Horsebox insurance and breakdown cover recommendations please

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HelenBack

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I'm going to be buying a 3.5 tonne horsebox soon and am looking for recommendations for companies for insurance and breakdown cover please. Similarly if anybody has any bad experiences of companies to avoid, please do let me know. Happy to receive private messages if you prefer not to name companies publicly.

Thanks
 
I've been with Adrian Flux for several years now for my 3.5t One year the premium went down, others years it barely rose, including this year, so I just let it roll as it was very competitive to start with. Customer service is also spot on.
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I beg to differ with PeterNatt, I would definitely not recommend the Organisation of Horsebox & Trailers Owners. We were recently left stranded for many many hours late at night and they eventually sent an RAC van out after me making numerous phone calls to them. The RAC couldn't fix it or recover it as it was a 3.5t. We ended up arranging stabling for the horse ourselves and our box was not recovered until the following day. A friend had a similar issue the following evening, in a totally different part of the UK and again it was the RAC that attended.
 
I'd agree with Kaycee, having had to go out to a stranded friend 6 weeks ago, collect her horse whilst she waited another 4 hours for help. Guess what, RAC turned up and couldn't fix, couldn't take away and had to call another company to do it.
Fortunately horse was in his stable by 4pm,horsebox arrived back about 1am!!
Turned out it was a squiffy injector, easily replaced the next day.

On that alone, I'd not recco them.
 
SussexbytheXmasTree said:
I use Anthony D Evans insurance with Rescue from Equine Rescue Services.
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I use the same. They sent someone out to look at my non starting box this morning within 30 mins, confirmed it was the battery & jump started it. In this vein I would advise getting a policy where home starting & recovery from home are included!
 
We've used A plan insurance who use someone else for breakdown...they are pretty useless! They lost a record of our policy when I had to call with our horsebox breakdown...eventually after a lot of stress they agreed to cover us if we paid £382 up front there and then...I had to wait 8hrs for recovery as the first truck that came was too small to tow our lorry. Thank god the horse was a mile from home so we walked him back...was a absolute nightmare. We got some compensation in the end for the stress etc but we won't be re-insuring with them next year!
 
Trakky14 said:
We've used A plan insurance who use someone else for breakdown...they are pretty useless! They lost a record of our policy when I had to call with our horsebox breakdown...eventually after a lot of stress they agreed to cover us if we paid £382 up front there and then...I had to wait 8hrs for recovery as the first truck that came was too small to tow our lorry. Thank god the horse was a mile from home so we walked him back...was a absolute nightmare. We got some compensation in the end for the stress etc but we won't be re-insuring with them next year!
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I use A plan and have always found them good and to have competitive prices.

Those who say that RAC couldn’t fix the 3.5t, was that because of the issue with it or they just wouldn’t touch the horsebox?

I have ERA but my home breakdown is with RAC.
 
I use A D Evans, but for van only, no horse recovery. I paid for that for several years, but realised that they use an emergency recovery company, don’t do it themselves. So I just keep numbers for local transport companies in the van in case I need them, but I also have a sort of reciprocal arrangement with all my friends. I would turn out if anyone needed me, and they would do the same. I have to admit I’ve never needed help, but would be interested if others take this approach.

ETA Just realised I use A D Evans for insurance, Green flag for breakdown. Haven’t had to use them.
 
Squeak said:
I use A plan and have always found them good and to have competitive prices.

Those who say that RAC couldn’t fix the 3.5t, was that because of the issue with it or they just wouldn’t touch the horsebox?

I have ERA but my home breakdown is with RAC.
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My friends one was because the technician from the RAC was unable to diagnose the mechanical problem (no idea why as friends husband who is a non qualified weekend fiddler diagnosed and replaced injector the next day) and then the RAC refused to relay as they 'didnt do 3.5 vehicles'. Beggars belief as to why they even went really.
I was just glad to help out in getting her veteran stressage horse back home.
 
Another AD Evans insurance with Equine Rescue Services breakdown.
So easy getting them together. I've had to call out emergency breakdown (luckily box was empty). They were great, they kept in contact the whole time - there usual people were too busy so they organised another company to come and it was towed away. All done and sorted within an hour.
 
Anthony evans with their rescue package as well. Haven’t had to call them out for many years but they’ve always been good. I’ve had a policy with them for about 15 years.
 
KBIS insurance and breakdown but I think they use equine rescue service for the breakdown. Great service when I thought I had a problem. Turned out to be a service light but both services were very good.
 
HelenBack said:
I'm going to be buying a 3.5 tonne horsebox soon and am looking for recommendations for companies for insurance and breakdown cover please. Similarly if anybody has any bad experiences of companies to avoid, please do let me know. Happy to receive private messages if you prefer not to name companies publicly.

Thanks
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OHTO are very reasonable.
 
NFU have been brilliant every time. Even offered to organise vet when I mentioned we had left show early as horse seemed unwell.
 
I use SEIB and their premiums are good, they haven't increased for the last few years.
I will say though that when I bought my box the clutch went on the drive home and I called the RAC as I had my normal car breakdown through them and in their ts&cs it states that the vehicle must not be more than 3.5t so they were able to load it onto a truck and tow home for me. He even waited to make sure we could get it onto the yard. It did take a little while for them to get there though!
 
I have SEIB cover for trailer and car and had cause to use it a couple of weeks ago. Their cover is currently made up of RAC for breakdown combined with OHTO(PRP) for horse/box recovery. I was still waiting for RAC to attend 3 hours later and eventually just got a friend to rescue the trailer and limped the car home myself. SEIB have been excellent - receptive to feedback and I believe there would have been the option of getting horse recovery sooner if I had pushed for it - just would have meant separating horse/car/myself.

