ADAS Empowered

Joel (00:00)
Welcome to the ADAS Empowered podcast. This is the show where collision repair professionals, calibration techs, SHERs, and OEMs come together to stay ahead of the curve. Each episode, we're going to dive into the latest and advanced driver assistance systems, exploring emerging technologies, calibration best practices, and evolving industry standards. Whether you're in the shop, in the field, or in the boardroom,

We're your go-to source for thought leadership, collaboration, and real-world insights to drive safer and more efficient repairs. Let's get empowered together.

Joel (00:34)
All right, well good afternoon everyone. Joel here with the ADAS Empowered podcast. Your host for today's episode. I'm joined by a great colleague of mine, Nick Mellon. Nick's from RRM Insurance out in believe Scottsdale, Arizona. Connected with Nick a while back and really excited to tackle our topic of conversation today which...

Nick does come from the insurance side of the industry, but a little bit different angle in terms of being able to provide protection and coverages for collision repair and repair shops themselves. So really excited to dive in here real quick.

If you've not subscribed to the podcast, should be a link included with this video where you can subscribe and view the podcast or listen on your favorite podcast streaming platforms between.

Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, and we also have a YouTube channel where you can watch the video of this as well. appreciate everybody listening in today. And for those that have subscribed at this particular point, wanted to say thank you to everybody that's been a part of, which is now our fourth episode on the podcast. again, Nick, welcome. Appreciate you being on today and looking forward to our

Nicholas Melon (01:56)
Thanks for having me.

Joel (01:59)
conversation. ⁓ Let's start with a little bit about who you are and your background and let's kick things off with an introduction of who Nick Melanus are.

Nicholas Melon (02:13)
Yeah, again, Nick Malin, R of Insurance Services. We're a full service insurance agency out of Scottsdale, Arizona.

businesses across the country from repair shops, auto body shops, dealerships, towing companies, kind of the full spectrum of automotive services. I've been in the industry, whoo 2025, eight years now, six of that with RRM. I started my kind of automotive services journey with another agency that

that wasn't really specialized in the space. So I kind of stumbled into it while working at another agency. And just to provide a better fit made the switch over to RRM Insurance, just to be surrounded by colleagues and insurance companies, all of that that are also involved and specialized in the space.

Joel (03:11)
Awesome. Great to, like I said, great to have you on the podcast today. I think, like I said, what's interesting is when you and I initially had talked, sort of the idea was, hey, are our shops properly or adequately ⁓ covering themselves, making sure they're mitigating risk, and we'll get into that a little bit here. ⁓

I want to say personally say thank you for reaching out when you did. think the timing was really, really key and critical in terms of, you know, it even sort of reflected some thought in my own mind. Like, you know, our shop's adequately covered. If something were to happen unbeknownst to them, do they have?

do they have exposures? I mean, I worked in the insurance industry myself for a few years, so I do have a little bit of knowledge of it, not to the degree where you necessarily do, but I'm really looking forward to our conversation. So one of the things that we wanted to kind of surface up, really out of the get-go here was, ⁓ and I'll kind of preface it by saying the interactions between

collision repair shop and specifically on let's say like on the ADOS side or diagnostic side and if the shop has limitations or lack of equipment or training or facility to be able to perform certain calibrations or ADOS ⁓ work and they're subletting that out or subcontracting that out.

I think this is one of the first things that was really interesting that you had brought up in some previous conversations with me and that I want to allow you to elaborate on. Why is that important? What was that that you wanted to make mention of in some of those early conversations that we talked about as far as maybe ⁓ vetting out who you're subletting to or considerations in terms of... ⁓

who are we sending these cars to that we're putting in the, know, ⁓ them now in control of making sure these things are done correctly. So I'd love to have you take just a few minutes on sort of setting that stage and then talking through a little bit, you know, what shop should consider when they are subletting cars out.

Nicholas Melon (05:32)
Yeah, I think, and not to say shops don't understand this, I think a lot of them do, but I think what's important to remember is that the liability is always going to roll back up to the shop. The customer's, know, contract, repair order, whatever we're calling that, that's with the body shop. The relationship with the insurance company, if they're on a DRP, that contract.

