Church Vans

I posted this story over at HolyCoast.com, but it reminded me of many of the things about church vans that can become an insurance nightmare.

====

A terrible story out of Kentucky:

State police say the death toll has risen to 11 in a fiery crash between a tractor-trailer and a church van on northbound Interstate 65 in south-central Kentucky.

State police Trooper Charles Swiney says two children survived the crash.

A pastor for the family in the van says they were Mennonites from Kentucky on their way to a wedding in Iowa. Authorities say the truck driver was also killed.

Officials say the tractor-trailer crossed the median and struck the van head-on around 5:30 a.m. CDT near Munfordville.

When I was in the church insurance business several of the top losses in the history of the company had involved church vans. It doesn't appear to be the case in this accident, but it was often the driver's inexperience with that type of vehicle that led to the crash.

In one case I remember a youth pastor was driving a group of kids at night somewhere in the desert and decided to try and switch drivers without stopping. In the process they lost control of the van and rolled over. A girl from the church was killed and I think the company ended up paying over $250,000.

In another case a church preparing for a long trip took their van to a local tire shop. The shop said three of the four tires needed to be changed, but the other one was okay. Somewhere in New Mexico that other tire blew out causing the van to roll. One person was left with terrible permanent disabilities. The jury found the tire store faultless and held the church 100% responsible to the tune of $10 million. The church only had $5 million in insurance and ended up having to sell their property and almost everything they had to pay the judgment.

If your church has a van, especially a 15 passenger, you have to be very careful how those are operated. Too many times I've read stories where a group loaded all kinds of heavy stuff on the roof plus a full load of passengers and then had an incident where the vehicle got out of control. When you load the roof you raise the center of gravity and move it towards the rear of the vehicle, and that makes the front end a little goosey and makes a loss of control much more likely. For awhile there some church insurers wouldn't even insure 15 passenger vans.

Some states, like California, require a Class B Commercial license to operate any church vehicle with 10 or more seats, though many churches don't follow that law unless their insurer makes them or the CHP stops them. That's probably a good idea since going from a passenger car to a large van is not as easy a transition as you might think.

1 Day, 4 Appointments, 333 Miles

As an agent my appointments were either set by me directly, usually for new business calls, and by my office for renewal meetings. We kept a common calendar so both of us could see what was scheduled and try to maximize our efficiency. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.

One day I was scheduled in the Rancho Bernardo area in the northernmost part of the city of San Diego at 10am and in San Ysidro, the southernmost part of the city at 11:30. My appointment would take at least an hour and the scheduler didn't realize that even though both churches had San Diego addresses they were 40 miles apart. I didn't make it to the second appointment on time.

I'll never forget one particular day because it was probably the longest day I ever had on the road.

I started the day by leaving home about 8am for a 9am renewal meeting in Vista. First leg was a relatively short 46 miles. I departed Vista around 10 for the second leg, an 83 mile drive to Borrego Springs for a new business appointment at noon. Borrego Springs is out in the middle of the desert and it's not all highway driving. The last leg into town is a winding mountain road that descends into the valley where the town is located. I made it on time, but didn't have much of a cushion.

I spent another hour there before heading out on the third leg - 31 miles back through the desert and up the winding Hwy 78 mountain road to a camp in Julian. Got there in time to grab some lunch before the 3pm meeting. Much prettier country than Borrego Springs, but camp renewal meetings always involve a lot more work.

And the day wasn't done. After a 90 minute meeting it was time to head for the fourth leg - 46 miles to Campo, right on the Mexican border where I had a 7:30 pm meeting with a church board. For the record, there's almost no place to go in Campo for dinner. No fast food places, no restaurants that I could find...nothing.

My meeting with the church board only took about 30 minutes (I wasn't the only agenda item) and I was finally free to start the final leg - 126 miles back home. I think I got there a little after 10pm.

It looked like a great adventure when I first planned the trip, but by the time I got home I resolved never to try that again.

The Poison Chicken

During my early training I spent a Friday doing new business and renewal appointments with one of the senior people from the office. We had been out on appointments all morning and into the afternoon and were getting hungry. The area we were in didn't have much in the way of fast food, but we managed to find a Church's Chicken store. The senior guy decided to hit the drive-through.

Now I expected that he'd order a chicken sandwich or something relatively portable that we could eat easily in the car, but to my shock, he order a full-on bucket dinner, including two or three sides. We had enough food to feed a who car full of people. He also expected us to eat it in the car, which really complicated matters. There was just no easy way to do it, but he drove with one greasy hand on the wheel and a piece of chicken in the other.

It was hardly the best fried chicken I've ever had, and at one point he commented that the piece he'd just eaten "tasted funny". More about that later.

Our next appointment was a new business meeting with a start-up church. We were going to meet the pastor at his apartment. We still had a car load of chicken and fixin's and the senior guy decided to give the rest of it to the pastor for his family to finish. It seemed like a nice gesture at the time.

We headed home for the weekend, and on Monday the senior guy told me he'd been sick with food poisoning all weekend. That "funny tasting" chicken had been rotten. Fortunately, I didn't have any problem, but I couldn't help but wonder what we did to that nice pastor and his family.

Related Tags: Church Insurance, Church Mutual Insurance, GuideOne Insurance, Brotherhood Insurance, Philadelphia Insurance, Church Mutual, GuideOne, Insurance For Religious Organizations, Insurance For Churches, Church Insurance Programs, Church Insurance Agent

26 Miles Across the Sea

In February of 1999 the company got a request to bid on a group of camps, including one on Catalina Island, 26 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. We didn't have a full-time agent assigned to that area, so they asked me to go and do the work for the camp bid. There are only a couple of churches on the island, so I made a couple of calls and lined up another appointment while I was over there.

To get to the island you have to take a ferry from Long Beach, and I was on a very early boat - 7:00 am. It takes about 90 minutes to make the channel crossing, and when I got to Avalon (the main city on the island), I was met by someone from the camp who had come to pick me up in the camp's little Boston Whaler boat. We set out at high speed for the run around the island to the camp in very cold weather. There wasn't any cover on the boat, so I had a very windy welcome to Catalina.

I spent most of the morning at the camp, measuring and photographing their tent-like buildings. At that time we used Polaroid cameras which were really a pain when you had lots of buildings. The cameras spit out the picture after each shot, and the cartridges only hold 10 photos. Consequently, I had to drag around my file case with extra film and my measuring tools. It was a pain in the rear for a group deal that we probably weren't going to get (and we didn't).

About 1pm I had the camp guy run me back around to Avalon where I was met by a board member from one of the local churches. In Avalon few people own cars - most of the locals travel around the city in golf carts, and that's what the guy drove when he showed up at the dock. I spent the afternoon measuring and inspecting his church building in downtown Avalon, and fortunately, that effort wasn't wasted. I was able to write several policies for the church and we had them for a client for a couple of years before another agent lost the renewal. No big deal, because under the commission schedule in effect at the time I only got paid for the initial sale so what happened after that didn't really matter.

I did have a couple of hours to kill after the appointment to look around Avalon before catching the boat home. It made for a very long day since the boat didn't leave until about 5:30, but as working days went, it was certainly more interesting than most of them. A once-a-year trip over there wouldn't have been too bad.

Related Tags: Church Insurance, Church Mutual Insurance, GuideOne Insurance, Brotherhood Insurance, Philadelphia Insurance, Church Mutual, GuideOne, Insurance For Religious Organizations, Insurance For Churches, Church Insurance Programs, Church Insurance Agent