Why a roof replacement costs more to insure than almost any other exterior job

A roofing contractor’s general liability insurance runs about 1 percent of revenue, with a $2,800 floor. A siding or window contractor working the same house pays closer to 0.75 percent, with a $1,600 floor. Entirely different numbers for the same exterior, the same homeowner, and the same week of work.

Farmer Brown Insurance, a commercial brokerage that has covered small businesses and contractors in all 50 states since 1996, prices both of those policies every day. Falls, height, and claim severity are what actually determine that difference. That price gap shows up fast when two roofers bid the same job.

For example, consider a $9,400 re-roof on a hurricane-damaged home in a Louisiana coastal parish. A local roofer bids the job at $9,400, with insurance included in the value. A crew from three states away, which arrives within days of the storm clearing, bids $7,600. The shingles, the square footage, and the ten-day timeline all matched. The $1,800 gap between them didn’t come from the roof.

What actually goes into the local roofer’s number

Roofing crews usually pay some of the highest general liability insurance rates of any trade. On a small operation doing $150,000 to $500,000 a year, that prices out to roughly $2,800 to $5,000 annually. Push past $1 million in revenue and the premium climbs to $10,000 or more. Standard roofing contractor insurance carries $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate as its floor. The $1,800 gap between the two bids on this job sits close to what a year of that coverage actually costs an operation this size. That is not a coincidence.

The trade decides the price more than the house does

Falls, slips, and trips account for most roofing fatalities, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics has ranked the trade among the two or three deadliest civilian occupations in the country for multiple years. A siding crew works at height too, but roofers often work on steep, sloped surfaces with nothing standing between them and the ground below. 

Manufactured homes add another significant factor: every one built under the HUD Code carries a data plate rating it for a wind zone of 70, 100, or 110 mph, which decided how its roof was engineered at the factory. Even though every house can be different, what it costs to insure the person climbing onto its roof barely changes at all.

What an out-of-town crew’s paperwork can tell you

The homeowner calls the agency that issued the local roofer’s certificate. It checks out: active policy, dates that cover the full ten-day job, both ongoing and completed operations coverage listed, not just one. That second part matters more than it sounds like it should. Ongoing operations covers accidents while the crew is on site, a dropped tool, a ladder through a window. Completed operations covers what shows up after the crew is gone, and a poorly sealed flashing detail doesn’t leak on day one. It leaks during the first hard rain, sometimes months later. The out-of-town crew has no certificate ready when asked for it. It turns out their policy lapsed months before the storm even hit.

The tools and the truck are a separate risk from the roof itself

General liability responds to third-party injury and property damage. It does not cover a roofer’s own tools, and a nail gun, compressor, and set of ladders left on a job site overnight can be common targets for thieves. Tools and equipment coverage for an operation this size costs about $800 a year, a separate policy from general liability. Commercial auto is separate again, about $1,200 a year for a pickup hauling materials between jobs. If that $7,600 crew loses a ladder to theft or damages a trailer, it could affect whether they’re still in business next spring when you need them for a warranty call.

Workers compensation and claims history explain the rest of the gap

Roofing crews in California run $24 to $80 per $100 of payroll for workers compensation. The same trade in Texas runs about $13, which explains why a crew from three states over can look much cheaper, whether their cutting corners or not. Carriers also track a contractor’s claims against the industry average using an experience modification rate, where 1.0 is average and competitive contractors keep theirs between 0.75 and 0.90. The calculation excludes the most recent year on purpose, so a bad year doesn’t affect the crew’s rating immediately. A crew that showed up three days ago has no local claims history for anyone to check. That absence is information too.

What to check before anyone gets on the roof

Get the certificate of insurance straight from the issuing agency, not a forwarded PDF, since a forwarded file is easy to alter and impossible to verify by looking at it. Confirm the policy dates cover the entire job, not just the day the certificate was requested. Ask to be named as an additional insured rather than only as a certificate holder, and ask which operations coverage is actually on the policy. A license and an insurance policy answer two different questions, so check the license number on the state licensing board’s site independently rather than assuming one confirms the other.

The $1,800 that separated those two Louisiana bids was never really about the shingles. It was the cost of a policy that existed, a certificate that could be verified, and a crew planning to still be reachable the next time that roof needs warranty work.