Auto repair shop insurance combines garage liability, garagekeepers cover for customer vehicles in your care, workers compensation and commercial property. Garagekeepers is the distinguishing cover, because standard general liability will not pay for a customer's car.
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Two covers do the work here, and the second one is the reason a garage policy is not simply a contractor policy with a different name on it.
Damage to a customer's car while it is in your care, custody or control: on the lift, in the bay, in the lot overnight, or on a test drive. General liability specifically steps around property in your keeping, which is why a shop without this is uninsured for the thing most likely to happen.
Third-party injury and property damage from your premises and your operations. A customer who slips in the waiting area, damage caused by a vehicle you were operating, and the completed-operations half that answers for a repair that fails after the car leaves.
Lifts, hot exhausts, compressed air, batteries and heavy components. Frequency lives with hands and backs; severity lives with anything that involves a vehicle coming down.
Your own vehicles, plus the cover that answers when a technician drives a customer's car. Test drives and collections are where garage claims most often happen off the premises.
The building or the fit-out, hoists, alignment rigs, diagnostic gear and the stock on the shelves. Equipment here is heavy, fixed and expensive to replace in one go.
Waste oil, solvents, coolant and batteries. Standard wordings exclude pollution, and a garage generates it every day, which makes this an endorsement rather than an afterthought.
The repair that does not hold, or the part that fails. Distinct from garagekeepers, because this is about the work rather than about custody of the vehicle.
Garagekeepers is also the cover most often held at the wrong limit, because the limit has to contemplate the whole lot on a bad night rather than one car. Our brokers size it against how many vehicles sit on site overnight rather than against an average, and check the equipment schedule against what a hoist actually costs to replace while they are there.
Your shop
Most shops do several of these. What moves the file is not the work so much as how many vehicles you are responsible for at once, and whether any of them leave the premises with your staff in them.
Servicing, engine and transmission work, suspension, exhaust. The bread and butter, and the work that keeps the largest number of customer vehicles on your premises at any one time.
If you have taken on a fleet contract since the last renewal, the garagekeepers limit set for a retail shop is almost certainly now too low.
This is the single most common gap in an auto repair programme, and it is not an obscure clause. General liability excludes property in your care, custody or control by design. A customer's vehicle sitting on your lift is the definition of property in your care, which means the cover that answers is garagekeepers, or nothing does.
Where the line falls, in practice:
Covered: A car damaged on your lift or in your lot, where garagekeepers is in force and the limit reaches. This is the whole reason the cover exists.
Not covered: The same car, on general liability alone. The care, custody and control exclusion removes it, and no amount of general liability limit changes that.
Covered: A vehicle damaged on a test drive, where drive-other-car or the equivalent extension has been added.
Not covered: The customer's belongings inside the car. Personal property in a vehicle is usually excluded outright, which is worth saying at the counter rather than after.
The limit matters as much as the cover. Garagekeepers is generally written per location, so the number has to contemplate every vehicle on the premises on your busiest night, not the value of the one you happened to be working on. A shop holding eight cars overnight is carrying eight cars of exposure. Have the limit checked against the number you actually hold overnight, not against an average week.
The gaps
Eight that matter on a garage schedule. The first is the reason this trade needs its own policy rather than a contractor's.
WHAT YOU NEED
Garagekeepers. Care, custody and control is excluded from general liability by design, so the one thing you hold most of is the one thing it will not answer for.
WHAT YOU NEED
Rarely anything. Personal property in a customer's car is usually excluded outright. Say so at the counter and put it on the work order.
WHAT YOU NEED
Nothing. Resulting damage is generally covered, the labour to put your own work right is not. Price comebacks into the job.
WHAT YOU NEED
Drive-other-car or an equivalent extension. Once a technician is behind the wheel on a public road it is an auto exposure, not a premises one.
WHAT YOU NEED
A pollution endorsement. Standard wordings exclude pollution, and a garage produces it daily rather than exceptionally.
WHAT YOU NEED
Workers compensation. Garage liability answers for third parties, and a technician under a raised vehicle is not a third party.
WHAT YOU NEED
An equipment schedule that is current. Diagnostic gear is expensive, portable and frequently missing from a policy written years ago.
WHAT YOU NEED
A certificate from the machine shop, the auto electrician or the mobile tech. Work you subcontract can return as your claim.
The pattern is that a garage policy answers for custody and for operations as two separate ideas, and most underinsurance here comes from assuming one covers the other. Speak to our team about the limit rather than the premium, and ask about cover for a technician's injury at the same time.
Driver assistance
Cameras, radar and sensors now sit behind windscreens, in bumpers and inside mirrors on ordinary cars. Routine work disturbs them, and the consequences of not putting them back are unusually one-sided.
