Here’s the plain version. Your landlord’s insurance is there to protect the building — the walls, the roof, the plumbing that just soaked your bedroom. It is not there to replace your couch, your laptop, your winter gear, or your grandmother’s dishes, and it absolutely is not there to protect you if a friend slips on your icy front step and decides to sue. That gap is exactly what renters insurance fills, and it’s the first thing I walk every renter through before they ever sign a lease around here.

The coverage itself is more useful than people expect for what it costs. A standard renters policy generally bundles together personal property coverage, liability protection, guest medical payments, and additional living expenses if your rental becomes unlivable after a covered loss. That last one matters more in Vermont than almost anywhere else I can think of — if a burst pipe floods your unit in February, you need somewhere warm to sleep while it’s fixed, and that coverage is what pays for it.

I also spend a lot of time explaining that “personal property” doesn’t just mean stuff sitting inside your apartment. If your car gets broken into in a downtown Burlington parking garage and your laptop bag disappears, or your gear bag gets swiped out of your trunk on the way home from Stowe, personal property coverage typically extends to that too, not just theft that happens behind your own front door. People are always surprised by how far that protection actually follows them.

I’ll be honest about what renters insurance won’t do, too, because I’d rather a client hear it from me than find out the hard way. It won’t cover flood or earthquake damage on its own — those need separate coverage — and it won’t cover the building itself, ever, under any circumstance; that’s always the landlord’s job, same as it is on the home insurance side of what we do. Knowing exactly where that line sits is half of what I do at Cruz Insurance Agency, and it’s why I’d rather spend twenty extra minutes with a client up front than have them find a coverage gap the week their apartment floods.

How Much Does Renters Insurance Actually Cost?

This is where most people relax a little, because it’s genuinely one of the cheapest policies you can carry. Policies can start around $5 a month depending on your coverage limits, your deductible, and where in Vermont you’re renting — a lot less than most people budget for their phone bill, for coverage that can save you thousands if a fire or theft ever wipes out a room full of belongings.

Does My Landlord Actually Require It?

More often than you’d think, especially around here. A growing number of Vermont landlords, particularly in off-campus housing near UVM and in older multi-unit buildings prone to winter pipe issues, now require proof of renters insurance as a lease condition before you ever get a key. Even when it isn’t required, I’d still tell you to get it — a lease requirement just means somebody already learned this lesson the expensive way.

What About Liability If Someone Gets Hurt at My Place?

This is the coverage people think about the least and need the most. If a guest gets injured in your rental and it’s found to be your fault, family liability protection can help cover the legal and medical costs that follow, and guest medical payments can cover smaller injury claims quickly without turning into a lawsuit at all. Vermont winters mean icy front steps, and icy front steps mean this coverage earns its keep more often than people expect.

Does It Cover My Stuff If I Made Improvements to the Unit?

If you’ve put your own money into your rental — new flooring, a fresh paint job, a built-in you installed yourself — some renters policies include building improvements coverage that can reimburse you for that work if it’s damaged in a covered loss, since your landlord’s policy generally won’t. It’s a detail almost nobody asks about until they need it, and one more reason I like sitting down with renters instead of just handing them a generic policy.

One Habit That Makes Claims Painless

Whenever I set someone up with a renters policy, I tell them to do one simple thing that costs nothing: take photos of your belongings and keep receipts for anything expensive, even just in your phone. If you ever need to file a claim, having proof of what you owned and what it was worth turns a stressful process into a fast one, instead of you trying to reconstruct your entire apartment from memory while you’re already having a bad week.

Talk to Cruz Insurance Agency Before You Sign Your Next Lease

Renters insurance is one of those policies people put off until right after they needed it, and that’s exactly the pattern I’ve spent my career trying to change. Whether you’re a first-time renter in Burlington, a UVM student signing your first off-campus lease, or you’ve rented the same place in Milton for years and just never gotten around to it, my team and I would rather help you get properly covered now than help you file a claim later without any protection in place. Reach out to Cruz Insurance Agency, and we’ll walk through our renters and home coverage options together, find a policy that actually fits your apartment and your budget, and make sure you’re never the renter finding out the hard way what your landlord’s insurance doesn’t cover.

