[wilson9298]

What type of business bond do I need for a small lawn business? Or do I need one at all?

[Fr_Chuck]

What type of business ? Will your customers require you to have one.
In fact what type of bond. If you are a contractor biding on government contract you may have to have several various types of bonds.

[RichardBondMan]

Good guestion, generally cities, towns, counties, parrishs, states and the fed govt do not requires lawn service companies to be bonded. Your customers may rarely ask you if you are "bonded" but they probably have no idea what that means. It could be that if they were away from their premises that you were providing service to, they may be concerned of dishonest acts that might cause them a loss of their property. i.e.. I, like most people do not lock up my lawn furniture, gas grill, etc when I leave my home... I just trust no one will steal those items... I do have insurance but have a $1,000 deductible and what's outside is hardly worth that... they may have a concern that you or your employees might steal their property and if this is truly their concern, you could purchase what's commonly called a "third party fidelity" bond... it's not a true "fidelity bond" as your company or other companies might purchase to protect company assets from dishonest acts of employees... rather it has 3 parties unlike a traditional fidelity bond and those 3 parties to the bond are 1) you, the company 2) the bonding company and 3) your customers that incurr a loss due to dishonest acts of the bonded companies' employees. Understand that most all bonding companies insert a "conviction" clause or rider in these types of 3rd party fidelity bonds that simply means your customer cannot simply accuse your employee of a dishonest act to recover their loss, they must pursue and win conviction in a court of law.

[Clough]

Excellent answer above! In short, it sounds like you don't really need to be bonded for your lawn care business. I run a number of small businesses.

Have been doing that since the mid-1970's. Not one of my customers has ever asked if I was bonded. Almost always the work that I do for people is in their homes, or I take the objects that need to be worked on to my home.

Liability insurance for any small business is a definite must, though.

If you are going to be having employees that you will actually be paying as employees, then that will open up other issues concerning insurance and maybe also the possibility of them being bonded if they are your employees.

Are you going to have other employees, or is this something that you are just going to do by yourself, please1

Thanks!