After being in the home building industry for 30 years, including owning my own company, I was ready for a new challenge. My brother-in-law had been an insurance adjuster for 3 years and kept telling me I should try it. Finally a few years back I decided to just do it and have not regretted it one bit.

My first storm “event” lasted 7 months. I had never been away from my family for more than a couple of weeks at a time. I was in a hotel with about 40 other adjusters for the first 3 months. After that, 3 other adjusters and I who had formed a mutual friendship rented a condo together. The most rewarding part of this was the networking. We were all newbies but would always bounce ideas off each other. We each had different field support staff (TA's) that would share their experiences and knowledge of years of experience with us and we would pass this on to each other. This was invaluable and to this day I am still using what I learned.

For the first several storms I would scope (inspect) several losses and then come back to my room and stay up half the night. Needless to say, this was starting to wear on me. I finally took the advice of my brother-in-law and started to “table top". “Table Top” means to scope the loss and go back to your vehicle and type it up, run the claim off and take it back to the insured and go over it with them. The main advantage to “Table Topping” is instead of taking your scope notes back to your hotel room and being distracted, you sit in your vehicle and in about 20 to 30 minutes you are finished. The only extra investment is an inverter large enough to run your computer and second printer. (TIP: I got a $49.95 Canon printer, a wireless keyboard that I put in my lap instead of twisting sideways to type on the laptop and a wireless mouse). (TIP: Get an inverter large enough to run your computer and printer; the one I have is wired into my battery. Don’t get the small one that you plug into your cigarette lighter. It is not strong enough). I will never do it the old way again.

Adjusting is very rewarding, not only monetarily but it gives you so such satisfaction to help people in need. It really is an "ideal job".


Miles Patterson
www.homebuilderwebsite.com