Online sales becoming uninsurable

One of the activities I listed for the warehouse I’m about to lease is “online sales.” The lessor requires a certificate of insurance before I can move in. My insurance broker has gotten “decline” from all the big insurers they use. Now trying smaller companies. The reason cited by all decliners was “online sales” which due to customer data being hacked so often, creates too much liability. Just something for online sellers to think about, if you sell from home, no worries but if you want to rent space, watch out! In my case I like to roll with the punches rather than fight city hall, always works out for me somehow. In this case if the biz is uninsurable with online sales I’ll either not lease any more space or delete the online sales and do them out of present space.

 

Finally got the insurance certificate for the additional warehouse today! That was the only part of the lease process that looked impossible for a while. Big insurers declined one after the other because I mentioned online sales. Our traditional insurer for our family businesses even turned me down for kind of a silly reason, he got my business confused with the US Naval Surface Warfare Center. He found that place on the web and saw that they are involved with guns, explosives, etc. and our broker wasn’t able to convince him that had no connection with me. But she found an insurance company that was happy to take my company for a very low annual premium, about half of what I had to pay in past years. So it was worth the hassle and worries. I should be moving some stuff starting Friday, new leased building is only one block from my present location. If I didn’t mention it before, one reason for the new space is that it already has 480 volts/3 phase in its main power panel, and several of my machine tools need that voltage. The present location has only 208 volts/3 phase (and 120 volts) which about half of the machines can use. We can make the higher voltage with a transformer but with very limited total current available there, and an upgrade unaffordable, it isn’t really worth the effort.

 

I think any of your motors could be run fine on 208 if you change the pairings in them. I haven't run across a 480 only motor.

 

. You are correct of course, for something with one motor, but then it will draw 480/208 times the amps. Some of the 480-volt machines have many motors and the control panels are set up with 480 volt components (one milling machine has six motors.) I think you’d need a PhD in EE to rewire some of those for a different voltage. Believe me I looked into all the shortcuts and almost took some, but now we’ll have the correct voltage for those machines.

New space panels-

 

Well today I delivered the long list of documents required, to the landlord in person. Each document was the longest of its type I’d ever had for a lease like this, but the lease contract itself (about 50 pages) was the best I’d seen as far as grammar, spelling, logic etc-no mistakes at all! Every previous lease contract was full of typos, grammatical errors, and in fact some had nonsensical statements, all of which I had to fix before I’d sign them. These folks added in several concessions I wanted also. So I get the keys tomorrow and start filling up the Hoarditorium Annex!

 

Congrats on your new location.

 

Thanks. I hope to bring hoards of stuff over from our other locations, photograph it, and sell it off one way or another using the front (street-facing) half the new place. Back half, nearer to the breaker panels, will be where we set up many machine tools. Front wall has drive-in access and back wall has an elevated loading dock. This pic looks toward the back wall. I’m hoping to avoid putting pallet racks up in this space. I think their presence encourages me to shove lots of stuff in them, then it’s “out of sight, out of mind.” Tripping over stuff on the floor should be a good incentive for me to sell it off.