And the liability they assume within that contract is between the DRP and the body shop. And so if you are, there's, there's two really important parts. I'm sure we'll get more deeper into some of these, but if you're hiring a ADAS contractor that doesn't do the repairs correctly, or completely,

if they're not doing the repairs in their entirety, whether that means they missed some that were needed or they're just not doing them correctly. And there is liability down the road, bodily injury, property damage, whatever that looks like caused as a result. ⁓ That liability does come back to the shop. Now.

Are there ways that shops should be handling that? Absolutely. There's some best practices we could talk about, about how to transfer that risk down to the calibration company, the company that is doing the work, which is no different than what the insurance companies do when you sign their DRPs and they say, Hey, you're need to have these insurance requirements. need to name us as an additional insured, but whatever those contracts read, they're all a little different, but

Those are all how the insurance company has deemed it fit to mitigate their risk and put it on the shop performing the work, which is where the liability should be. The faulty work should lie with the person doing the faulty work.

Joel (07:16)
So if we set the stage here a little bit, because there are a lot of folks out there doing calibrations at this particular point, I don't want to necessarily say they're fly by night, but they're maybe a bit underserved in terms of business documentation, for lack of a better way of saying it. Potentially they're visiting a shop today as we speak. The shop has got a vehicle that they know needs a calibration because of a diagnostic trouble code or what have you.

and there's no vetting process necessarily going to take place because that person, as they pull up to the shop, shop says, I've got a vehicle. It's a brand new relationship that the shop is unaware of that this other entity doesn't necessarily have any liability coverage, much less ⁓ adequate liability.

I I think it goes without saying you mentioned almost immediately that that

some exposure there if you're putting that vehicle in the hands of somebody maybe they know what they're doing maybe they don't ⁓ should be cause for concern for shops to to reevaluate maybe a couple things right first what are their liability limits and what do they have for for proper lobby liability for themselves but not only that who are we handing the keys to these cars to and what are we understanding as far as

due process in terms of like where are they at for, from a liability standpoint. Is that relatively accurate to say at this particular point?

Nicholas Melon (08:48)
It absolutely

is. to be clear, I don't want to pick on the ADOS contractors. This would be advice I would give a shop on any of their Sublet services. So if they have a glass guy, I would have the same recommendation. If they've got a PDR guy, I'd give the same recommendation. A lot of shops are doing wheels and tires in-house, but if they're not, if they have a tire shop that they deal with, that's another high liability area.

Joel (09:18)
Yeah, I think the other thing you have to think about too is we talk a lot about this as a recently and I don't know why it's come up more often than it has, but again, setting that same stage in that same scenario where you're putting the vehicle in the hands of somebody that maybe is under trained, doesn't have right business documentation, maybe isn't following procedures correctly, manipulating measurements as far as getting a calibration to successfully pass.

Nicholas Melon (09:36)
Mm-hmm.

Joel (09:48)
and they're putting somebody back into a vehicle that isn't necessarily safe. Although the vehicle owner doesn't know any different and the shop thinks that, I've subletted this out to somebody who's got equipment. It should be okay, right? Person gets in the car, drives away and an unsuspecting bystander in another vehicle or pedestrian or somebody on a bicycle is involved in a situation with that car now.

I mean again now you've you've involved a an additional third party that had nothing to do with the repair of the vehicle but now is Subject to whatever circumstances or consequences are of that. So again, I Don't know if you've seen something like that or can talk to experience in that regard I do think it's more of just

there are other people involved potentially when we are fixing cars that aren't necessarily directly related to that particular vehicle.

Nicholas Melon (10:48)
Yeah,

I think a firsthand example that I could give, and it's not an ADAS example exactly, but it trickles right into the same conversation as I had a client who was sold ⁓ a truck by dealership who used a contractor to install a fifth wheel hitch. The fifth wheel ended up being installed incorrectly. ⁓ The trailer that the client was pulling ended up

Joel (11:10)
me.

