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Business insurance for roofers in Georgia
Published 2026-06-11 · by Brokly
What insurance do Georgia roofing contractors need?
Each requirement and definition below cites its statute, regulator, or public reference — full sources at the end of this section.
You're required to have
Covers your roofing crews' on-the-job injuries — and construction carve-ins start the mandate at one employee in some states.
Required once you regularly employ 3 or more employees, counting both part-time and full-time workers.
Pays medical care and lost wages when an employee is hurt working. Roofing is treated as construction work in states with construction-industry carve-ins, which apply a lower employee threshold — Missouri's construction-employer rule names roofers by trade, and Florida reaches one-employee crews. Falls are the leading cause of work-related injuries and deaths among roofers — the crew works at height all day, which is why roofing sits among the highest-rate workers' comp classes.
Typically covers
- Medical bills for a work injury, at rates the state sets
- Part of the injured employee's lost wages
- The employer too: covered employees generally can't sue over the injury
Typically doesn’t
- Injuries outside work
- Independent contractors, in most states
- Lawsuits that get around the can't-sue trade-off — that's the employer's liability part of the same policy
Source: Georgia State Board of Workers' Compensation — Employer Information
Required in specific situations
Liability and property-damage protection for the trucks that haul crews, shingles, and tear-off debris to job sites.
Georgia requires motor vehicle liability insurance with minimum limits of $25,000 for bodily injury per person, $50,000 for bodily injury per incident, and $25,000 for property damage per incident.
Required if the business puts owned or leased vehicles on public roads — nearly every state requires auto-liability coverage to operate them.
Commercial auto insurance includes liability and property-damage protection for cars, trucks, and vans used for business — for a roofing contractor, the trucks that carry crews, materials, and ladders to customer job sites. The trade runs on trucks — crews, shingle pallets, and tear-off debris move to and from a different customer's roof job after job.
Typically covers
- Liability when a business vehicle injures someone or damages property
- Accidents in vehicles titled to the business, driven by employees for work
- The liability minimums states set for business vehicles
Typically doesn’t
- Your liability when employees drive their own cars for work — that's hired and non-owned auto; the employee's own car stays on their personal policy
- The freight or goods being hauled — that's cargo or inland marine coverage
- Damage to your own vehicle, unless physical damage coverage is added
Source: Georgia Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire — Auto (Insurance Resources)
A licensing financial guarantee — not insurance for the business — some states require on file before issuing the license.
Georgia does not license roofing as a trade at the state level — under the specialty-contractor exemption (O.C.G.A. §43-41-17(f)) the State Licensing Board for Residential and General Contractors' traditional-specialty list, which includes Flat Roofing, Sheet Metal Roofing, and Shingles and Shakes, lets roofing contractors contract directly with owners without holding the state residential or general contractor license — so no statewide credential or surety bond conditions roofing-only contracting, while local licensing requirements remain a county-by-county and city-by-city matter.
Required if your state's (or city's) licensing law conditions the roofing or contractor license on filing a surety bond — the license won't issue or renew without it.
A contractor license bond is a financial-guarantee instrument the contractor buys from a surety and files with the licensing authority; it protects the public, not the contractor. Where a state conditions the roofing or contractor license on one — Illinois, for example, requires a continuous bond on file for its statewide roofing license — the license will not issue or renew without it; the amounts, and which states require one, vary by licensing law. Where the licensing board demands it, the bond is a gate on the license itself — a roofing contractor in a bond state cannot legally operate without one on file.
Typically covers
- Customers or the state, if you break the licensing board's rules
- The licensing requirement itself — where a board demands a bond, no bond often means no license
Typically doesn’t
- You — the surety collects any payout back from you
- Injuries or property damage from your work — that's general liability
- Big-job performance disputes — a performance bond is its own instrument
Source: Georgia Secretary of State — Traditional Specialty Contractors Policy Statements (State Licensing Board for Residential and General Contractors)
Worth a look for this trade
Third-party injury and property damage — including water intrusion your completed roof causes after the crew has left.
Protects the business against claims of bodily injury, property damage, and personal injury. Its products/completed-operations section pays for damage that occurs away from your premises and is caused by your completed work — the defining roofer exposure, since a roof failure lets water into the customer's building long after the job closes. Oklahoma, for example, conditions its statewide roofing-contractor registration on this policy ($500,000 for residential work, $1,000,000 for commercial). A roofer's biggest exposure survives the job: a roof that leaks soaks the building below it months after the crew leaves.
Typically covers
- Injuries to customers, visitors, and other third parties
- Damage your operations cause to someone else's property
- Legal defense for covered claims
Typically doesn’t
- Your employees' injuries — that's workers' compensation
- Mistakes in professional advice or design — that's professional liability
- Redoing your own faulty workmanship itself
Definition source: Texas Department of Insurance — Commercial general liability insurance
Inland-marine coverage for the ladders, nail guns, and compressors that live on the truck and the job site.
Inland marine insures movable business property — contractor equipment and property in transit — wherever the work is. For a roofer that means the ladders, hoists, nail guns, and compressors riding between job sites and staged on open roofs rather than at a fixed premises. A roofer's equipment lives on the truck and the open job site — inland marine is the property line built to follow it.
Typically covers
- Tools and equipment that travel — in trucks, on job sites, between locations
- Theft from a vehicle or job site, a common loss
- Rented or borrowed gear, when it's listed on the policy
Typically doesn’t
- Gradual wear and breakdown
- Tools that stay at your shop — that's commercial property
- The vehicles themselves
Definition source: Texas Department of Insurance — Commercial property insurance guide (inland marine)
Errors-and-omissions coverage for roofing businesses that sell design input, consulting, or planning beyond the installation itself.
Professional liability — errors and omissions — covers losses from errors in judgment, breaches of duty, or negligent acts in the performance of services for others. For a roofing contractor that means the professional side of the trade: roof-system design input, consulting, and construction planning. It is a separate exposure from the jobsite bodily injury and property damage that general liability addresses. A roofer who advises — design input, system consulting, construction planning — is selling judgment as well as installation, and judgment errors are a professional exposure of their own.
Typically covers
- Financial harm from advice, designs, or specs that turn out wrong
- Client claims that work failed inspection or missed a professional standard
- Legal defense for those claims — often the largest cost
Typically doesn’t
- Bodily injury or property damage — that's general liability
- Intentional wrongdoing
- Work redone purely as warranty or goodwill
Definition source: NAIC — Glossary of Insurance Terms (errors and omissions / professional liability)
Exact terms live in the policy — these are the typical boundaries.
What does it all cost?
A typical <5-employee roofing company in Georgia runs modeled $18k–$73k/yr in workers’ comp. More benchmarks are on the way to this chart.
bar height = modeled annual cost · tap a bar for that size’s range
Modeled from the $28.84/$100 payroll filed rate (2024) and each band's own observed payroll (CBP 2023). Illustrative — not a quote.
| Size band | Workers’ comp, modeled $/yr |
|---|---|
| <5 employees | ≈$25k |
| 5–9 employees | ≈$110k |
| 10–19 employees | ≈$280k |
| 20–49 employees | ≈$690k |
| 50–99 employees | ≈$1.6M |
How Georgia ranks + full workers’-comp detail →
Benchmarks in progress: Commercial auto · Contractor license bond · General liability · Tools & equipment · Professional liability
Sources & notes
Illustrative benchmark — not a quote or coverage recommendation. What a roofing company actually needs depends on its operations, contracts, and carrier.
- Georgia State Board of Workers' Compensation — Employer Information — as of Page-stated revision date: Rev. (7/15)
- OSHA Publication 3755 — Protecting Roofing Workers — as of OSHA 3755-05 2015
- Missouri Division of Workers' Compensation — construction-industry employer FAQ
- Florida Statutes § 440.02 (2024) — Florida Senate — as of 2024 statutes
- NAIC — Small Business Insurance
- Georgia Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire — Auto (Insurance Resources)
- NAIC — Auto Insurance topic — as of 2025-09-26
- Texas Department of Insurance — Commercial property insurance guide
- Georgia Secretary of State — Traditional Specialty Contractors Policy Statements (State Licensing Board for Residential and General Contractors) — as of list marked 'Revised 03/06/20' and 'under development and subject to change'; page live as of the 2025-11-10 snapshot used for capture
- Illinois General Assembly — Illinois Roofing Industry Licensing Act, 225 ILCS 335/3 (Application for roofing contractor license)
- Texas Department of Insurance — Commercial general liability insurance
- Oklahoma Roofing Contractor Registration Act, 59 O.S. § 1151.5 — Construction Industries Board official compilation — as of § 1151.5 last amended eff. 2015-08-21 (compilation as fetched)
- NAIC — Glossary of Insurance Terms (inland marine)
- Oregon DCBS workers' compensation premium rate ranking study, June 2025 (calendar-year 2024 rates) — as of calendar year 2024
- US Census County Business Patterns 2023, state file (Roofing contractors (NAICS 238160)) — as of 2023
Sources retrieved 2026-06-04 – 2026-06-11.
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