Article Research

[Limo Scene]

I am working on an upcoming article and would like to ask some questions from operators on the forum:

When you "shop" for insurance, what are you looking for?

How do you find insurance agents?

What do you do to get the best price?

When do you start shopping (as in one month, 2 months etc before your expiration)

Disclaimer: Any comment made be used for publication. If you desire your name and company name to be included in my article, provide it.

Thank you in advance for your comments. I am under a deadline so if you are reading this and want to comment - do it now.

[BLVD Limo]

Insurance? Really? Who needs that? *expressing sarcasm*

[Dean Schuler]

A solid company with a good history and better rates. We shop six to eight months out. Options for transportation insurance are limited in South Louisiana. The best way to get a good price is to have a great safety record. Higher deductibles are helpful too.


I am working on an upcoming article and would like to ask some questions from operators on the forum:

When you "shop" for insurance, what are you looking for?

How do you find insurance agents?

What do you do to get the best price?

When do you start shopping (as in one month, 2 months etc before your expiration)

Disclaimer: Any comment made be used for publication. If you desire your name and company name to be included in my article, provide it.

Thank you in advance for your comments. I am under a deadline so if you are reading this and want to comment - do it now.

[Dean Schuler]

A solid company with a good history and better rates. We shop six to eight months out. Options for transportation insurance are limited in South Louisiana. The best way to get a good price is to have a great safety record. Higher deductibles are helpful too.


I am working on an upcoming article and would like to ask some questions from operators on the forum:

When you "shop" for insurance, what are you looking for?

How do you find insurance agents?

What do you do to get the best price?

When do you start shopping (as in one month, 2 months etc before your expiration)

Disclaimer: Any comment made be used for publication. If you desire your name and company name to be included in my article, provide it.

Thank you in advance for your comments. I am under a deadline so if you are reading this and want to comment - do it now.

[Limo Scene]

Excellent Dean!

[wflimonj]

I leave it up to my insurance agent who I have been dealing with since I was 18. He does my personal, limo, and health insurance. I meet with him face to face. Its great having a local guy. We start seaching about 3 to months away for the best rates. I trust him. I don't want somebody across the country because I like to meet with him and get to know him on a personal basis.

[BLVD Limo]

Paging Phil...Paging Phil. I think this would be an opportunity for you to educate us a little on what someone should do when shopping for insurance. After all, you are the forum's insurance expert.

[Wade Randolph]

Luff we start 60 days out. I don't think loss runs are acceptable beyond that point. We ask the agents to send us a email packet asking what info they will need from us. We fill out those forms and send them back with our loss runs and copies of our chaffuers info and vehicle info. We then compare their rates with the coverage that they offer. What they really look for are chargeble losses. The better they are the lower the quote. We also look at the rating of the actual insurer.

[Geoff Levine]

I took the advice of one of my most trusted friends and went with his broker. Not only that, but I took his advice to go with Lancer even though they were more expensive. He told me that he had a huge claim and they were very easy to deal with and that alone was worth the extra price. Also, he said they are one of the best(if not the best) companies to go with if you need $5 million coverage.

I keep waiting for my guy to screw up and I plan on going with the Limo Insurance King(Phil), but I have to be loyal for now.

So to sum it up, I ask my more experienced friends for their advice and I go from there.

[brandon1]

im about to hit my 1 year mark and i need to renew my insurance. does anyone have any good contact information for people to get a price on a 5 million dollar policy in michigan? also should my insurance price be cheaper this year considering ive been in business for 1 year with 0 incidents or claims and also now i have two buses instead of one.

[Limo Insurance King]

I would like to provide some input, but I am very limited on time as I am getting married Oct. 3rd and we've had to put this together in six months (no, it's not a shotgun wedding) so I will try tonight, but I would like to just talk a little about how the process works and about how the insurance industry works. Just be easy on me, insurance is one of those things that can and usually does cause tension and it really doesn't have to.

[Cedar Mill Limousine]

I look at it the way I would look at any other partnership. It is more than cost and coverage. Can you trust them? Do they truly understand what good service is? Come up with some questions that you know answers to and see if they are honest. If you pay attention you can tell a lot about someone within the first 5 minutes.

[Limo Scene]

Well, come on Phil - I have to write this tonight and submit in the morning and I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on the matter.

[Limo Insurance King]

I've been trying to write something on this for three hours and I have four pages of jibberish because I have to "shop" insurance as well with the different carriers so I approach this subject differently as I deal with working with carriers on obtaining the coverages requested and the maximum number of legitimate credits applied and finding a carrier that is going to do that at a premium that is fair for both parties--I know that this sounds strange but sometimes having a very low premium can end up hurting you is you have a large loss because your loss ratio would be absolutely destroyed but that rarely occurs and I wouldn't expect someone to concern themselves with their future loss ratios when purchasing an insurance policy for their current year.

To begin with, there is no one universal way to go about procuring insurance because each risk is different because of size and scope of operations. For a majority of the smaller operations there are only a few insurance companies and then the larger the operation to more options available to choose from to insure and unless an operation has loss control issues then the options to choose from are smaller but this is a good thing because the better insurance companies that underwrite their product correctly and therefore can provide a fair premium do not just insure anything that lands on an underwriters desk--it has to make sense and if it doesn't the company declines to quote and in their eyes they kept bad business off the books and in most cases they are correct, in some instances good companies have declined to quote a piece of business that I felt was good but there's nothing to do if the risk doesn't fit the underwriting guidelines.

Make sure you get the coverage you asked for and that you understand what it is (there is a difference between Comprehensive and Specified Perils). Try to place your insurance with an insurance company that is admitted in your state (there are also non-admitted companies) and that it is rated in the A's with A.M. Best and you can check Best ratings following this link: www.ambest.com. How these affect pricing and service are another discussion.

Most importantly, make sure that your broker is knowledgeable about not only insurance but also your industry. The transportation insurance industry is very small when it comes to passenger transportation and being with someone who understands it is important.

[vipentertainment]

Phil (1st of all, Congrats on the upcoming marriage)

explain to us why it is so difficult to get quotes. i know i am a new company, approaching 3 years, but that is the most frusterating part to me, not getting quotes until the final hour (literally) of your previous policy expiring. why cant this be handled better, more efficiently?

by the way anyone looking for insurance, Phil does get things handled, and the ladies at Kiely-Hines work hard to keep us rolling!

[Limo Scene]

Thanks. The article has been filed. I appreciate the input.