Trade contractors carry thousands of dollars in tools every day. Whether those tools are actually covered depends on details most business owners have never checked.
A plumber loads their van every morning with thousands of dollars in tools. An electrician parks on a job site overnight. A landscaper stores equipment in a trailer that anyone with a hitch could drive away with. In each case, the business owner probably believes they have coverage. In each case, they probably have less than they think.
Standard business owner policies often include some coverage for business property, but the scope is narrower than most clients expect. Tools and equipment left at a job site, stored in a vehicle, or in transit between locations may fall outside the covered premises definition. And even where coverage exists, sublimits on property away from the described location can leave a significant loss only partially covered.
What Inland Marine Coverage Actually Does
Inland marine coverage — despite the name — has nothing to do with water. It is the category of insurance designed for property that moves: tools, equipment, and materials that travel to job sites, get stored in vehicles, or are left at locations the business does not own.
Contractors' equipment coverage, often written as a standalone policy or added as a rider, specifically covers the mobile tools and equipment that trade businesses depend on. It can cover theft from a vehicle, loss at a job site, damage during transit, and in many forms, accidental loss regardless of cause. For a trade contractor whose livelihood depends on equipment that is never in the same place twice, this coverage is foundational.
Why BOPs Leave This Gap
A BOP is built around a described location — typically the business address. Coverage for property follows from that. When tools leave the premises and go to a client's home, a construction site, or sit in a truck parked on a street overnight, the policy's reach gets complicated.
Some BOPs include off-premises coverage with a sublimit. Others exclude it entirely. Most business owners have not read closely enough to know which situation they are in — and most agents have not had the conversation to find out.
The Conversation
The question that opens this with any trade contractor is simple: where do your tools end up at night, and what happens if they disappear? Most will have a story — a break-in, a theft on a job site, a piece of equipment that walked off a trailer. The follow-up is whether their current policy would have covered it.
Most will not know the answer. Walking through what their BOP actually reaches, and whether inland marine or contractors' equipment coverage fills the gap, is a useful conversation for any client who works outside a fixed location. For businesses where the tools are the business, it is one of the more important ones to have before the loss.