Tree related work you shouldn't need insurance for?

[tomstrees]

I'd think that most ground tree and landscaping work would not require insurance unless the risks of damage to property are significant. Anyone experienced engaged in rudimentary ground work should not needlessly fear damaging the property or getting injured. If you do get injured, your health insurance plan should cover medical work. If you're hiring others then clearly risks go up a lot and workman's compensation insurance may be necessary as well as other insurance which can be quite high.

Unfortunately many customers I know get multiple estimates and just will not pay the higher rates of a full service company. As a result the type of jobs I do now, ground tree work, log splitting, etc. are relatively manageable without much in the way of risks. I don't work when I'm tired, I don't do risky work. Insurance can be quite expensive and if you are regularly doing big jobs is likely a necessity. If you do make a claim the insurers jack up the rates considerably to recoup their money, so it is a bit of a rip-off.

 

[Matias]

No insurance; just my assurance I am gonna get insurance when I go out on my own because there aren't enough people around here to make it on just the work I could get from people who don't care if you have insurance. It's a scam for sure, but so are a lot of things that we all begrudgingly accept as the way things are at this point in time, just like our goverment and medical systems.

 

[Jehinten]

There is plenty of risk while working on the ground. Felling trees, hangers falling while working near trees, property damage due to equipment, bodily injury while running equipment, and people are injured with log splitters quite often.

I know of two injuries off hand involving operating a miniskid, I was one of them and I was very experienced with the machine. Long story short, I got complacent in a seemingly open area as I was making multiple trips through there moving debris. I ended up backing over a low stump with the tires on one side of the machine and I flipped it on its side with my leg pinned under it breaking my ankle. Another instance, a local company had a ground guy die after backing a miniskid into a crane outrigger. It broke his pelvis and ruptured his aeorta.


In the long run, insurance is cheap. I've never made a claim, so perhaps I could say it's unnecessary, but its too cheap not to have just in case.

 

[Matias]

I figure, if insurance is too expensive, you need to raise your rates. I hated raising them the first time, but now I laugh at myself for ever thinking I should do this kind of work for so little. I will be raising my rates again when I get certified, as I only bid as low as I do because I don't have the credentials to back up my advice.

 

[ATH]

I figure, if insurance is too expensive, you need to raise your rates. I hated raising them the first time, but now I laugh at myself for ever thinking I should do this kind of work for so little. I will be raising my rates again when I get certified, as I only bid as low as I do because I don't have the credentials to back up my advice.

I think that is the point @tomstrees was making... There are people who don't raise the rates because they don't have insurance.

But I think "insurance is too expensive" doesn't play for the example gave. Low risk= low rates.

How much is that insurance...maybe $2K per year??? I pay (and I'm sure most who will respond) a lot more than that...but I also do aerial work, have pesticide application specific endorsement (required by the State), have listed equipment, coverage for the property, etc...all on the same policy. Take away inland marine/equipment coverage, vehicle policies, etc... I bet you can get it for under $2K. That's less than $1 per hour over the year.

So...your bidding a job for $75 per hour and competing against someone who bids $74 per hour and losing jobs? $600 v $592 for the day? Something else is wrong. The uninsured person is probably the same person that doesn't realize that charging $40/hour is a lot different than making $40 per hour in a factory. They won't be able to sustain that. Sure, it sucks losing to work in the short term, but they cannot afford to keep that up.

 

[ATH]

Workers Comp...ohio is different than most states, so my understanding will be different that others. It is monopolistic state meaning I have to buy it through the state. But they gave me multiple rates. Base rates (before experience discount) is 25% for aerial work, 6% for in the ground pruning, and I think 4% for planting and forestry consulting work we do. Point being, WC for ground work only isn't horrible.

 

[southsoundtree]

Get insurance quotes.

Buy inexpensive insurance.

Charge the customer for the protection that are buying.


Maybe you have the wrong customers. Time to change.


People with money don't hire uninsured people, generally.
Why would they? They are super-on-the-hook for any damage from a random guy working for them.

 

[Lumberjack]

It sounds like you need better customers and/or beter work.

My general liability coverage, if broken down to a monthly rate, equates to 7-10 minutes of our normal production rate.

 

[Reach]

Buy insurance! If you cannot afford insurance for the work you are doing, you definitely need to be charging more or not doing it.