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Here’s where most Vermont parents get tripped up first: your fifteen-year-old with a shiny new learner’s permit legally cannot sign an insurance contract. They’re a minor. That means the only way to get them covered is to add them to your existing policy as a household driver, with you as the responsible adult on the paperwork. I walk families through this step constantly, and it’s one of the first things we sort out when someone comes in asking what actually needs to change on their auto policy once a teen is in the house — because skipping it isn’t a paperwork technicality, it’s a real coverage gap if your teen is ever behind the wheel unlisted.

Vermont’s graduated licensing rules add another layer most people don’t think about until they’re living it. Your teen needs to be at least 15 to get that learner’s permit, and they can only drive with a supervising adult in the front seat — someone unimpaired, at least 25 years old. Before they can move up to a Junior Driver’s License, they need to log 40 hours of supervised practice, including 10 hours at night and 10 in bad weather, which around here usually means mud season or the first icy morning of the year. This is exactly the kind of local detail we build into the coverage conversation, because a kid logging night hours on Route 7 in November is a different risk profile than one practicing in a parking lot in July.

Once your teen actually gets that Junior License, the premium bump is real, and I won’t pretend otherwise. According to the Insurance Information Institute, adding a teen driver can raise a family’s auto insurance premium by 50 to 100 percent. That’s a big jump, and it’s the number that makes parents’ stomachs drop when they call me. Allstate’s own guidance for parents makes the same point plainly: a new teen driver is a milestone for the family and a real cost shift for the policy, both at once. But here’s what most people don’t know going in, and it’s the reason we always start this conversation early instead of waiting for the surprise: nationally, keeping your teen on your existing family policy runs about $2,718 a year on average, while insuring that same teen on a standalone policy of their own averages around $5,108. Staying on your policy isn’t just simpler — it’s usually thousands of dollars cheaper, because your teen borrows every discount you’ve already earned. A minor can’t legally hold a standalone contract on their own anyway, which is one more reason this decision isn’t really optional for Vermont families.

Vermont actually treats families a little more gently than a lot of the country on this front. A state-minimum coverage policy for a 16-year-old here averages around $1,388 a year, compared to over $5,000 in a high-cost state like Louisiana. That’s real relief, but it’s still a number on top of a number, which is exactly why we shop your teen’s coverage across the carriers we work with rather than just letting your renewal auto-adjust — a five-minute conversation in our Milton office can be the difference between overpaying and finding the right fit for your family’s actual budget.

The good news is there’s more room to bring that cost down than most parents realize. The single biggest lever is grades — a good student discount, typically available for a B- average or better, is consistently the largest teen-specific discount out there, and it’s one of the first things I ask about when a parent brings their kid in. Allstate lays out several of these levers for parents, including good grades, completed driver’s education, and staying accident-free. But here’s a wrinkle worth knowing that a website won’t always catch: some major carriers’ standard defensive-driving discount simply isn’t offered in Vermont at all, and eligibility rules for student and away-at-school discounts vary carrier by carrier. That’s exactly the kind of state-specific fine print that gets missed when you’re comparing quotes online instead of talking to someone who works Vermont policies every day. It’s part of why I always tell parents that a national quote-comparison site can’t replace an actual conversation about what applies in your zip code.

I think about this part of the job differently than most people expect from an insurance agent, because I’ve sat on both sides of that kitchen table. I remember what it felt like watching my own kids head out for their first solo drives, and now I’ve got grandkids working their way toward that same milestone. There’s a particular kind of quiet you feel in the house the first time your teenager backs out of the driveway alone — pride and pure nerves, tangled together, and I don’t think that feeling ever fully goes away no matter how many times you’ve been through it. That’s the same feeling I see across the desk from Milton to Burlington every fall, and it’s exactly why I don’t just want to sell a policy — I want that parent to drive home actually feeling better than when they walked in.

