Structural or not, and how many stories. Everything follows those two answers.
Two questions decide the market for framing and carpentry contractors: whether the work is structural, and how high it goes. We place on both.
Tell us the situation.
One licensed human replies the same business day — not five agents, not an auto-responder. If the policy you have is already the right one, we will tell you.
We use this to quote and service your insurance, and we do not sell it or pass it to lead networks. Privacy policy.
Send us what you have. We’ll tell you if it’s right.
Your current policy paperwork, a renewal notice, or nothing at all. A licensed agent reads it and replies the same business day.
What carpentry and framing businesses actually need.
General liability
Third-party bodily injury and property damage. It is the line nearly every contract names by default.
Without it — Framing failures are structural failures, and the damage runs to everything built on top of your work.
Workers compensation
Required in almost every state the moment you have employees. Priced on payroll and class code, which is why the class code is worth arguing about.
Without it — Falls from height are the defining injury in framing, and above two stories the rate and the appetite both change sharply.
Contractors errors & omissions
Covers faulty workmanship and professional mistakes: the cost of the work itself being wrong, which general liability excludes by design.
Without it — General liability pays for the damage your framing caused and nothing toward the framing itself being wrong.
Commercial auto
Vehicles the business owns and the people who drive them for work.
Without it — Crews, lumber and equipment move between sites daily.
Inland marine & equipment
Tools, equipment and property in transit. It picks up exactly where commercial property stops, which is the moment the item leaves the building.
Without it — Nail guns, saws, compressors and staging are stolen from sites constantly.
Umbrella & excess liability
Extra limit stacked above general liability, auto and employers liability. Usually the cheapest million dollars on the policy.
Without it — Residential developers and general contractors require limits above primary before a crew starts.
Builders risk
Covers a structure while it is going up, and ends at completion. Not the same as the contractor’s general liability.
Without it — A frame standing open is exposed to wind and fire before it is ever dried in.
Joe Gorman
Co-Founder | President of Commercial Lines
Came up in construction, on site and in the office, then moved into sales. Went out on a limb to become Boring’s first dedicated salesperson when the agency had no sales team at all, and now leads it. Landscaping is the class he writes most: grounds maintenance, tree work, irrigation and the spray operations that push an account out of preferred appetite.
Five endorsements, and a certificate is none of them.
A certificate is evidence a policy existed the day it was printed — it says so on its own face. The coverage a contract is really asking for lives on the policy as named endorsements, and this is the list they come from.
- Additional insured — ongoing operationsCG 20 10Covers the general contractor for claims arising from your work while the job is in progress.Without it: They fund their own defense on a claim your work caused, then look to you for it.
- Additional insured — completed operationsCG 20 37Extends that coverage to claims arising after your work is finished.Without it: The claim arrives years later, when the policy that should have carried it has renewed several times. Cheaper policies often exclude this or do not offer it.
- Primary and non-contributoryCG 20 01Puts your policy first and stops your insurer demanding a contribution from theirs.Without it: Two insurers argue about who pays while the defense waits.
- Waiver of subrogationCG 24 04Stops your insurer recovering from the party you agreed in writing to protect.Without it: Your insurer pays, then sues your customer, which ends the relationship.
- Per-project aggregateCG 25 03Gives each job its own general aggregate instead of sharing one across the year.Without it: Another project’s claims quietly spend the limit that was meant to cover this one.
Tract, condominium and apartment work is the exception that undoes all five — an exclusion for multi-unit residential removes the coverage before any endorsement can apply. What national homebuilders require covers that in full — D.R. Horton, Pulte Group, Blackrock Homes and the rest of the national builders set the strictest terms a sub will see, and they do not negotiate them.
Contracts ask for more than these five. Every contract insurance requirement, explained, or paste your exhibit into the Contract Insurance Decoder to see the endorsement behind each clause.
How high do you work?
Third floor and above is a different account. The exposure is not only the fall — it is what gets dropped, who is underneath, and how far a tool travels before it lands. Carriers ask for a height limit and many stop at two or three stories, so work you take on because it was offered can quietly put a renewal into a market you were not in last year. Tell us the tallest job you do, not the usual one.
Residential or commercial?
Underwriters treat these as separate trades even when the work is identical. Residential carries construction-defect exposure that follows the job for years and a homeowner who sues; commercial carries bigger limits, tighter contracts and a general contractor who enforces them. A book that is mostly one prices very differently from a book that is evenly split, and the mix is usually the second question on the application.
What the insurance company will ask about your carpentry and framing business
We read the applications the markets use for businesses in this field and pulled out what they actually ask. Have these answers ready and a quote takes a day instead of a week, because nobody has to come back to you for the missing piece.
About the business
- What kind of contracting work do you do
- When did you start this business
- What licenses do you hold
- Have you ever operated under other business names
- What are your annual gross sales
How you operate
- How many people do you employ
- What is your total annual payroll
- Do you hire subcontractors
- Do you work on buildings higher than two stories
- Do you have a formal safety program in place
Safety and controls
- How do you screen or check out new equipment operators
- Do you collect and keep certificates of insurance from all your subcontractors
- Who reviews and maintains those certificates
Your history
- Who is your current insurance company, or your last one if you don't have coverage now
- Do you have any claims over $5,000 from the last few years
Money and people
- What other locations or job sites do you operate from
Have these ready
- Your last five years of claims history from your current insurer, called loss runs
- Certificates of insurance from your subcontractors showing your company as additional insured
- Copies of any rental agreements for equipment you lease from others
You answer what you can; a licensed agent fills the rest with you.
What our carpentry and framing clients ask us.
Why does structural versus non-structural matter so much?
Because they are different risks wearing the same word. Non-structural carpentry — interior partitions, trim, cabinetry, finish work — fails as a cosmetic or minor defect. Structural framing carries the building, and a defect is a structural claim with everything built above it attached. Carriers price and accept the two very differently, and an application that says only "carpentry" has not answered the question an underwriter needs answered.
What changes above two stories?
The fall exposure, and with it the market. Single-story and two-story framing is placeable widely; above that, fewer carriers write it, workers compensation costs more, and some markets exclude it outright. Height is not something to round down on an application. It is checkable, and a claim on a third floor under a policy written for two is a conversation about misrepresentation.
Is framing tract homes harder to place than custom?
Considerably, and it is the same reason carriers dislike all residential tract work: a framing defect repeated across a development arrives as a class action or a homeowners association claim rather than as one dispute. Many contractor policies carry a multi-unit and tract housing exclusion that removes the work entirely, so a framer doing production housing needs the exclusion looked for specifically rather than assumed away.
What materials do underwriters ask about?
What you frame in and what you are framing. Wood-frame construction, engineered lumber, light-gauge steel and mass timber sit in different appetites, and the occupancy above matters too. Multifamily wood-frame is treated very differently from a single-family custom home. It is worth describing the work precisely, because the imprecise version is the one that gets declined.
What does a carpentry and framing insurance application ask for?
The applications for carpentry and framing businesses ask about 4 things above all: what kind of contracting work do you do; how many people do you employ; how do you screen or check out new equipment operators; who is your current insurance company, or your last one if you don't have coverage now. Have your last five years of claims history from your current insurer, called loss runs and certificates of insurance from your subcontractors showing your company as additional insured ready and a quote takes a day instead of a week.
Commercial insurance is 96% of what we do — it is not a department here, it is the whole business. Not ready to talk? The guides answer the questions this page raises in more depth. Already insured with us and need a certificate or a policy change? Ask the service team rather than starting a quote — it is faster and it goes to the people whose job it is. We also write home and auto, which is usually cheaper alongside the business policy than apart from it.