Question on using personal truck for biz..

[mrusk]

Here is the deal. I am 17 and am going to start mowing and landscaping in the spring. I have everything figured and planned out already. I will even be a legal comapny with full insurance on may 12th my 18th birthday. The thing i am worrying about is my truck. I been working hard and long hours since i was 13 so i had some good money saved yp and i went and bought a 03' chevy 2500hd brand new. Its in my dads name, however i give him the money for the payment each month. I was going to use this truck to pull my 16ft trailer, however my insurance company clearly prohibts using this truck for anything but pleasure. So using the truck to pull my equpiment would be in clear violation of my policy and if i got in any accident at all there would be a proablem. Even if someone hit me there would be a big proablem.
Does anyone use their personal vechile for business.
Besides using the truck and taking a risk i came up with 2 possible solutions

#1- When i am 18 and have everything legal take my business plan down to the bank and get a loan for whatever the current balance of the truck is and buy it out from my dads name and have it as a business vehicle.

#2- Sell my chevy and pay the loan off. Take the money thats left and buy a deisel f350. I think this may be the better option because i can get 0% finacing, while the bank will bent me over on rates.

What do you think? And guys don;t worry, i got lawns, patios, and landcape jobs allready lined up.

matt

[walker-talker]

At the time I got my insurance, I was using my personal truck for the business also. The insurance just wrote in the truck for business and personal.....did not cost anything more. Keep track of milage for business and write it off.....here I think it's something like .33 cents a mile

[mrusk]

I guess my best bet is just to talk to my insurance agent. The only proablem i see in doing what you did is how the business will be in my name while my truck is in my dads name.

matt

[Team Gopher]

Hi Mrusk,

Here are two quotes from two posts you can read up on.


Post #1 (http://server2.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34623)
"You'll need business insurance on your vehicle and liability. It's not always easy to get if you're brand new, but try looking online. It's a little more to insure your vehicle for business use, but if you had a serious accident, you could be denied coverage on a personal-use policy. I pay about $1600/year for truck and gen. liability coverage of $2 million. I was paying $900 for just the truck on a personal policy, but despite my agent's assurances, I found out it would exclude coverage if I had an accident while at work."

Post #2 (http://server2.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41684)
"As for insurance, if you're using it for commercial purposes, it will need commercial insurance regardless of who owns it. We have several vehicles that are leased to company by family members. The company insures them on the company policy no problem. Really no different than leasing from a dealership or whatever."