Nicholas Melon (11:15)
disconnecting completely from the truck, flipping over, causing bodily injury damage to a nearby vehicle. And ultimately, from my understanding, now I didn't insure the dealership, I insured the person driving the vehicle, but to my understanding, our insurance auto coverage sued the dealership, the dealership sued their contractor, and I don't know the results of that, but what I could tell you is

If the contractor didn't have the right insurance, the dealership was paying for it, or at least the dealership's insurance was paying for it.

Joel (11:52)
Right, yeah.

scary nonetheless, right? mean, it's firsthand experience having actual example like that and not necessarily just a hearsay, but having that ability to speak to the importance of being properly covered, properly vetting out contractors who we're working with so that we understand what's a couple of ways that we could, if we are subcontracting, making sure we're... ⁓

Nicholas Melon (11:54)
Yeah.

Joel (12:21)
vetting and validating proper information from them.

Nicholas Melon (12:25)
Yeah, I think on the insurance coverage side, we should be asking for certificates of insurance, confirming minimum coverage limits, probably asking to be named an additional insured on the subcontractors policy. All of these are our standard best practices. If you are a DRP shop, it's probably a best practice to require that your subcontractors also meet the DRPs.

insurance requirements. Now that in some cases can be a big ask because the garage keeper's limits are pretty high. But certainly on the liability side, would say meeting your DRP's requirements is a best practice. As far as vetting, mean, we have to be educated enough to know if the shop is doing the repairs or at least set up to do the

the calibrations correctly. You're not gonna have somebody standing there and watching them do it, and that's always the liability of doing business, right? ⁓ But if you visit their shop and it isn't set up correctly for the static calibrations, you and I both know that the requirements that some of these OEs put out there to do a static calibration are quite high.

Joel (13:48)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Melon (13:48)
Well,

then you know that you're not getting proper calibrations on those vehicles. So I think we vet the shops as best we can and we transfer the risk on the insurance side the best we can and the combination of the both, you know, is the best possible outcome to protect you. And then your insurance on top of that is always, you know, the last resort.

Joel (14:09)
makes a lot of sense actually. it's using good judgment I think is really the overarching piece of this, right? Validating the information ⁓ through certificates of insurance or being named insured on liability policies I think is one of the things I think a lot of shops that are part of DRP programs don't even maybe recognize or realize that there are...

mitigating or ways to mitigate risk because of insurance contracts that they already have in place, where if they are arbitrarily subletting to somebody who is uninsured or underinsured from a liability standpoint, things you've got to think about. But again, what I go back to is that just-in-time opportunity where I've got a car that needs what it needs done and I've got somebody on my doorstep standing there saying, I can do it.

It's a balancing ad at that particular moment. Maybe the best course of process at that particular point is just to delay things a little bit, only because it does provide some additional protections for a shop owner.

Nicholas Melon (15:15)
Yeah, absolutely. you know, I think at the end of the day, the shops clients want their vehicles back in the condition it was before the accident. And so if that means we're delayed a day, nobody likes that. But if you explain to your client that, hey, this just needs to get delayed, this calibration,

to get done at this type of shop or whatever that looks like. ⁓ I would like to think that the client is always going to want their car fixed correctly, not quickly. And quickly and correctly is always ideal, right?

Joel (15:57)
Sometimes you can have a choice. You can do it quickly or correctly, not necessarily always both.

Nicholas Melon (16:02)
And I

would also say, and I kind of didn't mention this, it's not a situation where you're collecting a certificate on every job, right? It's a one-time contract that you're signing with these vendors that you're using all the time. So you find a great calibration shop that can do what your needs are. You put an annual contract or whatever that looks like in place with them. And you get one certificate of insurance.

You mark a calendar date when their policy expires. When that comes back up, you ask for another certificate. ⁓ This doesn't have to be something that takes you hours and hours of administrative work in your office. It should be a quick, straightforward process.

Joel (16:48)
Seems as though too, even if you've got other vendors that are non-ADOT specific, it makes sense to do the same, whether they're a parts vendor or a paint jobber or anybody really for that matter that you may be outsourcing certain things to.

