About Skip Hire Insurance
GM Insurance Brokers are specialists in the Recycling Industry.
Over 90% of the insurance business that we arrange for our clients is for Skip Hire or Waste Transfer Station Operators. Therefore, we have an excellent understanding of this industry and some of the problems you may face in arranging insurance.
We find that there are usually 3 or 4 types of insurance policies that Waste Operators require, being Vehicle or Fleet Insurance, Public and Employers Liability Insurance, Plant Insurance and Property Insurance.
Vehicle Insurance
If you have more the 1 vehicle, we recommend that you arrange "Multi Vehicle Insurance" and have all vehicles owned by you insured under 1 policy. Not only will you receive a discount from insurers for having all of your insurances with one insurer, you have the convenience of having one insurance document covering all of your skip vehicles and commercial vehicles. Some insurers will "mirror" or "reflect" the no claims bonus that you may have earned under one HGV Insurance policy onto another. This gives you a no claims bonus over all of your vehicles.
Fleet Insurance.
If you have more than 5 vehicles, Skip Hire Fleet Insurance could be the right option for you. The benefits of having fleet insurance is that any additions to the fleet would enjoy the overall fleet discount under the policy. Often, fleet insurance can be arranged to include younger drivers. There are incentives for haulage companies to employ younger drivers, so if you have a mix of younger and older drivers, a fleet insurance would be suitable for your business. If you require a quote for your fleet insurance, we will require a number of documents from you, being, your fleet insurance experience document, a list of the vehicles insured under the fleet and a list of your regular drivers. We recommend that it is good practice for your business to invoke an ethic of good driving practices. This could be implemented by introducing a drivers handbook. A drivers handbook is nothing if it isn't read, acknowledged and signed by your drivers. There are many aspects to arranging the right fleet insurance, making sure that the insurance arranged is competetive is often the easy bit, the hard bit and this is where we excel - is arranging the right insurance at the right price.
Property Insurance
If you've tried to insurance the buildings or offices of your waste transfer station, you'll know two things. First of all, not many insurers are prepared to offer cover and secondly, the handfull of insurers that offer cover, charge in excess of 5 times a normal commercial building insurance premium. This is because of the risk of fire. Over the last 5 years, there have been a number of serious fires at Waste Transfer Stations, which have led to heavy losses for insurers. There are many Waste Transfer Stations that have a "same day clearing" policy, meaning that no waste (or very little waste) is left at the premises overnight. This greatly reduces the risk of fire and in return, many insurers agree to reduce their premium accordingly, if you agree to "same day clear". We have agreed with a number of underwriters to offer good discounts on Waste Transfer Station Property Insurance, where the operators have implemented automated fire extinguishing aparatus. We even check how far away the neares fire brigade is! Information like this can make insurers look very closely at a risk and "cherry pick" a premium for a better risk.
Plant Insurance
If you operate excavators, loading shovels, trommells, shredders and other plant associated to sorting and segregating waste, you may have had big problems trying to find an insurer to cover the plant you own - or hire in. We can arrange cover on plant competetively and with good levels of cover. If your static plant has "automated fire extinguishing" appliances, we can persuade insurance companies that the risk of fire is greatly reduced and as such, negociate for lower premiums. If you plant is fairly new, it could be prudent to ensure that any plant insurance you have is arranged on a "New Replacement Value" as opposed to "Current Market Value" basis. We understand the recycling industry, we understand the items of plant you have and the items that you wish to insure and we present your risk to insurance companies in a professional, diligant and proactive manner in order to obtain the best possible terms.
If you would like to talk to us about your skip hire insurance, please feel free to contact us. We will give you an honest opinion on the insurance products that you currently have and we will tell you immediatly if we think we can offer you competetive products. We look forward to hearing from you.