Income Protection for Plant Fitters
A vehicle mechanic works on a ramp with the tools on the wall. A plant fitter works wherever the machine stopped.
That might be a quarry, a half-built site, a landfill or a field in the rain. The components weigh what they weigh, the access is whatever the machine's design allows, and there is usually nobody to help lift. Add hydraulic systems holding considerable pressure and the hazard profile moves well beyond ordinary mechanical work.
Income protection pays a monthly amount while you cannot work. For a plant fitter the key questions are whether you are employed or working for yourself, and whether the policy tests your ability to do this specific work.
The short answer
Plant fitting is field service on heavy machinery: a machine breaks down where it broke down, often on a site or in a field, and it has to be repaired there. The components are heavy, the access is whatever the machine allows, and hydraulic systems at working pressure introduce a specific and serious injury risk that a car workshop does not have.
What actually stops you working
- Hydraulic fluid injection injuries from pinhole leaks in pressurised lines, which are serious, easily underestimated and need immediate treatment
- Crush injuries from components, attachments and machines moving or settling during repair
- Back and shoulder injuries from handling heavy components with no lifting equipment available in the field
- Falls from machines, tracks and access platforms, particularly in wet and muddy conditions
- Burns from hot engines, exhausts and hydraulic oil on a machine that has just stopped working
- Hand-arm vibration and hand injuries from impact tools used on seized and corroded fixings
Sick pay, if you get any
Depends on your position. Fitters employed by a plant hire company, a dealer or a large contractor generally have occupational sick pay in their terms. Self-employed fitters and those working through their own company have none, while the van, tooling and any diagnostic equipment finance continues. Call-out and overtime often form a large part of actual earnings in this trade, which is worth noting when sizing cover.
Why the definition of incapacity decides it
The clause matters because field service demands more than general mechanical ability. A fitter who cannot lift heavy components unaided, climb on machines or work in awkward positions can often still do workshop or diagnostic work, which an any occupation definition will treat as fitness. An own occupation definition asks whether you can do plant fitting as you do it.
Hydraulic Injection Is The Injury Nobody Takes Seriously Enough
This deserves its own section because it is specific to high-pressure systems and it is routinely underestimated at the moment it happens.
A pinhole leak in a pressurised hydraulic line produces a jet of fluid fine enough to be almost invisible and powerful enough to penetrate skin. The entry wound can look trivial, there may be little immediate pain, and the fluid is then inside the tissue where it causes damage and infection. It is a surgical emergency and treating it as a minor cut is how it becomes a permanent hand injury or worse.
The practical point for this page is that a hand injury of that kind takes a fitter out for months and can leave lasting loss of function. The practical point for the job is simpler: never check for a leak with your hand, and if it happens, say what caused it at hospital rather than describing it as a scratch.
There Is Nobody To Help You Lift It
Workshop mechanical work has cranes, ramps and colleagues. Field service has a van and whatever you brought.
A hydraulic pump, a final drive or a track section is heavy, and on a site it has to be moved by one person in whatever position the machine allows, often standing on a track or lying under something. That is the mechanism for the back and shoulder injuries that dominate long absences in this trade, and it is structural rather than a matter of being careless.
It also tends to recur, because coming back means doing the same lifts in the same conditions. As with every gradual condition on this site, that is an argument for arranging cover before the first serious episode, since anything in your records when you apply will be asked about and may affect the terms.
If you stop
A machine that is down is costing its owner money every day, so the work goes to whoever can attend. For an employed fitter the job is held. For a self-employed fitter the customers who called you have found somebody else by the end of the week, and in a trade built on being the person who turns up, those relationships are the business.
Check For A Scheme, And What It Counts
Fitters employed by a dealer, hire company or large contractor often have death in service, which is worth getting the figure for from your own benefit statement.
The detail that matters here is what the multiple is calculated on, because call-out and overtime can be a substantial part of a fitter's real earnings and schemes are frequently based on basic pay alone.
Self-employed fitters have nothing from work, and a van full of specialist tooling is usually financed, with that debt generally passing to the estate. Both parts belong in the calculation.
Capital For A Move Into The Workshop Or The Office
The characteristic ending is a back, shoulder or hand that will not do field service any more, in somebody with genuinely valuable technical knowledge.
That is a better position than many trades, because the knowledge transfers: workshop supervision, diagnostics, technical support, parts and service management, or training. Several of those pay less at the start.
A lump sum on diagnosis funds the transition. Income protection pays while you are unable to work and does not cover the situation where you can work but not out of a van on a site, which is where these injuries leave people.
If You Run Your Own Service Business
A self-employed fitter with regular customers has an asset that depends entirely on availability.
Plant owners call the fitter who answers and attends, because a machine standing idle costs them more than the repair. If you cannot attend for two months, those customers establish a relationship with somebody else, and that is harder to win back than it was to win.
Cover sized so another fitter could be subcontracted to keep servicing your customers protects the business rather than only your income. Where you employ other fitters, each represents skills and customer relationships that are not quickly replaced, so cover on a key person is worth considering, arranged by and paid to the business.
Common questions
What is a hydraulic injection injury?+
Fluid escaping from a pinhole leak in a pressurised line as a jet fine enough to penetrate skin. The entry wound can look trivial while the fluid causes damage and infection inside the tissue. It is a surgical emergency, it is specific to high-pressure systems, and it can leave permanent loss of hand function.
Is this different from cover for a vehicle mechanic?+
The product is the same and the conditions are not. A mechanic works on a ramp with lifting equipment and tools to hand. A plant fitter repairs machines where they broke down, lifting heavy components unaided in whatever position the machine allows, with hydraulic pressure involved.
Would a back injury be covered?+
Being unable to work through injury is what the cover responds to, and back and shoulder problems are the main route to a long absence here. The definition matters: own occupation asks whether you can do plant fitting, while an any occupation policy may conclude that somebody who could do workshop work is fit for employment.
Should I insure my call-out pay?+
Worth discussing, because in this trade call-out and overtime are often a large share of what the household lives on while employer arrangements tend to be based on basic pay. How variable income is treated differs between insurers, so we would look at your real figures.
I am self-employed with regular customers. What should I cover?+
Your income, and ideally enough that another fitter could be subcontracted to keep attending your customers. Plant owners use whoever turns up, because downtime costs them more than the repair, so an absence risks the customer relationships as well as the earnings.
Cover that often goes with this
The gaps we most often find sitting next to this one.
Working for yourself?
Income protection covers your own earnings. It does not cover what the business owes other people, so if you work for yourself you probably need public liability and tools cover as well. That side is arranged by CoverTrade. Business insurance for plant repairers.