Nicholas Melon (17:01)
Yeah, some of those

may have contracts the opposite way. I mean, I think you'd probably have a hard time getting your jobber to sign something like that. But certainly anybody performing a service on your customer's vehicle, I would say.

Joel (17:16)
So what's the biggest liability exposures for, as it relates to ADOS, for shops and for sublet calibrators?

Nicholas Melon (17:28)
Yeah, mean, simply put, the biggest exposures, the largest claims are going to come from not necessarily damage to the customer's vehicle, which is something that we also need to be ensuring for, but it's going to come from third party bodily injury property damage that's deemed a result or preventable had a calibration been done. ⁓

Sometimes at all or in its entirety or correctly Whatever that looks like right if if a vehicle needed a calibration And it wasn't done per OEM spec and it's a term in that an accident could have been prevented or you know I think the tricky part of this is what we're starting to see and you've actually published some data Maybe you didn't publish it, but you shared some data recently about how A dos vehicles with a dos maybe when they do get into accidents

the rates of injury are lower. And so I think it can get very tricky because potentially a savvy lawyer can come around and say, well, sure, this wouldn't have prevented it, but we think that there would have been no injury had this been done correctly. All of those are the largest exposures. When we're talking about people getting injured as a result of your completed work,

and your completed work includes your subcontractor's completed work. Those are your biggest liabilities. Those the areas where we get the multimillion dollar verdicts.

Joel (19:03)
Do you have a sense of what shops should be thinking about in terms of liability coverage, like a limit or an amount? I mean, I've seen a million dollars, which I think is sort of gone the way of the dodo. A million dollars isn't necessarily what it used to be. $5 million, I think a lot of shops are thinking of ways of keeping costs down. Obviously this is a cost center for them, but.

Nicholas Melon (19:32)
There's two items I'll say. For starters, I don't want to make a blanket statement. Every shop's needs are going to be different. You know, if we were dealing with a 20 location MSO, ⁓ they have a lot to protect. And so we'd probably make a different suggestion. We as an agency try and start with a $2 million umbrella, so that'd a million of

general liability plus an additional two million. ⁓ I think something that's interesting to just think about or talk about is the higher your limits go, the less expensive it becomes. And I'll try and make that make sense. the, and I'm not saying a $5 million limit is cheaper than a $3 million limit. What I'm saying is that that last two million is cheaper than the first two million. And the rationale is pretty simple of that.

Joel (20:14)
Hahaha

Nicholas Melon (20:28)
It's less likely to ever pay out. The first million is the most likely million to ever pay out. The higher that number goes, the less likely it is to pay out. And it actually gets more and more affordable per million dollars the higher you go.

Joel (20:41)
Makes sense. And that's great to mention too that sitting down with your customers or whoever you're dealing with, it is not a blanket number per se every single time. It's worthy of conversation. What exposures do they have? What assets do they have? What are they trying to protect?

How does it, is there anything as a shop owner with considerations as far as from commercial to personal, is there any crossover there where they have concerns of what loss the business might feel as a result of something, right, whether it's themselves or from subcontracting to...

understanding exposures they may have from a personal side or is that not necessarily something that...

Nicholas Melon (21:35)
I just want to make sure I understand the question.

You're talking like what I think a lot of people have heard, who is like piercing the corporate veil, right? Yeah. mean, those situations happen. ⁓ The typical area where that happens is intentional negligence. So in terms of ADOS, that would be, you know, you as the shop owner,

Joel (21:42)
Correct. Yes.

Nicholas Melon (22:02)
know that it's not getting done correctly or not what's supposed to get done isn't getting done. And then you choose not to do it anyway. If that decision on an individual decision-making level is what causes the event, liability, whatever that looks like, that's an area where, I mean, piercing the corporate veil, sure, but in reality, it's both.

Joel (22:08)
Mmm.

Nicholas Melon (22:31)
the shop and the owner are going to get named in the suit, which will typically happen either way. But the LLC, the business insurance, whatever that looks like, will typically indemnify the owner. Intentional acts are not covered on insurance.

