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Goldbridge Insurance Services
Your property policy stops 100 feet from the building. Everything your business owns that moves is on the other side of that line.
Here is a sentence that costs contractors real money every year: we have property insurance, so our equipment is covered.
It isn’t, and the reason is printed in the form.
The standard commercial property form covers business personal property located in the described building, or in the open, or in a vehicle, within 100 feet of the premises. That is the geography of the policy.
There is a coverage extension for property temporarily away from the described premises, at a location you don’t own, lease or operate. The limit on that extension is $10,000.
Ten thousand dollars. One mini excavator, one skid steer, one decent set of survey equipment, one vacuum pump assembly. A single item can exceed the entire off-premises extension, and most contractors have a yard full of them plus whatever is on trailers today.
That gap is what inland marine exists to fill. It is not a refinement on a property policy. For a business whose equipment works away from a fixed address, it is the property policy.
Inland marine is the category for property that moves, property in transit, and property at locations you don’t control. For most commercial accounts it shows up as one or more of these:
Equipment is insured one of two ways, and the choice determines what happens at claim time.
| Approach | How it works | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled | Each item listed by make, model, serial number and value. Pays the scheduled amount. | Anything not on the schedule is not covered. Equipment bought mid-term and never reported is uninsured. |
| Blanket | A single limit over all owned equipment, usually with a per-item maximum. | If total values exceed the blanket limit, a large loss is proportionally short. Per-item caps can be lower than your biggest machine. |
| Unscheduled small tools | A separate sublimit for items below a dollar threshold. | The threshold and sublimit are both usually lower than the reality of a working crew’s truck. |
Most real programs use a combination: big items scheduled, small tools blanketed. The failure mode is almost always the same. The schedule is a year out of date and the two machines bought in spring aren’t on it.
If you buy equipment regularly, ask about a newly acquired equipment provision. It gives you automatic coverage on new purchases for a set number of days, usually with a dollar cap, provided you report them. That reporting requirement is not optional and nobody remembers it.
You rent a lift for three weeks. The rental agreement makes you responsible for damage, theft and often loss of rental income while the unit is out of service.
Your general liability policy does not cover damage to property in your care, custody and control. Your auto policy does not cover a towed lift. And unless your inland marine schedule carries a specific limit for leased or rented equipment, your own equipment coverage does not extend to gear you don’t own.
The fix is a rented and leased equipment limit sized to the largest single piece you would ever have on rent, not the average. Rental companies will also ask for a certificate naming them as loss payee, which is a separate item to get right.
Worth reading the rental contract for the loss of use clause too. Some inland marine forms cover the rental company’s lost revenue while the machine is being repaired and some don’t, and that number can be meaningful on a long repair.
Fire gets the attention. Theft writes the checks.
Job site theft, trailer theft and tools taken out of parked trucks are the dominant loss category for equipment coverage, and carriers know it. Expect policy conditions around it: requirements that trailers be locked and hitched, that equipment keys not be left in machines, that items in vehicles be locked out of sight.
Some forms carry a separate, lower sublimit for theft from an unattended vehicle. Find yours before you need it.
Telematics, GPS trackers, locked yards and documented serial numbers all help on both sides of the equation. They reduce the loss frequency and they make the claim provable, which matters more than owners expect. A machine with no serial number recorded anywhere is a difficult claim.
Same fork as property, same consequences.
Most equipment schedules default to actual cash value, which means depreciation comes off the check. On a seven-year-old machine that can be half the replacement price. Replacement cost on equipment is available from many markets and is worth pricing, particularly for newer fleets.
Either way the scheduled value has to be realistic. Scheduling a machine at what you paid for it in 2018 doesn’t help you, and neither does scheduling it above its actual value, because you’ll be paying premium on a number the carrier will not pay out.
Contractors. Excavators, skid steers, compressors, generators, lifts, laser levels, compaction equipment, trailers. Plus installation floater coverage on materials sitting at a site before the work is accepted, which is where a lot of uninsured theft happens.
Portable sanitation. This one is frequently missed. Your units are business personal property sitting at customer locations, which puts every one of them outside the 100-foot radius of your property policy. A few hundred units at a few hundred dollars each is a real number, and events and job sites are where they get damaged, tipped, burned and stolen. Vacuum pumps and tank equipment mounted on trucks also need to be addressed, since the auto policy covers the vehicle rather than specialized mounted equipment on every form.
Towing and roadside. Wheel lifts, dollies, recovery gear, straps and chains. On-hook coverage for customer vehicles you’re transporting is a separate conversation from your own equipment and both need limits.
Janitorial and cleaning. Floor machines, extractors, pressure washers and supplies, all of it living inside buildings you don’t own.
Landscaping and tree service. Mowers, chippers, stump grinders, climbing and rigging gear, all of it on trailers and all of it a theft target.
Only within 100 feet of your described premises, plus a small off-premises extension commonly capped at $10,000. For equipment that works at job sites, that is not meaningful coverage.
The auto policy covers the vehicle. Tools, equipment and cargo inside it are a different coverage, and specialized equipment permanently mounted on a truck needs to be addressed specifically.
Needs its own limit. Your owned-equipment coverage does not automatically extend to rented gear, and the rental contract makes you responsible for it.
Not by default. If your crews bring their own tools, an employee tools limit can be added, and it prevents an awkward conversation after a truck break-in.
Coverage on materials and fixtures you’re installing, from the time you take possession until the installation is accepted. It covers the window units sitting in the parking lot on Friday night.
No. Builders risk covers a structure under construction. Installation floater covers your materials and work within someone else’s project. Larger jobs often need both.
Usually same day. If your policy has a newly acquired equipment provision, you may have automatic coverage for a limited period, but only if you report the purchase inside the window. Call when you buy, not at renewal.
Equipment coverage sits alongside commercial property for your fixed location, commercial auto for the vehicles that haul it, and general liability for the work itself. Our business insurance overview shows the full program.
We will tell you whether your schedule is current, whether your blanket limit actually covers your total values, whether rented equipment has a limit, and what your theft sublimits are. If you don’t have a schedule, that’s the first thing we’ll help you build.
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This page is general information about how inland marine and contractors equipment coverage is typically structured. It is not legal advice and it is not a description of any specific policy. Coverage is determined solely by the terms, conditions and exclusions of the policy you hold, including all endorsements.