So if your kid just came home with a permit, or you’re bracing for the Junior License conversation this winter, don’t wait for the renewal notice to figure out what it’s going to cost you. Come talk to us at Cruz Insurance Agency, and we’ll go through your teen’s specific situation, compare it across the carriers we work with, and make sure every discount you actually qualify for gets applied — not just the ones a website assumes you have. My dad built this agency in 1965 on the idea that insurance works best when it’s personal, and helping a nervous parent protect their new driver without blowing up the family budget is about as personal as this job gets.

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Fair question. Let me answer it the way I’d answer it if you were sitting across from me at my desk with a cup of coffee going cold.

General liability insurance covers the financial fallout when your business accidentally hurts someone or damages their property. That’s it, at the core. Somebody trips over your extension cord at a craft fair in Milton. A customer’s laptop gets soaked when your ceiling leaks in your storefront. A landscaping crew’s mower kicks up a rock that cracks a client’s window. General liability is the policy standing between “unfortunate accident” and “you personally writing a check that could sink your business.”

It typically covers three big buckets: bodily injury, property damage, and what’s called “personal and advertising injury” — which sounds fancy but really just means things like libel, slander, or accidentally using a competitor’s slogan in your Facebook ad. It also covers your legal defense costs, which matters more than people realize, because even a baseless claim can rack up thousands of dollars in attorney fees before anyone proves anything.

Why Vermont Businesses Get Caught Off Guard

Here’s the thing about Vermont: we’re a state of small operations. Farm stands, sugarhouses, contractors, salons, breweries, seasonal event vendors. A lot of my clients started as one person with a truck and a dream, and liability insurance was the last thing on their mind when they were just trying to get a Milton Facebook post to go viral. Then they land their first big client, or they sign a lease that requires proof of coverage, or — worst case — someone actually gets hurt, and suddenly they’re calling me in a panic asking what their general liability policy through our agency is supposed to do for them.

I always tell people: the businesses that get hurt worst aren’t the reckless ones. They’re the careful ones who assumed “nothing’s ever gone wrong before” was a coverage plan. It isn’t. According to the Insurance Information Institute, general liability claims related to slip-and-fall injuries remain among the most common and most expensive small business liability claims nationwide, and legal defense costs alone can climb into the tens of thousands even when the business ultimately isn’t found at fault.

What It Doesn’t Cover (Because This Trips People Up Constantly)

General liability is not a catch-all. It won’t cover your own employees’ injuries — that’s workers’ compensation. It won’t cover damage to your own tools, equipment, or vehicle — that’s commercial property or commercial auto. And it definitely won’t cover professional mistakes, like an accountant giving bad advice or a contractor’s faulty workmanship claim — that territory belongs to professional liability or errors and omissions coverage.

I had a client last fall — a handyman working out near the Milton line — who assumed his general liability policy would cover a dispute over a botched deck rebuild. It didn’t, because that’s a workmanship issue, not a bodily injury or property damage issue in the classic sense. We ended up walking through the difference together, and now he carries both. That conversation is exactly why I like sitting down with clients instead of just emailing them a quote. Coverage gaps are almost never obvious until they cost you something.

How Much Coverage Do You Actually Need?

This is where I get a little bit like a broken record, but bear with me: it depends on your exposure, not just your industry. A one-person Etsy seller doing craft fairs around Vermont in October has a very different risk profile than a landscaping crew running mowers and trimmers across multiple properties, or a contractor climbing ladders on someone else’s roof. Most small Vermont businesses land somewhere around a $1 million per-occurrence limit with a $2 million aggregate, but that’s a starting point, not a rule carved in granite.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recommends business owners actually review their liability limits any time their operations change — new equipment, new locations, new services, more foot traffic. I’d add: review it any time a client or landlord asks for a certificate of insurance, because that’s usually a sign your coverage requirements just went up a notch, whether you asked for it or not.

