look at a typical example. Say a member of the public slipped on a wet floor on your business property and injured themselves. They have a potential claim for compensation as a result of their injuries. That will potentially lead to costly legal proceedings and end in a potential payout in settlement of the claim if you are found responsible.
That is where general liability insurance comes into play. The insurer can cover these costs and payout, leaving you with peace of mind.
Garagekeeper’s Legal Liability Insurance
If you offer services such as towing or servicing of cars, you need Garagekeepers insurance to protect you from legal liability when you are storing clients’ vehicles.
Garagekeepers insurance protects you in case of theft, vandalism, or collision.
Garagekeepers’ insurance coverage is designed for garagekeepers who run service stations or offer towing services, and it is an optional coverage. It protects your client’s vehicle when it is parked or stored on your premises.
Workmen’s Compensation Insurance
Worker’s compensation, as it is now known, and was changed from Workmen’s Compensation to make it gender-neutral, offers compensation to staff who suffer injuries or illnesses due to their jobs. That insurance is explicitly aimed to pay for medical treatment, missed wages from lost hours at work, and more.
While each state’s rules on worker’s compensation differ, the overview is that worker’s compensation provides wage and medical benefits.
No matter what state you work in, employers are responsible for the payment of workers’ compensation. The contribution for this insurance is calculated as a percentage of your salary.
Workers’ compensation protects the rights of both employers and employees.
Commercial Property Insurance
What is commercial property insurance? It is insurance that helps cover your business and its physical assets. In essence, commercial property insurance pays out to repair and replace any business assets that get destroyed or damaged caused by natural disasters, fire, and theft.
What does it protect? Here are some of the assets:
- The building itself
- Equipment and machinery
- Work tools
- Business furniture
- Inventory
- Personal property lost or damaged whilst on the business premises.
What Does Commercial Building Insurance Cover?
It can also help protect a business’s income. An example is if you have a fire in your workshop and it damages machinery, you will not be able to open for business until it has been fixed. This type of insurance will cover the loss of income of a business during the closure.
Every business has different needs. Insurance companies will consider this and customize a policy to suit your business.
Cyber Liability Insurance
Unfortunately, data breaches and other cybercrime are a part of today’s world. The figures come from one of the industry’s most renowned cybersecurity reports, the Verizon Business 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report.
Cyber liability policies can cover a company’s cost for recovery from a data breach, virus, or other cyber attacks. It will also cover any legal claims arising from that breach. Data infringements have resulted in substantial fines and legal costs in the past few years.
Besides the exorbitant legal fees and expenses, cyber policies normally cover:
- Notification to clients regarding the breach
- To have the personal identities of affected clients restored
- Recovering the said data
- Repairing computer systems affected by the virus etc
Cover-Up and Take Care
Auto repair shops vary in their services, from car mechanical and electrical repair to auto body repair services. Auto technicians or workers in the automotive industry are among those who face many different kinds of dangers in the workplace.
If you own and run an auto repair shop, you are exposed to more than a reasonable share of risks. These include liability risks from possible vehicle damage or theft and employee risks when interacting with heavy machinery and tools.
No businesses are the same, so you must seek a qualified business Insurance professional who can take you through the right choices of auto repair shop insurance is good for your business.
As Benjamin Franklin once said, ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’!
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