When times are tough, is third party always best?
In the current economic climate, whilst the bottom line is very much top priority, renewing your van insurance may well seem as unimportant to you as your mother-in-law’s birthday.
Both are tasks that can fill you with an unwarranted dread. If you forget the latter, you know you’re in for an earful from the wife. However, if you neglect to look for cheap van insurance quotes when that time of year rolls around, you’re risking more than ‘the cold shoulder’ for a few days, if you get caught short.
Annual van insurance is an inevitability that, as a business owner, you can not send a belated card to and hope it gets you back in the good books. If the worst were to happen, especially for sole traders, and your van is stolen with all of your work gear in the back, your livelihood has literally been swiped from under you nose.
In more properous times, it is great to be fully comp.; one has to be pragmatic, however: when cash is short and you are looking for cheap van insurance to tide you over, then third party, fire and theft is a feasible option. If nothing else, at least you are covered if an unscrupulous crook does away with your motor whilst you’re at your mother-in-laws 125th birthday party and they decide your vehicle has more potential than the broomsticks lined up along the garage wall.
Many business-minded people who have been fully comp for years, but are finding economics tough, look at taking out third party cover as an admission of failure, but that is just not so. Even if you go for the cheapest van insurance available, at least you’re covered to some extent.
It is worth considering the options and the false economy that this may action may disguise. This is going to sound like backwards logic but there is a method in the madness.
You know how much your van, or any commercial vehicle you own, is worth and what it would cost to replace. If you have enough money in the kitty to do so, but have one eye on cashflow, then it may be worth risking going with cheap van insurance, such as third party.
If, however, you have very little in the pot then you absolutely must take out fully comprehensive van insurance. If your business is reliant on a van for transport and you cannot replace it following an accident that your reduced van insurance does not cover, you may as well shut up shop and go home.
Make sense? Now, I’m not advocating that either is the right answer for you or your business, especially of you are a start-up or apprentice and you have not yet realised your full earning potential. It is always the temptation to go with cheap van insurance for young drivers, but that can be habit forming and is not always the best solution.
Whichever policy you decide upon, be sure that the very basics are covered in any event. Irrespective of cashflow, if you need van insurance, you need van insurance.