Auto Repair Shop Insurance

We place independent mechanical shops, body-adjacent mechanical, and automobile-service operations. If you are a dealer or a full body shop with spray booths, say so; the form and the appetite change. If you are a neighborhood garage that also sells a few parts, this is the page.

Garagekeepers can be written legal-liability or direct primary. Direct primary is what most shops want when a customer's truck is hit in the lot or damaged on a lift. Limits should follow the highest-value vehicles you actually take in, not an average Civic. We ask about overnight storage, keys, and lot fencing because underwriters do.

Shop property is tools, diagnostic equipment, tires and parts inventory, and the build-out. Diagnostic computers and alignment racks are equipment-breakdown and inland-marine conversations as much as they are contents. A $15,000 tools mention on a BOP is not a scan tool and a full box.

Pollution is real: waste oil, solvents, wash water, and — if you have tanks — tank coverage as a separate form. We will not hide a used-oil tank inside a GL endorsement and call it done. Road-testing and errand runs need garage auto or commercial auto, including hired/non-owned if techs grab a parts-store trip in a personal car.

Auto-services professional liability (a botched repair that causes a later failure without a sudden accident) is a useful companion to GL. It is not a substitute for garagekeepers. In Washington, shop payroll stays with L&I; we place stop-gap and any out-of-state WC.

Risks we actually schedule

• Damage to a customer's vehicle on the lift, in the lot, or during a road test.
• A repair alleged to have caused a later mechanical failure or accident.
• Waste-oil, solvent, and tank pollution that a standard GL form excludes.
• Theft of tools and diagnostic equipment after hours.
• Employee injury around lifts and running engines — L&I in WA, private WC elsewhere.