Commercial Property
Explore protection for insured premises and business contents against covered causes of loss.
Protection for unexpected equipment failures
Equipment Breakdown Insurance
An unexpected equipment failure can interrupt your working day. Explore coverage for qualifying mechanical, electrical, and pressure-system breakdowns affecting insured equipment.
Your Business Depends on Equipment.
Plan for a Covered Breakdown.
Electrical systems, pumps, workshop equipment, and building services can all play a part in keeping a landscaping business operating. Equipment breakdown insurance helps address certain sudden equipment failures that standard property coverage may exclude.
Understand what makes a breakdown covered
What Is Equipment Breakdown Insurance?
Equipment breakdown insurance helps with covered physical damage caused by specified types of equipment failure. Depending on the policy, qualifying events may include mechanical breakdown, electrical arcing, or the rupture of certain pressure equipment.
Coverage is often arranged as an endorsement to commercial property insurance or a Business Owner’s Policy, or through a separate policy. The equipment must fall within the policy’s definition of covered equipment.
For landscapers, this requires a careful distinction: coverage for building systems and stationary equipment does not automatically include mowers, skid steers, excavators, vehicles, or other mobile machinery. Those items may require specialized arrangements.
Explore Breakdown Coverage
Review the protection available
What Equipment Breakdown Coverage Can Include
Depending on the policy and selected coverage, protection may include:
- Repair or replacement costs: Qualifying costs to repair or replace insured equipment damaged by a covered breakdown, subject to valuation and settlement provisions.
- Resulting property damage: Covered physical damage to other insured property caused by the qualifying breakdown.
- Business income: Qualifying income losses when a covered breakdown causes an insured interruption, where this protection is included.
- Extra expenses: Covered additional costs incurred to reduce a qualifying interruption or continue operations, subject to policy conditions.
- Expediting expenses: Certain additional costs to speed up covered repairs or replacement, where included and within applicable limits.
A machine simply stopping is not enough to establish coverage. Maintenance, wear and tear, corrosion, and replacement of worn parts are generally excluded. Limits, deductibles, waiting periods, and exclusions must be reviewed.
Discuss Your Equipment
Match protection to your operations
Review the Systems Your Business Relies On
Start with the equipment at your office, workshop, storage facility, or other insured premises. Discuss electrical distribution systems, heating and cooling, compressors, pumps, and other equipment essential to your operations.
Identify what you own, what you lease, and what your landlord maintains. Equipment installed at customer properties, mobile machinery, and items operated away from your premises need separate attention. Do not assume they fall within the same coverage.
For a quote, prepare equipment descriptions, locations, ages, values, maintenance information, and details of previous failures. Explain how downtime would affect your business and whether temporary equipment or alternative premises would be needed.
Request Your QuoteExplore Other Landscaping Insurance
Coordinate breakdown protection with coverage for property losses, mobile equipment, rented machinery, and everyday business risks.
Tools & Equipment
Review physical damage protection for mobile tools and machinery, including applicable breakdown exclusions.
Rented Equipment Coverage
Consider protection for qualifying physical loss or damage to equipment rented or leased for your projects.
Business Income
Review qualifying income loss and extra expense protection, including which events can trigger coverage.
General Liability
Help protect against covered third-party injury and property damage claims arising from your operations.
Business Owner’s Policy
Explore a package of core business coverages and ask whether equipment breakdown can be added by endorsement.
Equipment Breakdown Insurance FAQs
How is equipment breakdown different from tools and equipment insurance?
Tools and equipment insurance typically addresses specified physical losses to insured items, such as theft or accidental damage, while often excluding mechanical or electrical breakdown. Equipment breakdown addresses defined failure events involving eligible equipment. The policies must be reviewed together.
Are lawn mowers, skid steers, and excavators covered?
Not automatically. Many premises-based equipment breakdown policies exclude or restrict mobile equipment and vehicles. Provide a list of your landscaping machinery and ask whether specialized machinery breakdown coverage is available.
Is equipment breakdown included in commercial property insurance?
It may need to be added by endorsement or purchased separately. Standard commercial property coverage commonly excludes certain mechanical or electrical failures. Check your declarations, endorsements, and covered equipment definitions.
Does it pay for routine repairs and worn parts?
No. Equipment breakdown insurance is not a maintenance contract. Routine servicing, deterioration, worn components, and gradual loss of performance are generally excluded. A loss must satisfy the policy’s definition of a covered breakdown.
Can electrical failures be covered?
Certain electrical failures, such as covered electrical arcing, may qualify. A power interruption or damaged electronic component does not automatically establish coverage. Review the cause of loss, covered equipment, and any applicable exclusions or extensions.
Are customer-owned irrigation systems covered?
Your business’s equipment breakdown policy does not automatically insure systems belonging to customers. Coverage depends on insured property definitions, locations, and your insurable interest. Claims arising from installation errors or service work need a separate liability review.
Does coverage include lost income or replacement rentals?
Business income, extra expense, or temporary equipment costs may be available, but they are not automatically included. A covered breakdown must trigger the relevant protection, and waiting periods, sublimits, and other conditions can apply.
Is this the same as an equipment warranty?
No. A warranty generally addresses specified product defects or repair obligations under its own terms. Equipment breakdown insurance responds to defined insured events and may include related losses where purchased. Neither replaces routine maintenance.
What affects equipment breakdown insurance cost?
Pricing depends on the equipment insured, values, locations, operating conditions, maintenance practices, claims history, and coverage selected. Deductibles, business income limits, and optional extensions also affect your quote.
Prepare for Equipment Failure.
Protect Your Business Operations.
Explore breakdown coverage for eligible equipment and review the protection your landscaping business needs to recover from a covered loss.
Get an Equipment Breakdown Quote
Coverage is subject to policy terms, covered equipment
definitions, limits, deductibles, waiting periods,
exclusions, eligibility, and availability. Examples
do not guarantee coverage for a particular claim.