Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast on Sunday, October 28.  Prior to that I’d been applying to several CAT companies to get my name on their rosters.  Renfroe called me three days prior to the storm asking about my availability.

After the storm hit, everything was quiet for two days.  Then I got a call from Pilot Catastrophe on Tuesday evening asking if I would be on paid standby to work State Farm claims for them.  So it appears my State Farm Certification has some value.

During the week, I only heard from Renfroe on Thursday inquiring of my availability again.  I told them I was on paid standby with Pilot and wanted to honor that commitment.  Pilot was paying $100 per day for me to wait for deployment instructions.

Friday night I got a phone call from Pilot asking if I would be willing to do Allstate claims instead of State Farm, since Allstate needed help and had immediate work.  So I gathered my things and have headed to Richmond, VA, to attend a 2-day training with the All State team.  After training I will be deployed to another state to work claims.

According to Pilot, State Farm may have claims, but they don’t know for certain.  So my choice was to either go with Allstate or continue to wait to see if State Farm would have any claims.  Once I decided to go with the Allstate claims, I was given 48 hours to show up in Richmond for the 2 days of training.

My First Deployment

So I spent Friday night doing my last minute packing and left Saturday morning for a 2-day drive to get to Richmond.

I have no idea what type of claims to expect, but they said there is a possibility of being given claims in New York once my training is finished.  Thus begins my journey of becoming an adjuster with my first CAT storm.  More to come soon…

John Bowers has a background in construction and decided to add claims adjusting to create a new income source.  Follow John’s journey as he shares his experiences on training and deployment.