Garden Machinery Dealer and Service Insurance

The claim that matters in this trade happens after the customer has left, and it turns on what the workshop did.

A service or repair ends with a machine returned to a customer who assumes it is safe. The realistic failures are specific and familiar to anybody who has run a workshop: a deck guard or chute deflector not refitted, a blade brake or operator presence control that was not checked, an interlock bypassed to run the machine on the bench and left bypassed, a blade fitted the wrong way round or not torqued, a worn blade reused because the customer did not want to pay for a new one, and a chainsaw chain brake that was never tested.

So the discharge record is the defence. A checklist completed per machine covering guards refitted, safety devices tested and functioning, blade condition and fixing, and the machine run and checked after reassembly, signed by the technician. Where a customer declines a safety related part, record the recommendation and the refusal and consider declining the work, because handing back a machine you know is unsafe is a position no record improves.

A service workshop is full of equipment belonging to other people, and the standard liability wording excludes exactly that.

At any point a workshop holds domestic mowers, professional groundcare equipment, ride-ons worth several thousand pounds each, and in a busy spring a yard full of machines waiting for attention. A fire, a flood or a break-in destroys the customers' property rather than your stock, and the figure is the replacement value of other people's machines. Most public liability policies exclude damage to property in the insured's care, custody or control, which is all of it.

So confirm the position in those terms and set the limit on a busy week rather than a quiet one. Spring and early summer are when a workshop is fullest and when the value at risk is highest, including machines left for months by customers who never collect. Check whether machines stored outside in a yard are covered on the same basis as those inside, because overflow in season usually goes outside, and establish whether the limit is per machine or in total.

A garden machinery workshop combines fuel, running engines and hot work in one building, and the fire exposure has recently changed shape.

The traditional risks are well understood: petrol and two stroke mix in containers and in machine tanks, fuel drained and decanted, oily rags and grass debris, running engines indoors with exhaust fumes, and welding or grinding for deck repairs. Controls are correspondingly ordinary: fuel stored in proper containers in a designated place rather than around the workshop, machines drained where they are stored long term, waste and debris cleared rather than accumulated, extraction for running engines, and a hot works routine with a clear area.

The newer exposure is lithium. Battery powered mowers, handheld tools and their chargers are now a large part of the trade, and a battery charging unattended overnight, a damaged pack taken in for assessment, or a stock of packs in a showroom is a fire exposure insurers are actively pricing. Charge in a designated area rather than wherever there is a socket, do not charge damaged or swollen packs, quarantine suspect batteries away from stock, and declare that you handle them, because an undeclared battery operation is the kind of thing that gets examined after a fire.

Three parts of a dealer's business sit outside the ordinary sell and service pattern, and each changes the exposure.

A demonstration puts a customer on a machine on your land, frequently a ride-on they have never operated, sometimes on a slope. Set a rule about who may try what, give a proper briefing rather than a quick word, keep demonstrations to suitable ground, and do not let somebody take a ride-on out unsupervised to see how it handles. A loan machine goes further: it leaves your premises, is used by somebody you cannot supervise, and comes back in unknown condition, so it needs a condition record and written terms rather than a handshake.

Used and part exchange machines put you in the supply chain for equipment whose history you do not know. A machine that was repaired badly by somebody else, has a guard missing, or has been modified becomes your product when you sell it on. So inspect and record used machines before sale against the same checklist as a service, replace missing guards rather than selling as seen, and be careful about describing anything as serviced if it only had a look over.

Two things are commonly missing: customers' machines and products liability. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.