Auto Repair Shop Insurance in Texas

What auto repair shop insurance covers in Texas

Auto repair shop insurance is a package with one coverage in it that no other small business buys: garagekeepers, which pays for damage to a customer’s vehicle while the shop has it.

What a Texas shop usually carries:

• Garage liability, the shop’s version of general liability, covering injury to a customer on the premises and damage the shop’s work does to other people’s property
• Garagekeepers, covering the customer vehicles in the shop’s care, custody and control
• Commercial property for the lifts, the diagnostic equipment, the tools and the parts inventory
• Commercial auto for the shop’s own service trucks, loaners and test drives

Workers compensation belongs in that list the moment a shop puts a technician on payroll.

What garagekeepers coverage pays for

Garagekeepers answers the gap that sinks a repair shop’s general liability claim: a customer’s vehicle in the shop’s possession is property in the shop’s care, custody and control, and liability policies exclude that property.

How the coverage is written:

• On a legal liability basis, it pays only when the shop is at fault for the damage
• On a direct primary basis, it pays for covered damage whether the shop was at fault or not
• Perils track the vehicle owner’s own policy language: fire, theft, vandalism, hail and collision, each with its own deductible

The limit is set per location, not per vehicle. A shop that parks fifteen cars in a lot overnight during a North Texas hail season is insuring all fifteen against that one number.

The coverages a Texas shop needs beyond garagekeepers

Garagekeepers covers the customers’ cars, which leaves the shop’s own money exposed in four other places.

What the rest of the package answers:

• Commercial property: the building or the tenant improvements, plus lifts, alignment racks, scan tools and the parts on the shelf
• Business income: revenue lost while the bays are unusable after a covered loss
• Workers compensation: the technician who tears a shoulder pulling a transmission, which no liability policy pays
• Commercial auto: the shop’s own trucks, and the liability that follows a technician on a road test

Faulty workmanship is the exclusion that surprises Texas shop owners. A garage policy pays for the engine fire a bad repair caused, and it does not pay to redo the repair.

What Aulona Insurance Group can place for a Texas auto service business

Aulona Insurance Group places auto service accounts statewide through insurers the agency holds appointments with. Expect underwriting questions about the work performed, the vehicles kept overnight and the equipment on site.

Operations the agency places:

• Repair shops, general and specialty
• Body shops
• Tire shops
• Car washes

Lines available: garage liability and general liability, garagekeepers, commercial property, workers compensation, umbrella and excess liability, and commercial auto.

Inside the small-business program: annual gross revenue under $5 million, total W-2 payroll under $5 million, loss history under $20,000 with no more than two incidents in three years, and no prior cancellation or bankruptcy filing. Workers compensation runs through its own market and is not limited by those figures.

Where Aulona Insurance Group is not the right fit

Aulona Insurance Group cannot place three operations that sit next to auto repair, and says so before a submission is started.

Not placed, in this class:

• Towing operators, including a repair shop running its own wrecker
• Gas stations, including a service bay attached to fuel sales
• Auto dealerships, new or used, including a shop with cars on the lot

Two more that catch an auto service account:

• Surplus-lines risks, which sit outside what Aulona Insurance Group writes in-house

Everything else is the size band in the section above: revenue, payroll, loss history, a prior cancellation and a bankruptcy filing.

What moves the price of a Texas auto repair shop policy

The premium on a Texas garage policy is set by the insurer, from rates it has filed with the Texas Department of Insurance, and never by Aulona Insurance Group.

What an auto service submission is priced on:

• The operations performed, since collision and paint work rate above brakes, tires and oil changes
• The number of bays and technicians, and the W-2 payroll behind them
• The garagekeepers limit, which has to cover the busiest night in the lot rather than the average one
• The premises: fencing, lighting, alarms, and whether vehicles are kept inside after hours
• Claim history, where the size of a past loss matters more than the count

Aulona Insurance Group publishes no premium on this site and does not rank insurers by price. The number comes from the insurer, on a recorded call with Luka Cenaj, in English or Albanian.