Life is full of surprises: some good, some bad. A tornado may drop a bag of money on your driveway, although it's more likely to drop a tree limb on your roof. Such unpleasant events — wind or storm damage to your house or personal property, legal liability to others injured in an auto accident, or expenses from needed medical treatments — are risks that we often choose to insure ourselves against. By paying an insurance premium, you can avoid most of the economic impact (known as a "loss" in the insurance industry) of such unfortunate events.

If you have recently gone into business, your view of insurance may be that it is a luxury that big, thriving companies can afford to purchase but something you can't worry about right now. After all, you have tight cash flows, you have employees (or at least yourself) to pay, and you need to market your product. So you may be thinking, "If I get robbed or my old truck gets stolen, I'll deal with it then. I'd rather spend money dealing with what I know will happen, rather than what could happen."

Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes. Robbery, forgery, computer piracy. It is a fact of life, and business, that Mother Nature sometimes strikes, accidents happen, and some people steal things. Just as you take steps to ensure the safety of your home and family, so too must you take steps to minimize the risks to your business. To do this, there are several issues you should consider:

Below, you will find a checklist of things that may need to be done when a vehicle changes hands. We suggest that you print this out and check off each item as you get it done.

Once you've successfully sold, traded, scrapped, or donated your vehicle, you're not done yet! As with most business transactions, the IRS wants to get a report and a piece of the profits if you made any.

We're assuming that you have pondered whether you should keep or dispose of your vehicle and now want to sell it or trade it in on a different vehicle. If so, there are two keys to getting a good price for it. The first key is preparing the vehicle for show. The second key is researching the book value of the vehicle.

Here are some advantages of trading in a vehicle:

Here are two advantages of selling your vehicle for its scrap value:

The advantages of donating your vehicle to a charity, such as a trade school that teaches auto repair, include:

There are six factors that you should consider when you make this decision:

If your business owns one or more vehicles and you remain in business for long, eventually a time will come when you'll be faced with considering whether or not to sell, trade, or perhaps even scrap, a vehicle. There are several key decisions that you should make if you think that the time has come to get rid of a vehicle:

This discussion examines the pros and cons of selling a vehicle on your own. You should also review the pros and cons of other vehicle disposal methods. If you are unsure of whether or not you should get rid of your vehicle right now, our discussion on deciding to keep or dispose of a vehicle can help.

If' you have already considered whether you should keep or dispose of your vehicle and have decided that you want to dispose of it, it's time to look at the pros and cons of various methods for doing that.

In negligent lending cases, you are liable because you let an employee use a company vehicle when you knew (or should have known) the employee was unfit to drive. To reduce your liability from negligent lending suits against you, you can:

The theory underlying negligent hiring and retention claims — if they relate to an auto accident involving one of your employees and a company vehicle — is that you are liable for the accident because of the sloppy job you have done in hiring, or not firing, the employee who then caused the accident. As a lawyer who is helping someone to sue you sees things, if you had not hired (or retained) the employee, there would never have been an accident.

We can think of at least two good reasons for having a vehicle policy if you have employees using your vehicles:

In negligent maintenance cases, you will be liable for an accident if a condition of your company vehicle made it unsafe to drive and that condition (for example, faulty brakes or a bad tire) contributed to the accident. Unlike some of the other liabilities from employee use of your vehicles we discuss, you can be sued by both your employee and anyone the employee injures with your vehicle if it was negligently maintained.

Suppose that you were the president of a security company employing armed guards. Would you establish policies on acceptable use of firearms and set limits on who was qualified to carry them? If asked this question, most business owners would probably say "yes." Cautious owners would, perhaps, even require their gun-toting employees to spend a minimum number of hours in training each year or establish other safety measures to reduce the likelihood of an unfortunate accident.

One of the hazards of having employees use vehicles to perform work for you is possible respondeat superior liability. Unlike some of the other liabilities of having employees use your vehicles, you face respondeat superior liability even if your employees get into accidents while driving their own vehicles. In fact, you'll find that respondeat superior liability can come into play after any unfortunate incident — not just auto accidents — where an employee has harmed someone else or someone else's property.

Your employee was acting in the scope of job at the time of the accident.

If you are thinking about leasing a vehicle to use in your business and aren't sure whether buying or leasing is the right decision for you, see our discussion of the lease or buy decision for more information.

Do your employees use company vehicles, or perhaps your personal vehicles, while they are working for you? Are you considering having them do so? If so, or if you think this may fit into your future business plans, here is a six-step process that can help:

If you don't want to use a vehicle you already own for your business, there are numerous advantages to purchasing a used vehicle instead of a new one. The main advantage is this: as soon as you drive a new vehicle off of a dealer's lot, it immediately becomes worth much less than the price you paid for it. In fact, it is not unusual for a vehicle with just 10,000 miles on it to be worth several thousand dollars less than a new car of the same model.

Whether you have an established business or you're just starting out, at some point, you will have to address the various questions that relate to the use of cars, trucks, or other vehicles in your business.

If you know that you'll need to use a car or truck in your business, you will find this process useful for obtaining one: