Every trade we cover, sorted by who sets the floor
Three things decide what a contractor carries: a licensing board that writes an amount into a rule, a contract that demands a certificate, or a hazard an underwriter prices. Most trades sit mainly in one of the three, and a fourth group below is sorted by your role on the job rather than by your trade. Find yours and the page will start from the right place.
Where the license carries the policy
In these trades a board or a state agency has already decided part of the answer. The license application asks for a certificate, and the amounts are written into a rule you can read.
- Electrician
Texas sets the amounts in rule and asks for the certificate at renewal as well as at issue.
- HVAC contractor
Licensed by class, with minimums that step up with the size of the equipment.
- Plumbing contractor
The responsible master plumber is the person the board holds, and the coverage follows that role.
- Security guard
Texas writes the liability policy into the company license, then the policy writes an exclusion back.
- Pest control
The applicator license carries its own insurance condition, and the amounts differ by which program licenses you.
- Roofing
Licensed and insured by the state in Illinois, licensed by nobody in Texas. Same trade, opposite answers.
Where the contract sets the bar instead
No board asks these trades for anything. The demand comes from a property manager, a general contractor, or a homeowner association, and it arrives as a certificate request rather than as a statute.
- Handyman
The licensing grey zone, answered state by state rather than in general.
- Cleaning business
Residential and small-business work, where the client trusts you with keys.
- Janitorial
Commercial contract cleaning, where the certificate is a condition of the contract.
- Tree service
No board and no OSHA standard of its own, so the workers compensation class carries the account.
- Pressure washing
Nobody licenses it. The rule that applies is about where the wash water goes.
- Landscaping
The license attaches to the pesticide rather than to the trade, and it carries an insurance condition.
- Snow plow
The plow truck is an auto first, which changes which policy answers.
- Landscaping with snow removal
Two seasons underwritten separately, which is why the dual operation is priced the way it is.
- Home improvement contractor
Several states register the trade rather than license it, and registration is where the insurance appears.
Where the work itself is the underwriting question
These trades are rarely licensed at state level. What an underwriter reads instead is the hazard: the dust, the trench, the torch, or the part of the job that shows up as a claim a year after you leave.
- Painting
Lead rules on pre-1978 work, and overspray that lands on something you were not hired to touch.
- Flooring
Moisture under the slab, discovered after the job is signed off.
- Tile
Silica dust at the saw, and water that finds its way behind the wall.
- Drywall
Dust rules on one side, the fire-rated assembly on the other.
- Concrete
Silica during the cut, and the crack that appears a season later.
- Excavation
Federal trench rules, and the buried line nobody marked.
- Paving
A fleet on the road all day and a pollution question on the lot.
- Utility contractor
The locate call before the dig, and what a strike costs when it is missed.
- Welding
Hot work, the fire watch, and a rig that is a truck before it is anything else.
Where your role on the job decides it
Some of what you carry is set by where you sit in the chain rather than by what you do. The party that hires, the party that is hired, and the one-person business that is neither an employee nor an employer each face a different version of the question.
- General contractor
You are the one collecting certificates, and your own policy has an opinion about work your subs did.
- Subcontractor
You are the one being asked for proof, and the terms in the request are worth reading before you agree.
- Independent contractor
No employees, so no workers compensation in most states, which raises the question of what replaces it.
Working the other way round
If you already know which policy you are being asked about, start from the coverage instead of from the trade. The coverage section takes each line on its own terms: what it responds to, what it excludes, and where contractors find the gap. And if the question is a state's rather than a trade's, the Texas hub collects what one state requires across every trade we have written there.