Total Loss Fire at a Manufacturing Facility

This claim was at an industrial manufacturing facility masquerading as a farm products producer.  Their policy covered their property with building limits, business personal property limits, scheduled tools & equipment with ACV coverage, limits and fixed deductibles, leased equipment, numerous additional named insured’s and lien holders.  And it is all a total loss.

The insured submitted a list of thirty items of business personal property that nobody ever heard of, or had been modified from its intended purpose.

The terms of the insurer’s engagement of my services were to visit the site and determine what these items were, and what they were worth.  And the insured had replacement cost coverage.

The building that burned was a sizable footprint, and it had equipment all around it in various states of decrepitude.  I knew this would take more than one day. 

I met with the insured’s representative who designed the “system” they were using to make specialty soils, peat moss and fertilizer.  There was equipment to process the raw materials, move it, mix different ingredients, heat it, remove heavy solids, cool it, add organics, wet it, dry it, process it for packaging, bag it and palletize it for shipment.  In addition to forklifts and pallet jacks – the easy part – there were dozens of pieces of industrial machinery that were integrated into the building but could be easily removed to another location.

Our first report was sufficient for confirmation of coverage and for the insurer to issue a large up-front payment on the loss to enable the insured to resume some semblance of an income generating business.

In the end, we confirmed the identity of each item to evaluate it.  We established the ACV of each item, established or confirmed the replacement cost of each, and helped the insurer fulfil the promise to their policyholder while streamlining the timeline to do so and minimizing the insured’s loss of business income.

Then, on to the next claim.

Take a virtual tour of the burned remains of a building for a commercial business as I inspect the scene.

Scenes from the site.

Tom Fergus handles claims for forestry, farm, construction, and specialty equipment. Service area is all of New England (except Rhode Island), New York: Upstate, Long Island, and Finger Lakes. Desk review on complicated claims outside of my area. Click here to see my mobile office.