If you’re a business that ramps up for fall — cider mills, corn mazes, foliage tour operators, holiday craft fair vendors — this is genuinely the time of year I want you thinking about this. Foot traffic spikes. Parking lots get muddy. Extension cords get run across walkways. Pumpkin patches have more moving parts (literally) than almost any other seasonal business I insure. If you’re gearing up for peak season, now’s the moment to double-check that your general liability policy actually reflects the volume of people about to walk through your gate, not the volume from three years ago when you started.

I also always tell clients: don’t assume your homeowner’s policy or your personal umbrella policy has your back if you’re running a business out of your home or on your property. Allstate, which I’ve worked with for years and trust for a lot of my own book of business, is clear that personal policies generally exclude business activities entirely — even a modest side hustle can fall outside that protection the moment money changes hands.

My Honest Take

I didn’t get into this business to sell paper. I got into it because my dad built this agency on actually helping neighbors when something went sideways, and that’s still the job. General liability insurance isn’t glamorous. Nobody brags about their coverage limits at a dinner party. But I’ve sat across from too many business owners on the worst day of their professional life — the day something they never expected actually happened — to treat this as optional small talk.

If you’re running a business anywhere in Vermont, whether it’s a full storefront in Milton or a folding table at the farmers market, it’s worth a real conversation about what you’re exposed to and what a general liability policy through our agency would actually do for you. Bring the coffee. I’ll bring the coverage worksheet.

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Do I even need life insurance if I don’t have kids?

If nobody depends on your income, you can probably skip it — or keep it small. But “nobody depends on my income” is rarer than people think. Got a mortgage with a co-signer? A partner who’d struggle to cover rent alone? Aging parents who lean on you? Even a business partner who’d be stuck buying out your share? Any of those counts as a dependent, financially speaking. I had a client last year, late twenties, no kids, who almost skipped coverage entirely — until we realized his girlfriend was on the mortgage with him and made about a third of what he did. That conversation changed fast.

How much coverage do I actually need? Give me a real number.

Here’s the napkin math I use with clients before we ever get into specifics: take your annual income, multiply it by 10, add whatever debt you’re carrying (mortgage, student loans, the works), then subtract what you’ve already got saved up. That’s your rough target. A $70,000 earner with a $200,000 mortgage and $30,000 saved is looking at roughly $870,000 in coverage. I know that number sounds enormous the first time someone hears it, but term life insurance is one of the few products in this industry where “a lot of coverage” doesn’t mean “a lot of money” — a healthy 35-year-old can often get $800,000 in term coverage for less than a car payment. If you want to run your own numbers before you ever sit down with me, the Insurance Information Institute’s guide to figuring out how much coverage you actually need walks through the logic in plain English.

What’s the difference between term and whole life, and why does everyone argue about it?

Term life covers you for a set number of years — 10, 20, 30 — and pays out if you die during that window. It’s cheap, it’s simple, and it’s what I put most young families into. Whole life covers you forever and builds cash value you can borrow against, but it costs a lot more for the same death benefit. The internet loves to fight about which one is “smarter,” but honestly, it depends on what you’re solving for. If you need a safety net that disappears once the mortgage is paid off and the kids are through college, term does that job perfectly well. If you’re thinking about estate planning, a business succession plan, or leaving a guaranteed inheritance no matter when you pass, whole life earns its keep. When I sit down with Chittenden County families to actually put together a life insurance policy built around what their household needs, most people assumed they needed one or the other, and the honest answer was usually “a little of both.”

I keep hearing “most Americans are underinsured.” Is that just a sales line?

I wish it were, but it’s backed by real data. LIMRA’s 2024 Insurance Barometer study found that about 102 million American adults are either uninsured or say they need more coverage than they currently have — that’s roughly 42% of adults walking around with a gap they know about. Part of that is procrastination — I get it, nobody wakes up excited to plan for their own death. But part of it is that people set their coverage once, at 25, and never touch it again. Then they buy a house, have two kids, and get a raise, and their policy from a decade ago covers about a third of what they’d actually need. If it’s been more than five years since you looked at yours, it’s worth five minutes to double-check the math, and it’s genuinely one of my favorite parts of the job to sit down and walk a family through updating their life insurance coverage once their situation has changed.

