Underground utility strikes are the claim that defines this trade.
Commercial insurance for horizontal directional drilling and underground utility contractors. Written around the utility strike that makes this class hard to place.
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.
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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 directional boring businesses actually need.
General liability
Third-party bodily injury and property damage. It is the line nearly every contract names by default.
Without it — A struck gas, fiber or water line is a third-party claim that starts in the six figures.
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 — Drills, locators and tooling are high-value, mobile, and excluded by property policies once they leave the yard.
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 — Excavation work carries serious injury exposure and uncapped claims without coverage.
Commercial auto
Vehicles the business owns and the people who drive them for work.
Without it — Trucks, trailers and equipment transport are constant and all business use.
Umbrella & excess liability
Extra limit stacked above general liability, auto and employers liability. Usually the cheapest million dollars on the policy.
Without it — Utility strike claims and the outages behind them exhaust primary limits quickly.
Commercial property
Buildings and contents, valued at what it costs to rebuild today rather than what you paid.
Without it — The yard, the shop and everything stored in them still need replacing after a loss.
Contractors pollution liability
Bodily injury, property damage and clean-up caused by a pollutant your work released: chemical drift, run-off, fuel spills. The standard general liability form excludes all of it.
Without it — A struck sewer main or a drilling-fluid frac-out is a contamination claim, and general liability excludes the clean-up that follows it.
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 our directional boring clients ask us.
Why is directional boring hard to insure?
Because a single utility strike can produce a claim far larger than the job that caused it. A severed fiber trunk line brings business interruption claims from everyone downstream of it, not just the repair. Many carriers decline the class outright or exclude underground damage, so the coverage that matters most is the coverage most often missing. Placing it means going to markets that will actually look at the work.
What is the underground exclusion?
Many general liability policies exclude damage to property below the surface, which for a boring contractor removes coverage for the exact thing you do all day. Whether that exclusion is present, and whether it has been bought back, is the first thing worth checking on any policy in this class. We check it before quoting, not after.
Do you cover new or small operators?
Yes. Single-rig operators and newer contractors are placeable, though the market is thinner and the first year prices the lack of history. Operator experience, locating practice and your 811 procedures carry real weight with underwriters and are worth documenting before you shop.
What happens if I lose tooling downhole?
That is its own coverage, and most equipment policies do not include it. A stuck or abandoned string — the drill rods, the housing, the transmitter, the reamer — is a loss of property you own, in a hole you cannot reach, and an ordinary inland marine form is written around equipment that is somewhere you can walk up to.
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.