LandOne™
Workers’ Compensation and General Liability Program
for Lawn and Landscape Professionals
The LandOne™ program provides competitive commercial insurance solutions specific to the lawn and landscape industry. Rancho Mesa has pioneered an authentic all-encompassing service model to provide your landscape business with the tools you need to secure proper coverage, mitigate risk, track and train employees, and cultivate aggressive premiums.
Workers’ Compensation
We provide coverage for your employees if they get hurt at work.
General Liability
Not all commercial general liability policies are the same. We have coverage enhancements for lawn and landscape businesses.
Auto
Rancho Mesa offer commercial auto coverage for your fleet and trailers.
Inland Marine
Get coverage for all of your equipment, equipment you rent, and product you temporarily have possession of that you will install like irrigation, lighting, plants, shrubs and trees.
Property
Secure coverage for your building and contents within the building.
Excess
If you need an additional layer of protection for your business that hovers over your general liability, auto and employers liability, an excess policy might be what you need.
Any Ferrell, Environmental Concepts Landscape Management, Inc.
“Thanks for all your help – the resources available have been great!”
Dan Durkin, VP Finance, Rancho West Landscape, Inc.
“Jim has been a great resource for me. He is very good at explaining the process in standard English and not all the abbreviations the adjusters use. I wish we started working with your team sooner. Just good to know we made the right choice this year. Thanks for all your help.”
Theresa Brennan, Urban Habitat
"Switching insurance companies can seem daunting – after all, in the end it’s always a numbers game. But switching to Rancho Mesa was by far the best and easiest decision I have ever made. There is not one question or concern that Rancho Mesa can’t answer or solve. Insurance is one of those things you don’t need until you do; and Yvonne and Drew have been there every step of the way, to ensure that my employees, assets, clients and company stay protected and covered. Thanks Yvonne and Drew for being more than just my insurance company, but for being part of the Urban Habitat family.”
Mark Schroeder, President, Mark Schroeder & Company
"It has been a great pleasure to work with the team at Rancho Mesa regarding our Workers Comp Policy. Drew and team worked hard to keep our rates affordable. Needless to say we are very pleased that we switched to Rancho Mesa."
Joanna LaBahn Cornett, CEO, LaBahn's Landscaping
"We are excited to be a new client of Rancho Mesa! They have hit the ground running with excellence. I have been very impressed with how on top of it they are. They do everything with the utmost professionalism. I am even more thrilled that they were able to close 6 of our claims within the first 3 months."
Natali Navarro, Office Manager, Schnetz Landscape Inc.
“After years of open claims not being resolved and the frustration that I had to personally do all the calling and fighting for results, we decided to switch brokers to Rancho Mesa and see if they were worth it. In the first six months of being with Rancho Mesa 80% of our claims were closed or close to being closed and the remaining ones were finally being worked on and coming to resolution. I’ve since switched landscape companies and when I was told that I was going to be in charge of the insurance policies, I knew that I wanted to bring Rancho Mesa on board with me here, as well, and again they did not disappoint.”
Susan Agonia, Sterling Land Care
“Working with Jeremy and his team at Rancho Mesa over the last 13 years has been a pleasure. Rancho Mesa’s expertise in the construction industry has really put my mind at ease that our business is well taken care of from a risk management perspective. Thank you Jeremy & Rancho Mesa for all you do.”
Mark Girard, CEO, Habitat Restoration Sciences, Inc.
“Drew and the Rancho Mesa team continue to be a strong and trustworthy advocate for us. Over the years, we have implemented several of their programs including - Mobility & Stretch and we use their Risk Management center for managing our safety documentation. We appreciate all of the resources offered by Rancho Mesa, along with the personal attention our company receives. Drew is passionate about his work and about helping companies like ours to always work towards improving our exMOD. In addition, he develops new and relevant safety training/workshops for our industry and he brings competitive pricing to the table each year for our renewal.”
Jorge Sanchez, President, Watersedge Landscape
"I have been in the landscape industry for over 15 years. I have worked with a few insurance agencies and none come close to Rancho Mesa Insurance. I met Drew Garcia about 2 years ago now and he has provided us with excellent service; him and his team take care of every insurance need. He has helped us save over $50,000.00/ year on insurance cost and has provided us with educational workshops and seminars that have helped us build our business. We will be working with Rancho Mesa Insurance for years to come."
Jim Vitale, President, J. Vitale Landscape & Maintenance
"Rancho Mesa has been a reliable business partner to J. Vitale Landscape & Maintenance. Their knowledge of the landscape industry has helped protect our experience MOD and insulate our insurance cost."
Tyler Rogers, Controller, Heritage Landscape Services, Inc.
“Rancho Mesa provides the services and perspective that Heritage needs to manage risk. Drew knows the landscape industry and we consider Rancho Mesa a valuable business partner to our company.”