Something as simple as a hydraulic line on your wood splitter that springs a leak and dumps oil on the ground can cost you easily over $50,000 for environmental cleanup. You tap somebody’s fancy plate glass window with a rake handle and crack the glass, $8000. Customer trips and falls in the front yard over a stick you left there or a rake that was laying on the ground, sues you because they have a “bad back“, $1,000,000 easily.

Can you afford to write checks that big when things go wrong? If not, you need insurance. It is amazing the insurance claims that I have had over the years, and we are a really safe operation that very rarely has anything go wrong. I realize that my operation is bigger than yours, but I put a rock through a window with a lawnmower once back when I was young and just mowing lawns for a living. Brand new picture window, $8000 bill. I didn’t think it ever could happen to me. Fortunately, I was insured.

I am not covered by my company, workers comp insurance policy, in my state the rules are funny. I could cover myself, but collecting is nearly impossible as the state considers the owners salary to be $5200 per year. My health insurance will cover me for anything that happens to me personally, but it only covers my person. I have other insurance policies to cover everything else.

 

[ATH]

It sounds like you need better customers and/or beter work.

My general liability coverage, if broken down to a monthly rate, equates to 7-10 minutes of our normal production rate.

Is that 7 to 10 minutes per month? That's really low! Or is that 7 to 10 minutes per hour? That's really high!

 

[Lumberjack]

7-10 minutes of production per month generates the revenue to cover the bill, although the bill is paid annually. I had an audit last month, I haven't heard anything, so I reckon they're good for another year.

 

[evo]

Get insurance! I got slapped with an insane frivolous lawsuit, for ‘trespassing’ on the road to my house.
Three insurance companies stepped up to offer a ‘duty to defend’. I saw the bill from the two firms who did the least amount of heavy lifting. It was half the price of my house, and we ‘settled in great favor of the insured’. Aka us.

More nuts is that it was a very dark cloud lasting nearly 18 months and the stress nearly sank every relationship I have, the business and house. Without insurance we would have been literally screwed.

Only down side is our hands were somewhat tied to defense only.

Probably got back every penny I’ve paid over the years!

 

[evo]

I figure, if insurance is too expensive, you need to raise your rates. I hated raising them the first time, but now I laugh at myself for ever thinking I should do this kind of work for so little. I will be raising my rates again when I get certified, as I only bid as low as I do because I don't have the credentials to back up my advice.

I get what you’re saying but your thinking is backwards. How are you ever going to afford to buy equipment by charging as little as possible?
Same with the credentials.
Walk the walk and bill to grow. Then don’t get comfortable and keep growing

 

[Reach]

I get what you’re saying but your thinking is backwards. How are you ever going to afford to buy equipment by charging as little as possible?
Same with the credentials.
Walk the walk and bill to grow. Then don’t get comfortable and keep growing

I agree with that statement for sure. And on the note of raising prices, once certified, the certification to me doesn’t mean very much. What matters a lot more to me is the skill behind it. I am not a certified arborist, but I consider myself a professional arborist, and no far more than most of the certified arborists in the area. Therefore, I bill based on my skill, not based on a piece of paper that I don’t wish to chase.

 

[tomstrees]

At this point I'm doing less than a couple thousand dollar a year gross. Insurance would run over a thousand. Doing log splitting for people small leaks, people don't care.

"Something as simple as a hydraulic line on your wood splitter that springs a leak and dumps oil on the ground can cost you easily over $50,000 for environmental cleanup."

Really?? You should be writing horror novels, even Stephen King can't compete with that level of fear-mongering and paranoid projection! Small oil leaks in clay soil are not environmental threats, they will get bound up in the clay soils, frankly the tons of toxic fertilizers people dump on their lawns and all the toxic sprays doused on trees is 1000X more of an environmental threat!

 

[Reach]

At this point I'm doing less than a couple thousand dollar a year gross. Insurance would run over a thousand. Doing log splitting for people small leaks, people don't care.

"Something as simple as a hydraulic line on your wood splitter that springs a leak and dumps oil on the ground can cost you easily over $50,000 for environmental cleanup."

Really?? You should be writing horror novels, even Stephen King can't compete with that level of fear-mongering and paranoid projection! Small oil leaks in clay soil are not environmental threats, they will get bound up in the clay soils, frankly the tons of toxic fertilizers people dump on their lawns and all the toxic sprays doused on trees is 1000X more of an environmental threat!

