Damaged a garage fuel pump

Aretnap

Admiral_Barbarossa said:

Sandtree said:

Grey_Critic said:

The other question is does his insurance cover him for towing a club trailer.

Yes, assuming he has any form of motor insurance

We will wait and see if Social, domestic and pleasure covers commercial driving a club trailer?

Of course it would be covered - driving your mates from the diving club for a trip to the coast clearly is driving for social and/or pleasure purposes.

The only reason it might not be covered is if the OP.'s friend was being paid for the journey (or rather, being paid more than a fair share of petrol money), but nothing he has said suggests that was the case.

Manxman_in_exile

Admiral_Barbarossa said:

Sandtree said:

Grey_Critic said:

The other question is does his insurance cover him for towing a club trailer.

Yes, assuming he has any form of motor insurance

We will wait and see if Social, domestic and pleasure covers commercial driving a club trailer?

Where have you conjured the word "commercial" from?

Grey_Critic

Knowing the way insurance companies wriggle I suspect the OP is going to have problems before the matter is settled.

I trailered all over the place *without* any recompense but if the OP was paid for the fuel I think the insurers may use it as an excuse.

It does however give cause for thought. Many people involved with such as Canoeing, Rowing, Sailing etc do this every week of the year. Would be interesting to hear from people who this of their own experiences.

Car_54

Grey_Critic said:

Knowing the way insurance companies wriggle I suspect the OP is going to have problems before the matter is settled.

I trailered all over the place *without* any recompense but if the OP was paid for the fuel I think the insurers may use it as an excuse.

It does however give cause for thought. Many people involved with such as Canoeing, Rowing, Sailing etc do this every week of the year. Would be interesting to hear from people who this of their own experiences.

See Aretnap's post above. He actually knows what he's talking about.

Aretnap

Grey_Critic said:

I trailered all over the place *without* any recompense but if the OP was paid for the fuel I think the insurers may use it as an excuse.

This is nonsense for all sorts of reasons, not least that the law specifically requires insurance companies to treat car-sharing arrangements as non-commercial use, provided the payment to the driver doesn't exceed the running costs for the journey (ie the cost of petrol, plus a fair amount for depreciation/wear and tear).

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/section/150

Grey_Critic

I might have agreed with you if the claim was just for £2770 for repair of the pump - - quite expensive but a fuel pump is not cheap. Once you add on the £44k for "loss of takings I don’t think the insurers are going to sign it off without making some enquiries.

The trailer may have insurance but I suspect the insurer would be inclined to claim the driver is to blame and push for his insurers to pay out.

S.D & P whilst towing a lot of expensive equipment that is the property of a third party is not an everyday occurrence.

I see Two insurance companies arguing responsibility and then there is the matter of NCD - the driver will be held partly responsible so it will have an impact on his own insurance.

Uxb1

In the gliding/sailplane hobby world towing a sailplane in its trailer is a regular event. Additionally in possibly the majority of cases the towed trailers contents will be worth far more if not multiple times more than the towing vehicle.
These might  be your own glider, your friends glider or the club glider.
I did hear of a similar petrol station disaster decades ago and that was dealt with via the car owners' own vehicle insurance though in that case the sailplane being towed was owned by the vehicle owner.  Well actually its even more complicated as many sailplanes are owned by syndicates of individual who share out use rather than by a sole owner.

Personally I've avoided filling up if at all possible when I had one on tow behind me as the combo is just too long and petrol stations are often just too tight on space to be safe

Sandtree

Admiral_Barbarossa said:

Sandtree said:

Grey_Critic said:

The other question is does his insurance cover him for towing a club trailer.

Yes, assuming he has any form of motor insurance

We will wait and see if Social, domestic and pleasure covers commercial driving a club trailer?

Where are you reading they are being paid as a courier to move the trailer?

It doesn't matter who owns the trailer, lots of people hire caravans from companies, doesn't make their trip commercial in nature.

Even if it turned out the OP was being paid £500 to move the trailer their insurers would still be the RTA insurers for the incident and still have to settle the claim. They'd have a right of recovery from the driver of the vehicle at the time and the policyholder (if a different person) but all they can recover from them is their allocated claims costs and so technically you get their expertise in claims negotiation for free.

Given how difficult it is to recover RTA Insurer claims costs insurers will ensure the claim is mitigated even though in theory they will be reimbursed before you decide to say they'll just pay in full.

pinkshoes

£44,000 loss on the pump if they make 7p per litre profit?

That would be 628,571 litres of fuel sold in 5 days on just that pump. 

That's 87.3 litres a minute with the pump running 24 hours a day for 5 full days. 

Either they are making MUCH more profit than 7p per litre or they have got their maths wrong. 

Let the insurance deal with it! 

Sandtree

pinkshoes said:

£44,000 loss on the pump if they make 7p per litre profit?

That would be 628,571 litres of fuel sold in 5 days on just that pump. 

That's 87.3 litres a minute with the pump running 24 hours a day for 5 full days. 

Either they are making MUCH more profit than 7p per litre or they have got their maths wrong. 

Let the insurance deal with it! 

The maths clearly is wrong but the amount that'd be paid to them is also going to factor in a percentage of their fixed costs.... lets assume its a small station with only 4 pumps and 1 member of staff on duty at any time, if one pump is out then the defendant/insurer almost certainly has to pay 25% of the attendants time because that cost remains the same despite the drop in revenue. Clearly they dont have to pay the variable costs, like the fuel that's still in the tanks unsold.

The question will also be if they were able to just take 1 pump out of commission or if the logistics of the site etc meant more than one pump had to go off.