The impression I got during the breakdown was that the RAC resources were just incredibly busy and presumably just stretched too thin and they just weren't able to get a resource to me until about 4-5 hours after the call out.

I think SEIB is always worth considering in case they move away from RAC for the breakdown portion. But I personally won't be taking out any cover that uses RAC. I believe PRP/OHTO have now moved away from RAC and use a different breakdown service that provides them with the service levels they expect. Their cover worked out to be slightly more expensive than SEIB but not by much and would be worth it to me in order to remove RAC from the equation. I wonder if @Kaycee's experience of OHOT/PRP was tarred by RAC's resourcing levels too.
 
Zigzagged6260 said:
I have SEIB cover for trailer and car and had cause to use it a couple of weeks ago. Their cover is currently made up of RAC for breakdown combined with OHTO(PRP) for horse/box recovery. I was still waiting for RAC to attend 3 hours later and eventually just got a friend to rescue the trailer and limped the car home myself. SEIB have been excellent - receptive to feedback and I believe there would have been the option of getting horse recovery sooner if I had pushed for it - just would have meant separating horse/car/myself.

The impression I got during the breakdown was that the RAC resources were just incredibly busy and presumably just stretched too thin and they just weren't able to get a resource to me until about 4-5 hours after the call out.

I think SEIB is always worth considering in case they move away from RAC for the breakdown portion. But I personally won't be taking out any cover that uses RAC. I believe PRP/OHTO have now moved away from RAC and use a different breakdown service that provides them with the service levels they expect. Their cover worked out to be slightly more expensive than SEIB but not by much and would be worth it to me in order to remove RAC from the equation. I wonder if @Kaycee's experience of OHOT/PRP was tarred by RAC's resourcing levels too.
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I had a ridiculous wait for RAC in my car the other day. They only had one recovery man for a very large area, it took them over 6 hours to recover a woman by herself in the dark.
 
Zigzagged6260 said:
I have SEIB cover for trailer and car and had cause to use it a couple of weeks ago. Their cover is currently made up of RAC for breakdown combined with OHTO(PRP) for horse/box recovery. I was still waiting for RAC to attend 3 hours later and eventually just got a friend to rescue the trailer and limped the car home myself. SEIB have been excellent - receptive to feedback and I believe there would have been the option of getting horse recovery sooner if I had pushed for it - just would have meant separating horse/car/myself.

The impression I got during the breakdown was that the RAC resources were just incredibly busy and presumably just stretched too thin and they just weren't able to get a resource to me until about 4-5 hours after the call out.

I think SEIB is always worth considering in case they move away from RAC for the breakdown portion. But I personally won't be taking out any cover that uses RAC. I believe PRP/OHTO have now moved away from RAC and use a different breakdown service that provides them with the service levels they expect. Their cover worked out to be slightly more expensive than SEIB but not by much and would be worth it to me in order to remove RAC from the equation. I wonder if @Kaycee's experience of OHOT/PRP was tarred by RAC's resourcing levels too.
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It certainly wasn't helped by them sending out the RAC rather than someone capable of diagnosing and recovering the horsebox. But every time I phoned OHOT/PRP I kept being told someone would be with us within the hour, when in fact it was actually just over 6 hours before the RAC turned up. But most importantly, we didn't get any help getting our horse home, and we had to go back with a trailer the following day to fetch him! Luckily the venue we were at were able to stable him overnight for us, otherwise I dread to think what would have happened.
 
A story about the AA.

I broke down way back in about 2000 when towing back from a fun ride with my horse Billy at the time in the trailer, 50+ miles from home. A plug had come out of my radiator in the car and all my radiator fluid had leaked. I rang the AA and they came out but couldn't fix it at the roadside so said it needed to be towed to a garage for repair. They said they couldn't tow the horse though. We'd have to leave the horse in the trailer at the roadside (a verge on a busy stretch of dual carriageway by the motorway junction). I said no way was I going to do that, so rang a friend who kindly said she'd come out with her 4 x 4 meet us there, and hitch up to her vehicle and drive back home with my horse so my car could be towed to the garage for repair.

After 20 mins of waiting impatiently for my friend to arrive the AA man said he'd changed his mind and he would tow me to the garage after all. I rang my friend to stop her coming out but her phone was on voice mail, by which time the AA had hitched me up to his truck - he had one of those metal fixed towing hitches like a long plank of metal to stop you going into the back of him. So this was attached to my car, my trailer was behind the car. So all in all we must have been over 20 foot long. The AA man was going over small mini islands straight and not wide as you would with all that behind you, with no disregard whatsoever for my trailer so my poor horse was like a pea in a pod getting thrown everywhere and the trailer tyres going up the kerbs, it was a terrifying experience.

Luckily my horse and I arrived at the garage unscathed. My phone rang after a while and it was my friend telling me she'd arrived to pick me up and couldn't find me! Awkward.......

I decided when I got home to join the OHTO in case it should ever happen again. As it happens I never broke down again after that. I think the AA aren't allowed point blank to tow livestock now, but back in 2000 it was at their discretion.
 
A caveat to what I am about to say - this relates to insurance cover only, does not include horse recovery or breakdown.

My insurance for 3.5t Renault Master with A D Evans is due for renewal next month. Out of interest I spoke to my car insurer, LV. They will cover my Renault van, modified to carry a horse, for £120 compared to £285 with A D Evans. I was very clear that it is used as a horsebox, and it is listed as modified on the policy. So for those of you who don’t use a horse rescue insurance then this could be worth investigating.
 
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