The moment you take the keys to somebody else's car, a standard business policy stops being enough. Garage and dealer coverage is built for shops, body shops, dealerships and tow operators — the liability of the work, the customers' vehicles in your care, and the inventory sitting on your lot.
It bundles exposures that would otherwise sit on three or four separate policies, and the pieces are easy to under-buy. Here's each one in plain English.
Injury and property damage arising from your premises and your operations, including the auto hazard a standard general liability policy leaves out. This is the base the rest of the policy sits on.
Physical damage to customers' vehicles while they're in your care, custody and control — the single most important coverage on the policy for a repair or body shop.
Garagekeepers is written three ways. Legal liability pays only when you're proven at fault; direct primary pays regardless; direct excess pays after the customer's own policy. Which one you have decides whether a hail-damaged customer car is your problem or theirs.
Comprehensive and collision on the inventory you hold for sale — hail, theft, vandalism and lot damage. Rated on the average value of vehicles on the lot, so keep the figure current.
Service vehicles, parts runners, tow trucks, loaners and demos. Dealer plates and drive-other-car arrangements need to be reflected here rather than assumed.
A repair that fails after the customer drives away. The redo itself is usually excluded, but the damage that flows from it is what this responds to.
The vehicle handed over on a bad check, a fraudulent trade-in title, or a test drive that never comes back. A real dealer exposure and commonly a separate sub-limit.
Employee injury belongs on workers' compensation, not here. New York registers dealers and repair shops through the DMV, and your registration and dealer plates carry their own insurance requirements — we'll check your policy meets them.
Answered the way we'd answer them on the phone.
General liability excludes most auto exposure, and for a shop the autos are the business. Garage liability puts premises, operations and the auto hazard on one form, so a customer's car rolling off a lift is covered rather than argued about.
Damage to a customer's vehicle while you have it. The basis matters enormously: legal liability pays only if you're at fault, direct primary pays regardless of fault, and direct excess sits behind the customer's own insurance. Most shops want direct primary and many discover they only bought legal liability after a hailstorm.
Yes, if you hold vehicles for sale. Garagekeepers covers customers' cars; dealers open lot covers your own inventory. They're different property and the limits are set separately.
Usually, but the details decide it. Loaners, demos and dealer-plated vehicles need to be disclosed, and a customer driving your loaner raises whose policy responds first. Tell us how you actually run it and we'll make the policy match.
Tell us what the operation is — repair, body, sales, towing or a mix — how many vehicles you keep on site, and the average value of any inventory. A licensed NY agent will shop it and confirm the garagekeepers basis before you bind.