So let's say you get your gauges, your chips & tuners, new intake, sweet new stainless steel exhaust, maybe new injectors and/or WW, and very nice but very expensive new bulletproof transmission.

Then, on your way home from work, someone who's clearly not respecting the fact that there is a Super Duty comin' through the intersection decides to run the red light, and nails your truck. The insurance company decides thay want to total the vehicle out instead of repair it.

Where does that leave all the goodies (and cash) that you'd put into the truck? Are you just sunk? Do you adjust your insurance coverage beforehand so that they know you've put $10K worth of mods into the vehicle and will reimburse you? Or do you just have to suck up the loss?

Just wondering what the prevailing approach is-
Strated thinking about that the other day while debating what mods I might be interested in, and almost getting tagged........yikes.

 

Man, that's cold. Kinda like asking what I would do with the insurance money if my wife died.

I have known of situations where people took easily removable stuff like gauges, running boards, chips, stereo's etc. off their totaled vehicles before they kissed them goodbye.

If I had $10,000 in my engine & transmission, and the insurance company insisted on totaling the vehicle, I would settle for as much money as possible, buy the pickup back from them (assuming the mechanical was still serviceable), try to find a deal on a good used pickup with a bad engine and/or transmission, and grab a wrench, and try to sell the rest of the parts to you guys.

 

many ways to deal with this: take pictures of everything and present to insurance co with paid invoices after wreck but before you accept payment saying "oops by the way....".

buy wreck from them and transfer parts to new truck then sell remainder for scrap

tell insurance co you have all this stuff and expect big bill.

Who ever centerpunches you ought to be responsible and pay your extra losses, however in my case they are usualy uninsured.

 

I started to wonder this same thing a few weeks ago, given time time and money invested into my truck. So, I called my agent to get the scoop. She said that as long as I saved all my receipts for everything that I've done, they will reimburse me for all the upgrades, in the event of a loss. I told her how much it might be, and she just said save your receipts. This is through State Farm. Other companies may have a different policy. However, I have now assembled a binder that contains all the invoices for the parts that I have bought for the truck, just in case the unthinkable happened.

 

You bring up a good point. Wouldn't the insurance company send out an adjuster to calculate the loss? Wouldn't he/she/it be able to compensate for mods and gains? I don't know, so that's why I'm curious as well.

 

I don't tell the insurance company anything I don't have to or they don't ask, they would run your bill up high enough to pay for those mods in a year or 2. like others have said they are actually required to let you buy it back, atleast in every state I have lived in, they usually want something like 25% of the totalled value, but most times you can ask for and I think they have to provide the bids from salvage yards on your truck (went through this with a semi I had, tried to tell me that the trucks value was 35,000, I first showed that trucks that were similar were priced at 45,000, and then insisted on the salvage dealers bid sheet which was $13,000, I got the $45,000 but the point is they had to show it to me.)
Man that scenerio happens way to often, one of the guys that races were I run most of the time, had just finished restoring a 76 highboy F250 all new sheet metal on the truck like fenders bed sides, door skins etc, took it to the paint shop got a brand new paint job on it, picked it up and on the way home got Tboned by a car that ran a stop sign. Never even got the finished truck home before it was wrecked.

 

I was in the same boat a few years back, just not in for as much money. I had been looking for a good, but cheap one ton. I found an 82 ford that had a great body which is hard to find up here in alaska. I tore it down and painted the body, built a flatbed, rebuilt the engine, put all new wheel bearings in, all new seals everywhere, new ujoints in the drive shafts and front axle, Added a leaf spring to front and rear... Anyway, I tried to make it a truck I could rely on. A girl "tried" to make a left turn in front of me. The insurance only wanted to give me a little less than $1500 for the truck. I told them that it wasn't your everyday 82 ford. They didnt care and they have a lot more money for lawyers than I do. They asked for recipts, which I gathered, but I did all the work so there was no receipts for labor. After a lot of fighting, I told them my back hurt, which it did, and they gave me just enought for pain and suffering to cover the body parts, from jc whitney (arrrgghhh), to fix it myself. If you want to recoup, get riders on your vehicles through your insurance before it happens.