I am not writing horror novels, nor am I paranoid, I am writing facts. I am writing tales of what have happened to real people in this industry. It is very possible. If you are curious what an oil spill cleanup fee would be, call your local environmental recovery company, and ask them what it would cost to remediate a 5 gallon oil spill in your clay soil.

I have never had to pay for an oil spill like this, and hope I never do, but I have seen what can go wrong in this industry. You don’t spent 22 years in business without learning some things.

Back in the days when I still plowed snow, I was sued three times one winter by people who claimed to have slipped and fallen in a parking lot that I had cleared. The smallest lawsuit was for $250,000. Because I had insurance, and kept very good records of the work that I did, I paid zero dollars. If I did not have insurance, I would have spent tens of thousands on lawyers to fight these cases even though I had the records to prove that I was in the right.

It seems to me that a person who only does a little bit of this work every year is the one who should be most concerned about proper insurance, as you can least afford a big expense like what will happen if something goes wrong.

There have been a number of single person operations in my area who have been forced into bankruptcy because something minor went wrong and they did not have the proper insurance for it. Some of these people lost everything they owned because they were not insured.

 

[Reach]

At this point I'm doing less than a couple thousand dollar a year gross. Insurance would run over a thousand. Doing log splitting for people small leaks, people don't care.

"Something as simple as a hydraulic line on your wood splitter that springs a leak and dumps oil on the ground can cost you easily over $50,000 for environmental cleanup."

Really?? You should be writing horror novels, even Stephen King can't compete with that level of fear-mongering and paranoid projection! Small oil leaks in clay soil are not environmental threats, they will get bound up in the clay soils, frankly the tons of toxic fertilizers people dump on their lawns and all the toxic sprays doused on trees is 1000X more of an environmental threat!

This is an article on small residential heating oil spill cleanup costs in Massachusetts, tell me it isn’t possible a blown hose could cause you this trouble. https://www.fletchertilton.com/an-o...our-legal-liability-clean-up-costs-insurance/

We had a hydraulic motor fail suddenly on a wood chipper, fortunately on flat ground, and on a road. In the seconds it took for the operator to run and turn the key off, the machine dumped 15 gallons of oil on the street. Fortunately we were able to clean it up with a pallet of oil dry, otherwise it would’ve been a really expensive day. Even still, we spent hundreds on the oil dry and disposal of it all.

 

[Reach]

From what I am seeing, it seems to me that you are looking at insurance the wrong way around.

Rather than looking at what the cost of an insurance policy is, and thinking “I cannot afford to spend so much on insurance”, you should look at it from the perspective of what you can afford to spend when something goes wrong. You should be thinking “How much can I afford to pay if this fails catastrophically?“ and insure yourself sufficiently to pay for everything else that could go wrong.

If, after considering the numbers, you truly cannot cover the cost of the insurance with what you are charging, it seems to me that you should consider either charging more or doing something different. Operating without insurance is far too risky.

If your wood splitter unhooked from your truck on the way to a job, and crashes into something, did you know that your regular automotive insurance will most likely not cover the damage it causes? You are on the hook for that unless you have liability coverage or a special rider on your commercial auto policy. In fact, if you have your name on the side of your vehicle and it is not covered by a commercial policy, if you are in an accident, your insurance company does not have to pay a dime.

 

[27RMT0N]

Yep. General liability is pretty cheap. Where things really add up (for me at least, with 4 trucks and two chippers) is commercial vehicle insurance.

As much or more than anything, I'm happy to pay insurance just so I don't have to worry and look over my shoulder because I'm doing something 'wrong'. Piece of mind is worth A LOT.

 

[Reach]

Yep. General liability is pretty cheap. Where things really add up (for me at least, with 4 trucks and two chippers) is commercial vehicle insurance.

As much or more than anything, I'm happy to pay insurance just so I don't have to worry and look over my shoulder because I'm doing something 'wrong'. Piece of mind is worth A LOT.

For sure! Liability is comparatively cheap, though I believe my liability costs more than my commercial auto. The real big expense is workers comp coverage, but I don’t believe that you have employees so your liability and Worker’s Comp. would be much lower than ours.