Goods on Hook & Lifting Liability

What Goods on Hook Insurance Covers

Goods on hook insurance responds to property damage that occurs while someone else's property is being lifted, lowered, moved or carried by your crane, telehandler, hiab, forklift or similar lifting equipment.

Standard liability policies typically exclude property in your care, custody or control. A goods on hook extension reinstates cover for that specific exposure, the act of lifting.

Typically covered:

• Physical damage to third-party property while it's attached to your lifting equipment
• Liability arising from that damage, legal costs and compensation
• Loads lifted by owned, hired or otherwise operated equipment

Common exclusions to check:

• Fragile or inherently breakable loads
• Damage caused by overloading or defective rigging
• Consequential financial loss flowing from the damaged property
• Property owned by the insured

Policy wordings vary across the market. Some are broader, some are narrower. Always check the specific wording with your broker before assuming cover applies.

What Affects the Premium for Goods on Hook Cover

Premiums for goods on hook extensions vary depending on several factors. Here's what typically influences the cost:

Type and number of lifting equipment: A single forklift in a warehouse presents a different risk profile to a fleet of mobile cranes on construction sites. More equipment, or higher-risk equipment, generally means a higher premium.

Value of loads typically lifted: Insurers want to understand the maximum value of property you're likely to have on hook at any one time. Higher-value loads mean higher potential claims.

Nature of the loads: Fragile, awkward or high-risk loads (glass, prefabricated panels, specialist plant) attract more scrutiny. Some insurers price this differently or apply specific conditions.

Operator experience and certifications: Documented training, current operator certificates and a clean claims history all work in your favour at renewal.

Claims history: A history of goods on hook incidents will affect your premium. A clean record is worth protecting.

How the cover is structured: Whether the goods on hook extension sits within a plant liability policy or a general liability policy affects how it's priced. Getting the structure right can also affect the premium.

The Gap Nobody Talks About Until a Load Hits the Ground

You're on site. Your crane swings a load across the building and something goes wrong, a sling fails, the load shifts, and a piece of expensive plant belonging to your client ends up damaged on the ground. You call your insurer expecting them to sort it.

Then you find out your liability policy doesn't cover it.

This is the goods on hook problem. It can catch operators out, and it's not because they bought bad insurance. It's because most standard liability policies contain an exclusion for property in your care, custody or control, and the moment you attach a sling to someone else's load, that property is squarely in your care, custody or control.

Goods on hook insurance exists specifically to fill that gap.

Why Standard Liability Policies Leave You Exposed

General liability insurance is designed to cover your legal liability for injury or damage to third parties. What it's not designed to cover is damage to property you're actively handling. The logic from an insurer's perspective is that once you take control of something, you're responsible for it, and that responsibility sits outside the scope of a standard liability policy.

The exclusion is usually worded something like: property owned, occupied, or held in trust by, or in the care, custody or control of the insured. It's a standard carve-out across most commercial liability wordings in the New Zealand market.

So if you're operating a crane on a construction site and you damage the load you're lifting, your general liability policy may respond to damage to a bystander's property, but not to the damage to the load itself.

That's the gap goods on hook insurance is built to address.

What Goods on Hook Insurance Actually Covers

A goods on hook extension, sometimes built into a plant liability policy, sometimes added separately, responds to property damage that occurs while property is being lifted, lowered, moved or carried by your equipment.

The key trigger is the act of lifting. The property needs to be on or attached to your lifting equipment at the time of the damage. Once it's on the ground and disconnected, different policy sections may apply.

Which Equipment Does It Apply To?

Goods on hook cover is relevant for any operator using lifting equipment as part of their work. That typically includes:

• Cranes: tower cranes, mobile cranes, crawler cranes
• Telehandlers: particularly common in construction and agriculture
• Hiabs and truck-mounted cranes: used extensively in transport and logistics
• Forklifts: warehouse, distribution and construction site use

If your business involves lifting or moving property that belongs to someone else, this is worth understanding. You can read more about specific equipment cover for telehandlers and forklifts on the relevant pages.

What Policies Typically Exclude

Not everything is covered, and this is where reading the wording carefully matters. Common exclusions across market wordings include:

• Fragile loads: glass, ceramics, artworks, and other items prone to breakage may be specifically excluded or subject to conditions
• Overloading: damage caused by lifting beyond the rated capacity of the equipment
• Defective rigging or slings: some wordings exclude damage attributable to faulty lifting gear
• Property owned by the insured: the extension covers third-party property, not your own
• Consequential loss: the financial loss flowing from the damaged property (lost production, delays) is often excluded unless specifically included

Every policy is different. Some wordings are broader, some are narrower. That's exactly why it pays to have someone read the actual wording before you assume you're covered.

