When I go through a contractor's insurance with them, I always ask where their materials sit between the supplier and the finished install. Most owners have thought carefully about their liability and their trucks. Far fewer have thought about the furnace riding in the trailer, or the siding stacked in a client's driveway for three nights while the crew works through it.
Stock sitting in your shop is normally covered under the contents section of your commercial property policy, at the address shown on that policy. Once it leaves that address, most commercial property policies provide little or no coverage, and any transit extension they do carry tends to have a modest limit that is rarely sized for a full job's worth of material.
An installation floater picks up where the shop coverage stops. Floater is the industry's word for coverage that travels with the property, and this one follows the materials you will be installing from the time they leave your premises, through the drive and any days on site, until the work is installed or accepted, depending on the wording.
Even a same-day install has real exposure. A collision on the Henday can write off the load along with the truck. A trailer left outside a restaurant at lunch is an easy target, and material on site stays exposed to theft and fire until it is in the wall. Your auto policy will not fill that hole, because the Alberta standard owner's automobile policy covers the vehicle and specifically excludes the contents of trailers. Your liability policy pays for damage you cause to other people's property, not for replacing your own.
Some trades feel this more than others. An HVAC contractor hauling a furnace, a condenser and ductwork can have more value in one trailer than a painter goes through in a month, and siding and window installers often work through a delivered order over several days, which means several nights of exposure. Electricians, plumbers, flooring and cabinet installers supply and install too. The more your materials are worth and the longer they sit away from your shop, the more this coverage matters.
Many trades also assume the general contractor's builder's risk policy covers everything on site. Sometimes it does, but it may not reach materials still in transit, and plenty of renovation jobs have no builder's risk policy at all.
If you want to know whether your materials are protected from your shop to sign-off, send me your policy and a rough idea of what you usually have on a trailer or a site at one time. I work with contractors across Alberta and I am happy to walk through it with you.
Mandy Stierman, Founder and Principal Broker
Velocity Insurance Inc. | www.velocityinsurance.ca