Joel (22:53)
I know we're not legal experts by any stretch. I don't wanna breach or undo the of the legally, because I'm always timid of doing that, but I'd be remiss if we didn't at least re-articulate sort of what you said here. If you are a shop owner and you're listening, or know somebody, and as you say, if you are just grossly negligent in knowing what needs to be done correctly, but.

Nicholas Melon (22:56)
Yeah.

Joel (23:22)
ultimately refusing to do it that way or subcontracting up to somebody knowing that they're not doing things correctly or they're billing for things that aren't being done at all.

the corporate liability or commercial liability will only extend so far if there's a certain level of gross negligence there, which again, I'm not a legal scholar or expert on any stretch of any side of this thing, but I'm simply advising on what I hear through hearsay and through conversation and through

different things I'm associated with that there may be things like this going on within the industry.

hopefully we can get to a point where that is no longer the case through proper education and thought leadership, but we're a long, long ways from that. In the meantime, we'll continue to do what we're doing. So guess that kind of brings me back to another part of this as far as exclusions within a policy as it relates to liability. I are there certain exclusions that shop owners should be considering?

Nicholas Melon (24:28)
I mean, the short answer to that is always yes, right? There's always exclusions. Every policy has exclusions. ⁓ I think as it relates to, ⁓ you know, this conversation, potentially looking at ⁓ there's typically a professional services exclusion on a policy, ⁓ which is an easy gap.

to bridge with a professional or errors and emissions policy on shops, those are really inexpensive. I mean, in some cases we're talking 200, $250 a year to extend that coverage. And then I think things we see all the time, we see that garage keepers' coverage is on a what's called legal liability basis instead of direct primary. ⁓

The short of that is legal liabilities only going to cover ⁓ damage to your customer's vehicle if you legally caused it. So if it's sitting in your yard and the hail storm rolls through, that's going to be uncovered. You didn't make the hail come. There's a couple of problems with that, but the biggest one is every DRP contract I've ever seen would require you to have the direct primary coverage. ⁓

We see shops all the time that are in non-compliance with their contracts with that. ⁓ Other exclusions that I think people just need to keep their eyes out for ⁓ would be like ancillary coverages. We've talked about this maybe a little bit in the past. This is a little less specific to ADOS, but ⁓ cyber liability, one of the fastest growing claims areas typically excluded on your general liability.

employment practices liability, which is like a discrimination type coverage excluded from your liability, general liability. ⁓ In short, a general liability policy, if you did not cause actual bodily injury, so you know, I think broken bones, or physical damage, know, you know, actual physical damage to a third party,

So not to yourself, if you didn't cause bodily injury or property damage to a third party, it's probably not covered on your general liability policy.

Joel (27:04)
Got it.

It's a great way to think about it. You mentioned cyber, A lot of vehicles have, and a lot of sophistication on them, not a lot of software runs a lot of these cars nowadays. You think of like Teslas and certain EV model vehicles that are.

Nicholas Melon (27:10)
Yeah.

Joel (27:24)
able to receive over-the-air updates for software updates for certain control modules to actuate or activate, whether that's related to ADAS or to fuel efficiencies or to whatever, right? I've seen and heard of some instances as cyber crimes have started to increase within the automotive space, the EV and the AV side.

What's typical policy when you sit down with somebody and you're looking at, you know, we've got a general liability policy in place here, which you mentioned excludes cyber. What does that conversation typically look like for you guys as you sit down with a repair shop?

Nicholas Melon (28:09)
Yeah, I think the first questions and always how we approach this is, is two sided. So we want to know what defenses they have in place. Are you using two factor authentication? Do you have firewalls? Are you backing up critical data on a regular basis? You know, things that are stored on clouds and critical, or are we backing that up? And then the secondary side is, is just getting a simple cyber liability quote again.