A windscreen replacement, a bumper repair, an alignment, a suspension change. None of these feel like electronics work, and all of them can move a sensor out of the position its software assumes it is in.
Nothing warns anybody. The car drives normally out of the bay and behaves normally for weeks. The failure appears at the one moment the system was supposed to intervene, and by then the vehicle is at speed and somebody is hurt.
The work was finished, the vehicle was collected, and the damage occurred afterwards, which puts it against the products and completed operations side of the policy rather than garagekeepers. It also puts the shop's records of what was calibrated, and by whom, at the centre of the file.
The practical answer is unglamorous and effective: know which jobs trigger a calibration, document what was done, and confirm with your broker that this work sits inside your declared scope rather than beside it. It is also worth understanding how cover behaves after the job is closed, because that is the half of the policy this lands on.
Speak to our teamCustody check
A garage policy is really an argument about custody: whose property, whose premises, whose road. Every line below changes where that boundary sits. Nothing is priced and nothing is submitted.
Where your exposure actually sits
Nothing ticked. Choose what your shop does and the exposures it creates will list here.
Bring this to a renewal conversation. On this trade the limit is worth more attention than the premium, because the limit is what fails first.
Speak to our teamCost
No published figure survives contact with an actual shop. Six inputs move a garage premium further than the rest.
The garagekeepers limit is the largest single decision on a garage policy, and it follows how many cars are on the premises on a bad night rather than an average one.
Technician payroll on a class that contemplates raised vehicles and heavy components. It is the largest line on most shops once staff are on the books.
Whether you own or lease, how many bays, and what the fixed plant is worth. Hoists and alignment rigs are usually valued at what they cost, not what they cost now.
Test drives, collections and deliveries. The more a technician is on the road in somebody else's car, the more of your exposure sits off the premises.
What you generate, how it is stored and how it leaves. It is a modest line that gets expensive if it has never been declared at all.
Three years of loss runs, and how well the shop documents work orders and sign-offs. On a custody trade, paperwork is genuinely part of the risk.
Three marks is an input that moves a garage premium more than the others listed here. It is a relative weighting drawn from how these behave on a custody trade, not a rate and not a quote.
A garage premium is really two premiums: one for the people and the premises, one for other people's vehicles. The second is where shops are most often underinsured, and it is also the cheapest thing on this page to get right. Request a quote and we will come back with real numbers against your real lot.
Talk to an expertProcess
We understand your business first, then take it to the carriers who want to write it. An advisor walks you through the options and what they cost. No two files are the same, so what follows is the shape of a placement rather than a script.
What you do, where, with how many people, and what your contracts oblige you to carry. Those answers decide which markets will look at the file at all, and how much of the rest of this applies to you.
One set of information goes to underwriters with genuine appetite for your work rather than whoever happened to quote last renewal. An advisor talks you through what comes back and what it costs.
A main contractor wants proof before your crew can start, and this is how COIs get issued here. We read the certificate request against your contract so it asks the carrier for the wording that contract needs rather than a generic form that usually fails review.
It is the cover that answers for damage to a customer's vehicle while the vehicle is in your care, custody or control. That includes on the lift, in the bay, in the lot overnight and generally on a test drive. It exists because general liability deliberately excludes property in your keeping, so without it the vehicles you hold are the one thing your policy will not pay for.
No, and the names being similar causes real problems. Garage liability answers for injury and damage to third parties arising from your premises and operations. Garagekeepers answers for the customer's vehicle itself. A shop generally needs both, and having one is not evidence of having the other.
Enough to contemplate every vehicle on your premises at once, because the limit is usually written per location rather than per vehicle. A fire or a storm involves the whole lot, not the car you were working on. Count what is there on your busiest night and work from that.
Usually not. Personal property left in a vehicle is commonly excluded outright, which is a difficult conversation to have after a break-in and an easy one to have at the counter. Putting it on the work order in writing is the practical answer.
Once your technician is driving a customer's vehicle on a public road, the exposure has moved from your premises to the road, and it is typically drive-other-car or an equivalent extension that responds. It is a common gap in shops that offer collection and delivery.
Generally yes, as an endorsement. Standard wordings carry a pollution exclusion, and a workshop produces waste oil, solvents and coolant as a matter of routine rather than by accident. It is a modest addition that closes a category of claim entirely.
Frequently still the shop, which surprises people. Supplying a component does not transfer responsibility for fitting it or for its performance once fitted. If you accept customer-supplied parts, agree the position in writing before the work rather than after a failure.
It depends whether that work sits inside your declared scope. Calibration is increasingly part of ordinary jobs like windscreen and bumper work, and a miscalibrated system that contributes to a collision becomes a completed operations claim against the shop. Confirm the position specifically rather than assuming it is included.
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Tell us how many vehicles you hold and what your techs drive, and we will come back with a garagekeepers limit built on your worst night rather than an average one.