What actually determines my premium — is it just my age?

Age matters, but it’s one piece. Insurers look at your health, whether you smoke, your family medical history, sometimes even your hobbies (yes, if you’re a Vermonter who ice climbs Smugglers’ Notch for fun, that comes up). What surprises people is how much a little effort moves the needle — quitting smoking for even a year can meaningfully drop your rate class. As an Allstate broker, I’ve watched underwriting get more sophisticated over the years, and Allstate’s own breakdown of the factors that shape your rate lines up with what I see quoting real policies for real Vermonters every week.

How do I pick a beneficiary without starting a family feud?

Carefully, and with a backup plan. Name a primary beneficiary and a contingent one, because if your primary beneficiary passes before you and there’s no backup listed, the payout can get tangled up in probate court instead of going straight to the people you intended. I also tell clients: revisit this after every major life change — marriage, divorce, a new kid, a beneficiary who’s passed away. I’ve seen policies where an ex-spouse was still listed a decade after the divorce, simply because nobody thought to update the paperwork. It’s an easy fix, but only if you remember to make it. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has a solid consumer overview of how life insurance and beneficiary designations actually work if you want the regulator’s-eye view of it.

Honestly, where do most people go wrong?

Waiting. Every year you put it off, your premium creeps up, and your health is one bad diagnosis away from making coverage far more expensive or, in worse cases, unavailable. I always tell folks the best time to buy life insurance was five years ago, and the second-best time is this week.

If you want to actually run the numbers instead of guessing, that’s the part I enjoy most about this job. I’ll walk you through a plan built around your mortgage, your kids, your income, and your actual life — not a generic formula. Milton families have been trusting my family’s agency with that conversation for close to sixty years now, and I’d be glad to have it with you too.

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Folks, if you live in Vermont, you already know the answer is usually yes. Ice dams are basically a rite of passage up here, right alongside mud season and pretending you enjoy shoveling. But whether your homeowners insurance actually pays for the mess an ice dam leaves behind? That one trips up even people who’ve lived here their whole lives. So let’s talk it through, question by question, the way I would if you were sitting across the desk from me in Milton.

What exactly is an ice dam, and why does Vermont get hit so hard?

Picture your roof after a big snowfall. The upper part of the roof, warmed by heat escaping your attic, melts the snow sitting on it. That meltwater runs down toward the eaves, which stay colder because they overhang the house and get less of that escaping heat. The water refreezes right at the edge, and layer by layer, it builds a ridge of ice. That ridge is the dam. Once it’s there, any new meltwater has nowhere to go but backward and upward, sneaking under your shingles and into your attic, your insulation, and eventually your ceiling.

Vermont is basically a laboratory for this. We get the heavy snow, the brutal cold snaps, and then a warm afternoon just to keep things interesting, all packed into the same February week. Add in how many of our homes are farmhouses built in the 1800s with attics that weren’t exactly insulated with today’s standards in mind, and you’ve got a recipe my father Nino saw play out for decades, and I’ve now been watching unfold since I started working alongside him back in 1993.

So does home insurance actually cover the damage?

Generally, yes, but with a catch that surprises a lot of people. A standard homeowners policy typically treats water damage from an ice dam as a sudden, accidental event, which means the interior damage it causes, ruined ceilings, soaked insulation, warped flooring, is usually covered. If the weight of the ice causes part of your roof to collapse, that’s typically covered too, along with any of your belongings damaged in the process.

Here’s the catch: most policies won’t pay to remove the ice dam itself before it causes damage. Insurance is built to respond to sudden loss, not to fund preventative maintenance, so if you call your agent in January and say “there’s ice on my roof, come pay to get it off,” the honest answer is that’s on you or your roofer, not your carrier. The Insurance Information Institute notes that standard homeowners policies cover most of the damage that results from a freeze, but the preventive side of the equation still falls to the homeowner. Exactly how your policy draws that line is worth reviewing before winter hits, because the fine print varies more than most people expect.