In the grand scheme of the client's package, all of the things we've mentioned, the cyber, the EPLI, the errors and emissions, coverages, they're all very inexpensive. And so, yeah, we as an agency like to present those coverages every time we quote a business. Of course, client ultimately makes the decision if they buy it or not.

but we wouldn't be doing our job as agents if we didn't present them. mean, these are the fastest growing claims areas in all, not just shops, but in all of commercial insurance. And we have seen the claims play out, I mean, countless, countless times on the EPLI side, employment practices liability, discrimination coverage, whatever we want to call that. I mean, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars to just find you not,

liable. I mean the cases take a lot of money to defend you and that's if you look at the statistics that's where all the money all the claims dollars are spent. I think it's like 80 % of all the claims dollars spent on that type of insurance are in defense. They're not on paying settlements, they're not on paying the claimants, they're just to clear your name.

Joel (29:57)
Hmm. asking

a lot of expense just to get through the door, so to speak. I'm curious the number of shops that you've encountered in the conversation. You said sort of it's a two prong approach of asking certain questions about 2FA and firewalls and then obviously providing them with a quote. I'm curious of the first part of that comment. Have you encountered many shops that have 2FA set up or a firewall set up?

Nicholas Melon (30:26)
⁓ I think a lot of shops have some version of a firewall, sure. ⁓ And a lot of the softwares these days do a good job at requiring 2FA. ⁓ I don't find many shops that have written practices, right? And so do they have it? Sometimes they have it just because they have it.

but does the shop have an actual cybersecurity protocol written practice that they review with their team? That's a lot more rare. And I don't want to...

Joel (31:03)
Is that something

you'd recommend doing?

Nicholas Melon (31:06)
I would say that for a lot of these things, cybersecurity, discrimination, at the very minimum, we should be outlining some best practices in an employee handbook that when your employees get hired, they are required to read and sign and agree to.

I would say that's a minimum. then, I mean, I even being in the industry, we talk about cybersecurity here all the time. So I don't know. mean, I'm sure most shops are doing some kind of meetings. And I hope they're doing some sort of safety meeting, even to just take 30 seconds or one minute of that meeting to say, Hey guys, remember, ⁓ suspicious emails should get reported to admin.

You are not allowed to verify certain information that has to go to these people and just outline those best practices occasionally. Yeah, I think that's best practice. I understand that the world is not always perfect. And so.

Joel (32:13)
Kind of a an odd question. I'm curious if you can provide an answer or have any any knowledge or experience around this and I'm thinking of You know at the the desktop level I think that's great to have some sort of protocols in place to to mitigate any sort of cyber exposures See a vehicle comes into our shop that is loaded with technology software

Maybe there's a patch update, but we've got to connect to the shop's Wi-Fi. We leave for the night, the car's still connected to Wi-Fi, we haven't disconnected it, and there's a breach against the shop's internet. Of which that vehicle now has potentially been exposed to whoever that cyber group is.

Is that something that would be of a concern for a shop to think about in terms of protocols and proper process of disconnecting any cars that may be connected to a wifi or even hardwired or and also is that something that would be.

potentially covered under a cyber rider. ⁓

Nicholas Melon (33:23)
and

Yeah, I mean, I'll try and answer that the best I can. I'm unaware of any situation where that's played out. you know, I'm talking in some...

Joel (33:31)
OK. I didn't think it

had, but I was just kind of rolling through my mind. I'm like, OK, thinking worst case scenario of all potential risks.

Nicholas Melon (33:38)
I'll play the hypothetical

here a little bit and do the best I can on it. But number one, and this is a bit of a non-answer, but cyber insurance being as new as it is, is not standard. the policies, much more so we talked about general liability policies. I named a couple of exclusions that we want to look out for our garage keepers. Cyber, we really need to be reviewing individual policies.

They are just not created equal. There's not standardization in the industry yet on those coverages. As far as is there a liability, I think in the right situation, there's always a liability. It comes down to what kind of data can they get off the vehicle or what can they do for the vehicle? I mean,

Again, I am playing in the hypotheticals with you here, but I mean, is there a world where they can disable the vehicle and charge a ransom? They do that with certain types of software all the time. ⁓ So I would think on a good cyber liability policy, something like that could be covered. mean, I am a...

Joel (34:46)
Kind of where my mind was going with this. Yeah.

