Plant & Equipment Insurance Australia

Plant and equipment insurance covers your mobile machinery and tools against damage, theft and fire wherever they are: loaded on a trailer, working on a client's site, sitting in a yard overnight, or in storage between jobs. It is built for equipment that does not stay at one address, which is exactly what standard business property cover is not designed for.

Owned machinery is listed on a schedule and settled at whichever is lower: the machine's market value at the time of loss, or the sum insured you set when you took the policy out. There is one exception worth knowing on the wording we place: if a machine is written off within three years of being bought new, you can choose to have it replaced with an equivalent new machine instead of taking the cash. On every plant policy we place, we add a "market value plus" option as standard, which lifts the payout to market value plus 15 per cent (as at July 2026), capped at your sum insured, so if the machine has depreciated a long way below what it is insured for, the payout gets topped up above straight market value instead of leaving you short on a falling second-hand market. That buffer is built for depreciation, so it does not apply on the highest-value machines, or where the market value at the time of loss is already close to the sum insured.

If you hire equipment out to other businesses, you need hired-out plant liability. Wet hire, where you supply your own operator along with the machine, is largely automatic under most plant policies. Dry hire, where the hirer supplies their own operator, is where the real conditions sit: keeping cover for theft or damage caused by the hirer generally depends on having a signed hire agreement, no damage waiver in that agreement that undercuts your insurer's ability to recover from the hirer, the hirer's identity and licence recorded at handover, and a genuinely secure handover.

If you hire equipment in from a plant hire company, hired-in plant liability protects you against your liability under the hire agreement, which usually makes you responsible for the machine's full replacement cost while it is in your care, not just an excess.

If hiring your own machinery out is part of how your business earns money, ask about loss-of-hire cover too. It is a different benefit from the repair itself: some plant policies pay a flat weekly amount you choose up front for every week the machine is off the road after an accepted claim, others calculate the loss from what the machine actually earned over the past year, which is more accurate but needs a trading history to work from. Either way, the repair cost and the income you lose while it is being repaired are two separate exposures, and it is worth knowing which one, if any, your policy actually covers.

If any of your machinery is registered and travels on public roads under its own power, rather than on a trailer, you also need road risk cover. Compulsory third party insurance covers injury to people, not damage to other vehicles, fences or property, so a registered excavator or roller needs its own property damage cover for the road, separate from its cover on site.

A typical quote for plant and equipment cover is built from a value and a machine type, nothing else. We start with the paperwork that usually gets skipped. When you are dry hiring, whether that is hiring a machine in without an operator or sending your own machine out that way, we check the agreement itself, because that document decides who actually pays if the machine is damaged or stolen while it is in someone else's care. Wet hire, where an operator goes with the machine, is generally more straightforward, so we spend the scrutiny where it belongs.

We also do not leave you to discover a valuation gap at claim time. Our plant policies settle on whichever is lower, the machine's market value or its insured value, unless the machine is written off within three years of its first purchase new and you take the new-machine replacement described above. The wording we place does not say the same for a stolen machine, so we check yours. We add a "market value plus" buffer as standard on every plant policy we place, so a machine that has depreciated a long way below what it is insured for still gets topped up above straight market value. That buffer runs on most machines, though not on the highest-value ones. You do not have to ask for any of this or know to request it, it is built in from the start.

And we are selective about who we place this cover with. As a rule, we prefer not to place clients with insurers that make a locked compound, an immobiliser or a tracking device a condition of paying a theft claim, or that load a blanket excess onto every theft claim for it. The plant insurers we favour work on the same general duty of care that applies to the rest of your business, not a box-ticking exercise that can void a claim on a technicality you did not know existed.

Assuming it's covered because it's "on the policy." Mobile plant is exactly what its name says: it moves. Once a machine leaves the address named on a standard business property policy, that policy has generally stopped protecting it. Plant and equipment cover is built to follow the machine, not the address.

Not knowing what dry hire actually requires, on either side of it. If you hire a machine in, the hire agreement usually decides who pays if it is damaged or stolen, and it is usually you, for the full replacement cost, regardless of fault.

If you hire your own machine out on dry hire terms, no operator, the hirer drives it, the position flips: cover for theft or damage caused by the hirer only holds up if there is a signed hire agreement in place, it is not undercut by a damage waiver that limits your insurer's ability to recover from the hirer, the hirer's identity and licence were recorded at handover, and the handover itself was genuinely secure rather than a machine left for the hirer to collect.

Dry hire is where the real conditions sit on both sides of the transaction. Wet hire, where an operator goes with the machine, is comparatively straightforward. Read the paperwork before you sign it, not after something goes missing.

Setting the sum insured too low on a financed machine. Most plant policies pay whichever is lower: the machine's market value at the time of loss, or the sum insured you set when you took the policy out. A machine written off within three years of being bought new is the exception, because you can choose an equivalent new machine instead. If you still owe more on a financed machine than the amount it is insured for, a total loss can leave you short, even with the "market value plus" buffer most plant policies add to protect against a falling second-hand market, because that buffer tops up market value, it does not fix a sum insured that was set too low from the start.

The proper plant and equipment policies also carry a finance-protection option built for exactly this gap, and we turn it on on the plant policies we place. Even so, get the number right when you insure the machine, not after it is written off.

Treating security conditions as boilerplate. Some plant insurers still require a locked compound, an immobiliser or a tracking device before they will pay a theft claim. If that is not genuinely how your business operates on site, the condition is a real gap in your cover, not a formality. It is exactly the kind of condition we try not to place our own clients under in the first place, but if you are insured elsewhere, it is worth knowing before a machine goes missing, not after.

Forgetting road risk on registered machines. If a machine is registered for the road and drives itself between sites, compulsory third party insurance only covers injury to people, not damage to another vehicle or property. Road risk cover is the piece that is easy to leave off a schedule because it feels like an afterthought next to the machine's own value.