The Care, Custody or Control Problem, Explained Plainly

This exclusion can trip up operators across lifting trades. It's worth understanding why it exists and what it actually means in practice.

When an insurer writes a liability policy, they're pricing the risk of you accidentally causing harm to the world around you. They're not pricing the risk of you damaging the specific thing you're being paid to handle. That's a different risk, closer to a professional indemnity or bailee risk than a pure liability risk.

So they exclude it.

The goods on hook extension is the insurer's way of saying: we'll reinstate that cover, but only for the specific act of lifting, and subject to the conditions in the wording.

What this means practically:

• If you're a crane operator and you damage a load mid-lift, the extension may respond
• If you set the load down and then damage it while repositioning on the ground, you may be outside the extension's scope
• If the load was already damaged before you lifted it, there's likely no claim

The boundary between "on hook" and "not on hook" can be contested. That's one of the reasons having a broker who understands this area matters, particularly if a claim gets complicated. If you've ever had a machinery claim declined, you'll know how quickly these distinctions become expensive.

Who Needs Goods on Hook Insurance?

If you operate lifting equipment and you ever lift property that belongs to someone else, you need to understand whether your current policy covers it.

That's a broad group. It includes:

• Crane hire companies: lifting loads on behalf of construction clients
• Construction contractors: using telehandlers or hiabs to move materials on site
• Transport and logistics operators: using truck-mounted cranes to load and unload freight
• Warehousing and distribution businesses: forklift operations handling customer stock
• Rigging and lifting specialists: whose entire business is moving heavy or awkward loads
• Hire companies: who supply operated plant (where the operator is their employee)

The common thread is third-party property. If the load belongs to you, this isn't the relevant cover. If it belongs to a client, a contractor, or anyone else, this is exactly the gap you need to check.

How Goods on Hook Fits Into Your Broader Insurance Programme

Goods on hook isn't a standalone policy. It's typically an extension, either built into a plant and machinery liability policy or added to a general liability policy by endorsement.

That means it doesn't exist in isolation. It sits alongside:

• Plant and machinery insurance: covering physical damage to your own equipment. See our page on machinery insurance in New Zealand for how that works.
• General liability insurance: covering your broader third-party liability exposure
• Carriers liability insurance: relevant if you're transporting goods as well as lifting them. Carriers liability insurance covers a different but related gap.
• Statutory liability: covering defence costs and reparation for unintentional breaches of legislation (fines under the Health and Safety at Work Act can't legally be insured)

The interaction between these policies matters. A claim involving a damaged load on a worksite might touch plant insurance, goods on hook, and general liability all at once. If those policies are with different insurers and haven't been structured to work together, you can end up with gaps, or worse, two insurers pointing at each other.

This is one of the practical reasons to use a broker rather than buying policies piecemeal. Getting the programme to fit together properly is the job.

What to Check in Your Current Policy

If you're already insured and you're not sure whether goods on hook cover is included, here's a practical checklist to work through with your broker:

Goods on Hook Policy Checklist

• [ ] Does your liability policy include a goods on hook extension, or does it exclude property in your care, custody or control entirely?
• [ ] Is the extension limited to specific types of equipment (cranes only, or does it extend to telehandlers, hiabs and forklifts)?
• [ ] Are there exclusions for fragile loads, and does that affect the type of work you do?
• [ ] Does the extension cover property damage only, or does it extend to consequential loss?
• [ ] Is the sum insured under the extension adequate for the highest-value loads you typically lift?
• [ ] Does the extension apply to hired-in equipment as well as owned equipment?
• [ ] Are there conditions around operator certification or equipment maintenance that could affect a claim?
• [ ] If you use subcontractors who operate lifting equipment, are they covered under your policy or do they need their own?

If you can't answer these questions from memory, that's not a criticism, most people can't. But it's worth finding out before you need to make a claim.

Why This Is Worth Getting Right

A damaged load on a construction site isn't just an insurance problem. It's a relationship problem. Your client expects their property to arrive intact. If it doesn't, and your insurer declines the claim because the right extension wasn't in place, you're paying out of pocket, or losing the client, or both.

The loads being lifted on New Zealand worksites aren't cheap. Structural steel, prefabricated panels, specialist plant, HVAC equipment, these are high-value items. A single incident involving an uninsured or underinsured load can be a serious financial event for a small operator.

At Gerrards, we work with operators across the lifting and plant sector. We compare wordings from up to 20 insurers, and we know where the gaps tend to appear. When a claim comes in, we advocate for our clients, not for the insurer. That distinction matters when a claim is disputed and the wording is being interpreted.

This is general information only. For advice tailored to your situation, get in touch with our team.