Plant Claim

Situation

Our client provides civil engineering services and had a 10 tonne excavator on site, digging a main sewer.

Claim

The ground conditions were poor and the machine got stuck or “bogged” as we call it. Moving the machine simply worsened the ground conditions and dug it in further.

Most typical plant policies wouldn’t help with this type of loss; the cover is for damage and no damage has actually occurred. 

Through foresight, Keen Insurance had included an extension to the cover for bogged machinery.

In this case our client brought another machine in to free the bogged machine. That also got stuck. We were almost at the stage of dismantling the cab and burying the tracks in the ground; insurers would then have paid for the loss. 

Result

Eventually our client’s plant manager asked if he could have one last attempt and hire a heavy long-reach excavator to assist. We made sure that the insurers agreed and then using four items, weighing nearly 100 tons in total, the machine was eventually freed. 

We paid over £5,000 in hire charges and recovery costs, but got our client's excavator back in one piece. Works in poor ground conditions often lead to machines getting bogged. We knew this from industry experience and included the cover.