Equipment Rental Insurance
The 14% insurance premium that gets charged by Trusted Rentals to each rental is only on the base rate of the machine for the duration that the machine is in your care.
EXAMPLE: If you want a mini excavator for a week, it would be 1300.00 for the base rate times 14% or 182.00 extra for that.
The insurance covers you for physical damage only on the machine while it is in your care. It will cover in the event that something happens to the machine through no fault of your own. (Examples of this are lightning strikes, a tree falls on it, it catches fire, vandalism and theft.) It is not insurance that covers you for misuse, mishandling or overloading the machine while you are working in the machine. If you smash into a tree or hit a rock or break the windshield or dent the body or undercarriage in any way, these are all operator-associated damages that are not covered by the 14%. If you tear the track, tear the track off the machine or if you tear a hydraulic hose off the machine and we have to fix it, you are responsible for the charges from the time that we leave the shop in the service truck to the time we get back to the shop.
Examples of Machine Misuse or Mishandling Not Covered by Insurance
If a hydraulic seal on a cylinder starts leaking on its own, as they do, then you are not responsible for that, but if you dent or bend the piston that goes into the cylinder and the seal rips and starts leaking, then you would be responsible for that. The only thing that is covered by the 14% by some fault of your own is if there is a total loss. (If the excavator rolls down a hill while you are operating it or it flips over and is a total loss, then I have a deductable that you are responsible for. The deductable fluctuates based on the value of each machine. This is true of all the heavy equipment machines.) The 14% does not have any provision for medical coverage either; it is only physical damage to the machine through no fault of your own.
Waiving the Insurance Fee:
At times we do rent to contractors that are insured to rent equipment. If this is the case and you would like to waive the insurance fee, then we just need proof from your insurance carrier that you are insured for that, and we need that on file at our office prior to the equipment being dropped off.
The biggest issue we see here is that contactors "think" they are insured when they are not. Or they are insured but the limits of the insurance aren't enough to cover the value of the machines they are renting. Then contractors think that their "general liability" portion of their insurance package automatically covers them to rent equipment and it does not. The equipment renters portion it is a separate section under their general liability that has to be filled out and paid for as a separate line item with limits applied.
Equipment Considerations during the Winter:
Rental of the excavators in the winter has proven to be problematic. People don't seem to understand that you need to shovel the tracks out at the end of each work day. The loose materials build up in the track system and then freezes overnight which prevents the machine from moving the next day. The gearing of the final drives on an excavator is no match for frozen dirt and it is very easy to tear out a final drive assembly which can be 10,000.00 or more to repair or replace per side. It is imperative that you shovel the tracks out each and every day and then gently drive the machine forward or back at the start of the new work day to make sure the drive system functions like it should.
The other thing that can happen is that the materials build up to the point where they are higher than the top rollers and you can derail the track fairly easily knocking it off the front idler. So extra care needs to be implemented for running these machine in winter because dealing with any of these aforementioned types of problems can be very time consuming and costly...it's really 10 minutes worth of work to save potentially thousands in repair costs.
More Examples of Machine Misuse or Mishandling Not Covered by Insurance
Example #1: Frozen material not removed from the track the night before
Example #2: Torn out chain hook
Example #3: Final drive cover caved in
Example #4: Frozen Tracks
NOTE: You need to shovel out the tracks of heavy equipment on a daily basis so the undercarriage doesn't freeze solid. If all the dirt freezes and you try to move a machine, it could tear out the gearing in the final drives and could cost 10K to repair.
For more information call or Email Trusted Rentals LLC.
Phone: 603-763-1319