Nicholas Melon (34:58)
We're definitely playing in the hypothetical with it. I've never heard of the situation playing out. Typically what happens in insurance in these situations is the situation arises, ⁓ the policy handles it the best it can. ⁓ So if you have a policy that covers kind of things like ⁓ ransom payments or things like that, which many of the cyber policies do, I would think again, I'm no.

I'm not a legal expert or a contract expert per se, but I would think it gets paid. And then what ultimately happens is when claims get paid in the insurance world, they get addressed much more specifically.

Joel (35:39)
I appreciate you playing a little bit of devil's advocate here and again, not trying to throw you too hard of a curve ball, but as I think about things in terms of best practices, business practices, proper risk mitigation, things of like, know, when we think we've seen it all in this industry is something of, or something like this hypothetical suddenly appears and are we prepared for it? Have we considered?

right conversation with the group that's providing us insurance. So I guess my next question is, I think a lot of shop owners probably default to their local agent only because of a relationship they have for maybe a personal side. I see a lot of questions routinely on different social platforms of people looking for

Who do you use for garage keepers? Who do you use for GL? Who do you use for this? And there's a wide range of answers. I guess my question, and I'd love to have you guys kind of give a of a plug here for RRM is, I'm looking at my independent local agent that I use, said, hey, I've got a body shop and I need some coverage and they write me a commercial policy. How do you guys differ a little bit than that?

sort of that example. Walk us through that a little bit better.

Nicholas Melon (37:05)
Yeah,

I think that the the answer to that question is that we're involved, right? We are involved in the industry at an intimate level. We love the industry. We want what's best for the industry, but that's only part of it. When we focus in these industries, we get partnerships on the insurance side that benefit us, right? And so

Whether that's kind of negotiation of terms, coverages, ⁓ know, contracts with insurance companies that also specialize in the space ⁓ that aren't just handing out contracts to every local agent. ⁓ Potentially some leeway on the underwriting side. And then on the other side of that, we have some tools that we can share with the shop. So.

We've kind of talked a little bit about this. If they need help with employee handbooks, those are things that we can assist with and we have knowledge with in their industry. If they need help with a contract with a subcontractor, those are things we can help with. And so there's a lot of great local agents out there. I don't want to bash a local agency.

But I would say that the industry, and this is true of the insurance industry across the board, it is going to these specialized groups for these reasons, because it's just too hard to do everything ⁓ at a very high level.

Joel (38:42)
I completely agree. I one of the things that I think about is not only on just the insurance side, but vehicles you might work on or you defer to a certain subcontractor because of their experience and their qualifications or professionalism that you can rely on them. So there is specialization across the entire industry on

insurance to OEM certification to ADOS to Just about everything and I think that's the key difference that I like about Again, I would do the same thing I wouldn't necessarily disparage any of the insurance agents that are out there because there's a lot of them and they provide phenomenal service and and a great value it's Having that key distinct understanding of how the industry works knowing the the vehicle sophistication and technology is going to continue to evolve and that

there are a lot of things that a shop has to consider ⁓ other than sort of off the shelf type coverages that potentially leave them very well exposed or overexposed.

Nicholas Melon (39:55)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you ask your agent, how do I mitigate risk with my ADOS contractor and they ask you what ADOS is, that's maybe an indication that you need to go to an agent that's a little more specialized, right?

Joel (40:07)
Yeah.

That's one thing we wanted to talk about is like, how do you, how do you have that conversation or as a shop owner? If I, Mentioned ADAS or ADOS that I'm, I'm, I'm going to be doing these things to these vehicles and they, start to come back with what's, what's ADAS or what's ADAS or what's, what's a calibration. Is that potentially maybe not necessarily a red flag, but maybe a yellow flag of like, this may not be necessarily the direction I need to go with my.

insurance.