What could get my claim denied?

This is the part I spend the most time walking clients through, because it’s rarely black and white. If an adjuster determines the damage built up gradually over a period of neglect, say, gutters that were clogged with maple leaves for three autumns running, or an attic with insulation so thin you can see daylight, they may argue it was preventable and deny the claim. Damage to detached structures like fences, sheds, or a patio underneath an overhang is also commonly excluded. And if the water that gets in is ultimately classified as flooding rather than a burst pipe or roof leak, that’s an entirely separate coverage conversation, since flood damage isn’t part of a standard homeowners policy at all.

This is exactly why I tell people, don’t wait until you’re standing in a puddle to find out what your policy actually says. If it’s been a few years since anyone walked through your home insurance coverage line by line with you, winter is a good time to do it, before the first cold snap, not during.

What should I actually do if I spot an ice dam or interior water stains?

First, don’t get up on that roof yourself. I’ve heard too many stories of someone’s uncle deciding to “just chip it off real quick” and ending up with a much bigger claim on his hands, roof damage, a fall, or both. The IBHS recommends using a roof rake from the ground to clear snow before it can turn into ice, or hiring a licensed, insured pro if the situation is already past that point.

If you’ve got active water intrusion, move what you can out of the way, towels and buckets are your friend, and take photos and video before you touch anything. Document the ceiling stain, the icicles, the whole scene. Then call your agent, not the roofer, not your neighbor who “had this happen once.” We can tell you fast whether this looks like a covered event and get the claims process moving while it’s still fresh.

How do I keep this from happening again next year?

Prevention almost always comes down to two things: insulation and ventilation. If warm air isn’t escaping into your attic in the first place, the snow on your roof stays uniformly cold and doesn’t melt unevenly. That means sealing gaps around light fixtures and attic hatches, making sure your attic insulation meets current recommendations, and keeping gutters clear so any meltwater that does form has somewhere to go. The NAIC’s winter weather guidance echoes the same basics, and honestly, a lot of Vermont homeowners are surprised how much of this overlaps with what already keeps your heating bill down.

Why does having a local agent actually matter here?

Because “standard policy” doesn’t mean identical policy. Every carrier we work with, and we work with more than a dozen, structures ice dam and water damage coverage a little differently: some have specific sublimits, some treat gradual damage more strictly than others. I’ve been doing this since 1994, first alongside my dad and now as the owner, and the thing I care about most is making sure you’re not finding out about a gap in coverage the hard way, mid-February, with a bucket under your ceiling. My team and I would rather sit down with you now, look at what you actually have, and make sure it fits the house you live in and the winters we all know are coming.

If you haven’t had someone take a fresh look at your home insurance policy in a while, or if you’re just tired of crossing your fingers every time the temperature swings, give us a call. We’re right here in Milton, and we’d genuinely rather help you avoid the claim than just process it after the fact.

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So let’s settle this once and for all, because I explain it about six times a week between October and December: hitting a deer or a moose is not a collision claim. I know, I know — it feels like a collision. Your car collided with a large mammal at 45 miles an hour. But in insurance-speak, “collision coverage” only applies when you hit another car or a stationary object, like a mailbox, a guardrail, or — ask me how I know — a very determined snowbank. Animals fall under comprehensive coverage, the part of your policy that handles the stuff that just happens to you: theft, fire, flying rocks, hailstorms, and yes, wildlife with a death wish and no concept of headlights.

Why deer and moose are Vermont’s own special insurance headache

We’re not West Virginia (they hold the dubious honor of the highest odds of an animal strike in the country), but Vermont drivers know the drill. Dirt roads cutting through farmland, dusk commutes on Route 7, mud season turning every shoulder into a deer buffet — we’ve got the ingredients. Nationally, drivers file somewhere around 1.7 million animal-collision claims a year, and the busiest stretch runs from October through December, when deer are on the move. That lines up exactly with when my phone starts ringing off the hook.