Jon Parry, General Manager, Bemus Landscape
"Drew takes a proactive approach in understanding the landscape industry as it relates to insurance. The Rancho Mesa team has been a reliable and responsive partner to Bemus Landscape."
Angela Andrews, Vice President, True Lawn Care, Inc.
"Drew has taken the time to fully understand the landscape industry and specific risks associated with True Lawn Care. We truly benefited from Rancho Mesa’s claims advocacy program and our Experience MOD dropped 40 points resulting in a significant savings in the year to come. We value their partnership and commitment to knowing the Landscape Industry."
Craig Gerber, President, Landcare Logic
"Drew has specific knowledge of the landscape industry and his service plan for Landcare Logic has road mapped our ability to control our risk and help our bottom line. Rancho Mesa is a partner to our business. Thank you to the Rancho Mesa team!"
Tyler Rogers, Heritage Landscape Services, Inc.
"Thanks for putting these on, they are valuable tool that you provide to your clients and we appreciate it."
Dan Durkin, Rancho West Landscape
"A lot of good material in the legal update."
Kurt Davidson, LaBahn's Landscaping
"Thank you for the trainings! Extremely helpful."
Brian Conners, Peak Landscaping, Inc.
"Rancho Mesa’s strategies help control our insurance costs, both now and into the future. The feeling of having control over a very large line item is a welcome change. A big thank you to Rancho Mesa!”
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
The year 2025 will mark my 10th year working with landscape, lawn care and tree care professionals across the country. This long-term approach allows our team the time to learn and grow with the industry. Being able to understand landscape operations and accurately relay this information to the insurance carriers is a critical component to the overall insurance program we put together for our clients.
In the first of a special two-part series, Construction Group Vice President Daniel Frazee and Landscape Group Vice President Drew Garcia, interview Charles Stec, J.D., accomplished attorney at Lanak and Hanna, to discuss how construction companies can best navigate subcontract agreements.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Landscape business leaders can now provide their management team with resources to better support their workers’ compensation program. Rancho Mesa offers its landscape, lawn care and tree care customers an industry specific Workers’ Compensation Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that can be used to help benchmark a company’s experience modification rate (i.e., Ex-Mod, Experience Mod), and the underlying performance trends that can help stakeholders stay informed.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President of the Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Economies of scale create leverage for landscape businesses as they grow. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 2022 table of incident rates notes that the landscape industry has an incident rate of 3.4 per 100 full time employees. Landscape is classified by BLS under Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services; this sub class has an incident rate of 1.9. The average for all other industries is 3.0.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President of the Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Lawn and landscape professionals across the country have seen the direct impact of a very difficult and challenging commercial auto market. In particular, green industry businesses who specialize in service and maintenance, which require a larger fleet, have felt more of the direct market pressure.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President of the Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Having strong service partners that support your customers outside of your core operations is an important part of business. Many commercial landscape businesses have regional relationships with professional tree care companies to support the needs of their customers.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President of the Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
When it comes to measuring safety, most green industry (i.e., lawn, landscape, and tree care) businesses rely on OSHA rates, the experience modification, and, if you’re a Rancho Mesa customer, your Safety KPI Dashboard. This data is important; however, it only captures lagging information. Take your safety program to the next level by measuring predictive, preventive, and proactive - leading indicators.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President of the Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Three years ago, Rancho Mesa launched our proprietary safety KPI dashboard, consolidating experience mod and industry benchmarking reports to one working document. As a Rancho Mesa customer, you can now maximize the benefit of your safety KPI dashboard by completing our baseline training which will challenge the stakeholders in your organization to understand the key concepts this document delivers.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Landscape contractors have varying levels of exposure when it comes to installation projects. However, they virtually all share the same common coverage gap for trees, plants, shrubs, and lawns.
In this podcast episode Joe and Rancho Mesa’s Landscape Group Leader Drew Garcia discuss the importance of making it easy to do the right thing when it comes to safety and training.
Rancho Mesa's Vice President of the Landscape Group Drew Garcia interviewed the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP) CEO Britt Wood about the upcoming ELEVATE 2022 conference event in Orlando, FL on September 18-21.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Rancho Mesa’s Safety KPI Dashboard allows businesses the ability to clearly visualize their path to an Experience MOD (XMOD) below 1.00 through goal setting.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB) has proposed a 2% decrease (from $2.42 to $2.37) in the expected loss rate for the landscape class code 0042.
