Landscape in summer, plow in winter: the coverage gap nobody tells you about

The honest answer is that most landscapers who plow are carrying a landscaping policy with a plow route bolted onto it by hope. The policy was written in April for mowing, sod, and plantings. Nobody told the carrier about the eleven HOA lots in November. Then somebody falls, or the plow truck slides through a stop sign in Parker, and the carrier reads the claim against what it actually agreed to insure. We insure landscaping contractors statewide, and we plow ourselves, so here’s where the gap opens, line by line, and what closes it. Nothing here needs a second policy, usually. It needs the first one to know what you do.

The same outfit, two different risks

Two things to keep separate. Summer landscaping is mostly a property damage risk: the rock through the window, the sprinkler line you cut, the wall that leans. Winter plowing is a bodily injury risk: a tenant on the ice, a driver on the road at 3 a.m., a crew member who goes off the tailgate with a bag of salt.

The underwriter prices those differently, rates them under different codes, and reads the claim against whichever one you told them about. If you told them about one, that’s the one you have. Here’s the gap in the order it usually bites.

Gap one: the general liability classification

A general liability policy is written against classifications on the dec page. Landscape gardening, lawn maintenance, maybe hardscape. Snow and ice removal is its own classification, and under most standard forms it either appears there, rated, or it doesn’t. Some carriers go further and attach a snow and ice exclusion endorsement to landscaping policies by default, because they don’t want the exposure.

So the February claim goes one of three ways. Snow is on the policy: the carrier defends and the slip-and-fall article is your roadmap. Snow is excluded by endorsement: there’s no coverage and the letter is yours to answer. Snow is simply absent, never disclosed: the carrier reads the application, and that conversation is one you don’t want to have with a broken wrist on the other side of it.

What the landscaping GL still covers, in every version, is the summer work it was written for. The gap is the winter, not the policy.

Gap two: the truck

This is the one we see most. The one-ton that pulls the trailer of mowers all summer gets a Boss blade in November. The truck is on the commercial auto, fine, but the application listed it as a service vehicle with a summer radius, and nobody added the plow. Or worse, it’s a second truck the owner drives personally and it’s on a personal auto policy, which under most forms excludes business use, and there is no more business-like use than plowing an HOA at 2 a.m. for money. The plow truck article covers that whole problem.

The limits matter too. Colorado requires minimum auto liability limits of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for bodily injury and $15,000 per accident for property damage (C.R.S. 10-4-620; 42-7-103(14)(a)), unchanged as of 2026; commercial contracts commonly ask for $1,000,000 combined single limit instead. (C.R.S. 10-4-620; 42-7-103(14)(a)) A truck legal at the state minimum is not a plow truck. One accident on a snow-packed Parker Road with two people in the other car goes past the minimum before the tow bill.

The fix is a commercial auto policy that lists the plow truck as a plow truck: the blade disclosed, the winter radius and hours disclosed, and the drivers named. The plow itself and the spreader in the bed go on the equipment schedule, not the auto policy, which is gap four.

Gap three: the crew and the code

Workers’ comp rates on payroll, and landscaping crews commonly rate under one code for installation and another for lawn maintenance, with stand-alone snow clearing typically under its own. If the same two guys mow the HOA in July and plow it in January, the payroll has to know which is which. Timecards by task are what let the audit split it. Without them, the auditor picks, and the auditor doesn’t pick the cheaper one.

Separately: a crew member who works only December through March is an employee. Colorado has no seasonal carve-out ( C.R.S. 8-40-203(1)(b); 8-44-101; 8-43-409), and the workers’ comp page explains why a landscaper with a winter-only plow driver still needs the policy in force all year.

Gap four: the equipment

The equipment floater was scheduled in April: mowers, trimmers, the Yanmar mini skid steer, the plate compactor. In November you bolt a pusher box on the skid steer and put a V-blade and a tailgate spreader on the truck. None of them are on the schedule. The pusher box that goes off the edge of a lot you couldn’t see in a whiteout, and the spreader that walks out of the yard in Aurora over Christmas, are both yours to replace.

Small fix. Send us the winter attachments with values in October and we send them to the carrier to be scheduled.

Gap five: the contracts

Summer contracts for an HOA are about scope and price. Winter contracts for the same HOA carry an indemnity clause, a trigger depth, a response time, and a certificate request with the association and the management firm as additional insured. A landscaper who signs the winter addendum the way they signed the summer one is taking on the owner’s negligence without reading it.

Colorado’s 2018 statute helps in one narrow spot. Colorado's Snow Removal Service Liability Limitation Act (C.R.S. 13-21-129, effective August 8, 2018) voids any snow-and-ice contract clause that requires one party to indemnify, hold harmless, or defend the other for the other party's own acts or omissions, but only where the service provider was prohibited, by the contract or in writing, from mitigating the specific snow or ice event at issue. (C.R.S. 13-21-129(3), (4); SB 18-062) Plainly: it voids the piece of the clause that makes you pay for the association’s own decision, and only where they told you in writing not to treat the walk that hurt somebody. Everything else in the clause runs as written. The indemnity law article has the whole statute; the point here is that the winter addendum needs to go to us and to an attorney before you sign it, not after.

What closing the gap looks like

The October checklist

Do this before the first storm, not after the first certificate request.

• Read the classifications on your GL dec page. If snow isn’t there, call.
• Read the endorsement list for a snow and ice exclusion.
• List every truck that will carry a blade, and what policy it’s on.
• List the blades, spreaders, and pusher boxes with replacement values.
• Pull last winter’s payroll and see whether it was split by task.
• Find the winter addendum for your biggest HOA and read the indemnity clause.
• Send all of it to us.

The residential and HOA snow page covers what those winter accounts typically claim (mailboxes, garage doors, the spring lawn damage), and the lawn care page covers the summer side of the same outfit.

Where to go from here

If you landscape and plow, the policy has to know both seasons. Already covered? Send the dec pages and the winter addendum to the policy review and we’ll mark every line in the table above against what your crew actually does from November to April. Starting fresh? Get Insured lists what to have ready. The cost side is two separate drivers conversations, the landscaping cost article and the snow plowing cost article. The expansive clay in Castle Rock and the freeze-thaw across the Front Range don’t care which season the policy was written for. Call before the first storm. No online quote, on purpose.

Serving businesses located in Colorado. Coverage is determined by the policy language and the carrier.