Moose add their own flavor of chaos. A deer strike usually means a smashed bumper and a very sad grille. A moose strike means the animal’s body is roughly at windshield height, because their legs are so long the impact tends to come in high rather than low. It’s a different kind of accident entirely, and it’s exactly why I sit down with every single Vermont client — new drivers, longtime customers, my own grandkids when they finally get their licenses — and ask the same question: “Do you actually have comprehensive coverage, or did somebody talk you into dropping it to save twelve bucks a month?”

The mistake I see constantly

Here’s the thing that keeps me up at night, or at least keeps me typing angry follow-up emails: liability-only policies do not cover animal strikes. Full stop. If you’re driving an older car and you decided comprehensive wasn’t worth the premium, an encounter with a deer means you’re paying for that repair — or that replacement — entirely out of pocket. I’ve watched people cry actual tears over a totaled Subaru and a $6,000 repair estimate because nobody ever explained the difference to them. That’s not going to happen to my clients if I can help it. When someone walks into our Milton office, I don’t just sell a policy and shake hands. I walk through what you drive, where you drive it, and whether a wildlife encounter would wreck your finances or just your Tuesday. That’s the whole philosophy behind how we build out an auto insurance policy that’s actually shaped around Vermont driving conditions, not some generic template built for a driver in Phoenix who’s never seen a moose in his life.

What I tell people to actually do

If you do hit one, here’s my short version of the speech I give over the phone at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday: get your car off the road if you safely can, put your hazards on, and do not go poke the animal. A wounded deer or moose is unpredictable and can absolutely still hurt you. Call the local police or state troopers, especially if the animal is blocking the road or you’re not sure your car is drivable. Take photos. Then call us — or your carrier — before you do anything to the vehicle. I’ve had clients try to “just get it looked at real quick” at a shop before filing, and it makes the claims process messier than it needs to be.

And please, for the love of all things holy, don’t swerve to avoid the deer. I say this every single autumn and I’ll say it again: braking firmly and staying in your lane is safer than yanking the wheel and putting yourself into oncoming traffic or a tree. That’s not folk wisdom, that’s straight from the highway safety researchers who study this stuff for a living, and the data backs it up — a huge share of the serious injuries and fatalities in animal-related crashes happen when drivers swerve, not from the initial impact itself, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Why I actually enjoy this part of the job

People sometimes ask why an insurance agency owner gets this animated about wildlife collisions. Honestly? I grew up around horses. I still ride and train them, and I’ve spent my whole life around large animals that can go from calm to chaos in half a second. I get it. I’m not lecturing anybody from behind a desk who’s never had a close call with something four-legged and 200 pounds heavier than they’d like. When my agent Shawn — who spent a decade with Allstate before coming back to our team — talks through how comprehensive coverage handles an animal strike, he’s not reading off a script. He grew up on a dairy farm. Between the two of us and the rest of our crew, this agency has seen just about every version of “an animal ruined my Tuesday” that Vermont has to offer.

My professional advice  

If you drive anywhere near a tree line, a farm field, or basically anywhere in this state that isn’t downtown Burlington at noon, comprehensive coverage isn’t optional peace of mind — it’s just common sense. According to the Insurance Information Institute, the average animal-strike claim runs into the thousands of dollars once modern sensors, cameras, and bumper components get involved, and that number keeps climbing as cars get more expensive to fix. I’d rather sit down with you now, over coffee or on the phone, and make sure your policy actually matches how you live and drive, than have that awkward “I wish we’d talked sooner” conversation after your car is already at the body shop.

So give us a call at the office, or stop by 684 W. Milton Rd. We’ve been doing this since my dad started the agency back in 1965, and this is exactly the kind of conversation we still like having — even if it means explaining, for the thousandth time, why hitting a moose isn’t technically a “collision.” Let’s get your Vermont auto insurance coverage squared away before deer season sneaks up on you again, and while we’re at it, I’ll walk you through the rest of your car insurance policy to make sure nothing else is quietly underinsured either.

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