Rancho Mesa's Alyssa Burley and Drew Garcia, Vice President of the Landscape Group set the stage for insurance expectations in 2022.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Commercial auto premiums for landscape companies continue seeing heavy increases, and there is no end in sight.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
A piece of heavy equipment like a skid steer, backhoe, or excavator can be a vital tool for a landscape company and is expensive to replace, if stolen. According to the National Equipment Register (NER), heavy equipment is nine-times more likely to be stolen than vandalized and five-times more likely to be stolen than encounter fire damage. These statistics are alarming and prove theft of heavy equipment has now become a billion dollar illegal industry.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
In January 2021, we launched the Safety Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Dashboard to provide a tool for our customers to use as a bridge between their experience mod and safety performance.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
For the first time in several years the Expected Loss Rate for class code 0042 has increased from $2.38 to $2.42, a 2% increase.
Bottom line, although very minimal, this should help bring the experience mod down.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
How do you differentiate your company from your local competitors? Product, customer service, delivery, etc. The same can be said for your risk profile and insurance costs. Why are my insurance rates high when my competitors are low? This article breaks down four factors that influence your risk profile and impact pricing.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President of the Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
The workers’ compensation market for landscape companies in California has remained in a downward trend since 2015. As a result, landscape business owners have realized lower rates and subsequently aggressive premiums. The following are some key insights to help landscape businesses prepare for their 2021 workers’ compensation insurance renewal.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many construction companies were utilizing some form of cloud-based systems to effectively streamline business operations and increase accessibility of information. While hosting sensitive data in the cloud has many benefits like shared access to data, applications and storage, there are some risks contractors should take into account before relinquishing their data to the cloud.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President of the Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Landscape companies with a low Experience Modification Rating (XMOD/EMR) typically exhibit similar best practices when dealing with work-related injuries. Their proactive approach helps close claims faster and return employees to work sooner than their counterparts.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
As landscape businesses continue to adapt operating protocol due to COVID – 19, they may also be creating new risk. Newly formed “work from home” policies for the office staff and direct reporting to job sites for workers in the field can create more of a non-owned auto liability exposure.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
California business owners are aware that their experience modifier (XMOD) is published annually, roughly three to four months before the expiration of their current workers compensation policy term. However, more often than not, companies are missing an incredible opportunity to make an impact on the calculation of their XMOD by strategically evaluating their work comp claims prior to the most critical month in the XMOD calendar known as Unit Stat.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Autonomous mowing is becoming more common in commercial and residential landscape management. As the market begins to adapt and utilize this technology it creates a very unfamiliar and unique exposure for you and your General Liability carrier.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Author, Steve Hamilton, Loss Control Supervisor, Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies.
On Thursday, July 17 2019, the California Occupational Safety & Health Standards Board voted to adopt an emergency standard requiring employers to take action when air quality particulate matter measures greater than 150 and when there is reasonable expectation that employees will come in to contact with wildfire smoke.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Mobile devices have become an invaluable tool for many people, on the job. They provide access to contacts, email and applications (i.e., apps) that can make work a lot simpler and safer for landscapers. We researched the top apps that boost worker safety. In no particular order, here are the top 5 free safety applications for the landscape industry.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Most Landscape Contractors believe their exposure to pollution is limited to the herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers they apply. In order to provide some limited coverage for this it is common to see the Herbicide/Pesticide Endorsement added to the Commercial General Liability Policy. Although the endorsement extends some coverage, Contractor’s Pollution Liability would help fill the gaps created by the General Liability Policy for all of the landscape contractor’s pollution exposures.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
Based on Rancho Mesa Insurance Services’ client’s information, we have been able to identify that the majority of work-related injuries occur within the first year of employment. During the first year, the majority of these claims occur in the first six months. Having a system for onboarding and training new hires is a critical component to dealing with the heightened risk of injury during this time period.
Author, Drew Garcia, Vice President, Landscape Group, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.
The 2019 Expected Loss Rate (ELR) for Landscaping class code 0042 was recently published at a 15% decrease or $2.97.
The ELR is the factor used to anticipate a class code’s claim cost per $100 for the experience rating period. It is not to be confused with the Pure Premium Rate (PPR). The ELR differs from the PPR in that the ELR simply measures the basic claim cost for a class code without including loss adjustment expense, excess loss load (capped at $175,000 for X-MOD purposes), and loss development.
As a professional baseball player, Drew Garcia began his career at Rancho Mesa during the off season. When he wasn’t on the field, he was learning the fundamentals of the insurance industry. After he retired from baseball, Drew transitioned into a full-time career with Rancho Mesa. His background in sports has helped him look at business with a unique perspective based on teamwork and best practices.
After years of serving the landscape industry, Drew has developed a unique relationship with the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP) where he serves on the NALP Safety Committee. He has been quoted in Landscape Management magazine as an industry expert, published in The Landscape Professional magazine, podcast host on the StudioOne™ Safety & Risk Management Network, is the creator of Rancho Mesa’s proprietary landscape Mobility & Stretch Program.
Developing Solutions • Building Trust • Protecting Clients – ONE RELATIONSHIP AT A TIME.™
