What insurance is needed for a new mini excavator hire business?

[NEAOLee]

Hello all,
I am hoping i can get help and advice on what insurance and any other cover would be needed to lease out a mini excavator as a business? Thanks in advance.

 

[bodgitt&scarperLTD]

It’s pretty difficult (read: impossible) to get insurance for just one or two.
Once you have fifty or so, then you can get a policy where you can get the customer to pay an extra percentage of the hire to cover the machine. Like the big boys do.

Before that though, the only way to be be covered properly is to get the customer to sign up for short term insurance through someone like jcb. Which costs as much as a weeks hire for a weeks insurance, and as they have to sit down and do it it’s a hoop they won’t jump through either.

not what you wanted to hear I’m sure but it is what it is. Be very careful to, with just a machine or two offering self drive hire you will be a magnet for thieves who will have you deliver it to site only for it to disappear. Happens all the time.

Self drive plant hire is a race to the bottom to be frank. People will treat your machines like shit and you’ll be forever trying to get builders to pay for damages. Until you are running dozens of machines with staff and procedures in place the insurance and damages issues mean you stand to loose a lot for a measly potential profit.