As the owner of one or more trucks, you may worry you are wasting time you could use to make money if you cannot use your fleet. Downtime claims exist for this purpose. Learning more about this system can help you in any future accidents.
How it works
The calculations needed to figure out how much you need to start by looking at your gross income. The amount of money you made in previous years before the accident occurred gives you a starting point to figure out your losses. From there, you can take away certain unavoidable expenses, like tolls or gas money. The losses are the money you would be making if not for the accident.
It is important to keep all financial papers with you throughout this process. Receipts, tax returns, and repair bills are just some examples of information you need to prove your case. Keeping any documents used in this process is typically a good idea.
Damage mitigation
One important rule you must keep in mind is that you should be mitigating any lost wages during this process. This means you should be actively looking for solutions to work around your lack of proper transportation.
Trying to rent other trucks is one way to show good faith effort towards this obligation. If there is genuinely no possible way to rent new trucks or fix your old trucks, then you can show you at least tried. It helps to keep paper records of what you already did in order to have proof you took steps to mitigate your damages.