Nicholas Melon (40:41)
Yeah, I would say if you're with your local agent, if you're with somebody who you didn't find through this industry, or maybe even if you are, ⁓ to get a second opinion ⁓ from us or any agent that's really specialized is probably not a terrible idea. I have no problem telling people, ⁓ know what, your agent in this, at least with this current policy, they're doing a great job for you.

and, and you should stick with them if this ends or let's keep this communication open. That's a conversation I, I'm happy to have. ⁓ on the flip side of it, there's a lot of times where it's like, well, if they're not having, even if the policy is okay, you know, they, have a fine general liability and garage keepers policy. But if they're not having some of these conversations with you about ⁓ errors and emissions cyber EPLI, ⁓

Well, then we just maybe want to talk about consider, ⁓ you know, an agent that's going to look at your needs a little closer, knows your needs a little bit better. And ⁓ yeah, I think just reaching out to an agent and a second opinion is a good option.

but we're happy to do that if that's us, yeah.

Joel (42:00)
As far as like RRM goes and services that you guys provide, you are nationwide, correct? Then you work with a diversified list of other insurance companies that actually underwrite the policies, correct?

Nicholas Melon (42:07)
Correct. ⁓

Yeah. So we, ⁓ we're a brokerage. We're not an insurance company. There's a, there's a distinction there. ⁓ and we are working with, you know, on, on kind of the core group, probably about 25 insurance companies. and then, you know, for something that's a little more specialized, higher risk, we have access through kind of secondary brokerage models to hundreds of, of insurance companies.

Joel (42:44)
So you really can find coverage for just about any type of shop level of risk, what have you,

Nicholas Melon (42:53)
Absolutely.

Yeah, think insurance is getting harder and some of the high wind hail ⁓ areas of the world, some of the wildfire areas, Northern Arizona. If those people are having trouble, we can help.

Joel (43:11)
appreciate that. I think again, there's a lot of folks that are out there that if you've not investigated in a group like RRM Insurance, Nick, what's a good place to get in touch with you guys? If go to the website.

Nicholas Melon (43:23)
Yeah, you can go to our website. My email is pretty simple. It's nicknickrmins.com. ⁓

Or if you want to give us a call, guess my my office here is 623-777-4471. mean, we're a responsive group. I'll tell you that typically somebody is going to get back to you same business day. So, yeah, if anybody's interested, please, please reach out. We'll be happy to point you in the right direction.

Joel (43:57)
Yeah, I think it's a good opportunity, like I said, if you're looking for ⁓ somebody to evaluate your current policy, have them take a look at it, get their input as being within the industry, having some really deep knowledge of how the industry works. I think that certainly helps kind of meet you where at as far as if you're a shop owner or even a sublet vendor from that standpoint.

We'll get you out of here on this. ⁓ If you could spend five minutes with any shop owner, what advice would you give them, ⁓

Nicholas Melon (44:30)
wow. Well, yeah, what advice did I give them to use Rav? ⁓

Joel (44:32)
I'd to ask this question to all my guests. I'd just love the response.

I appreciate it.

Nicholas Melon (44:40)
No, I think it would be to mitigate your risks from both angles, right? Let's work together to put best practices in place, ⁓ standard monthly training with your employees. ⁓ But then to also recognize that the worst case is always out there and that's what insurance is for and we can work together to find a

a competitive, cost-effective solution that's there for that worst-case scenario. So my advice would be to approach it from a two-prong solution, even though I'm an insurance agent, that's my job. We want to make the shop safer.

Joel (45:26)
Excellent, I love that answer. again, Nick, just wanna say thank you for being part of the podcast today in this episode. ⁓ I'm always amazed at what I learned in conversations with folks like yourself. And again, if you haven't had a chance to visit with Nick yet, RRM Insurance, it's RRMINS.com is their website. Feel free to reach out to them. ⁓ Gather up your insurance documents, have Nick take a look at it. ⁓

conversation with him and his team. think he'd be ⁓ very well blessed to do so. So again, just want to say thank you to Nick. We appreciate it. Appreciate everybody tuning in today and ⁓ continue to push out additional podcasts here in the near future. And we really appreciate everybody's time. They're spending their time with us this afternoon. And again, thanks to Nick. And ⁓ we'll continue doing what we're doing here. Thanks, everybody.

Nicholas Melon (46:05)
Thank you, Joe.

Thanks.