Contractor Insurance in Stuart

Your general liability policy does not pay to redo your own work.

This is the most expensive misunderstanding in the trades, and almost every artisan contractor holds some version of it. You install a water heater, the connection fails six months later, and the unit floods a finished laundry room and the hallway behind it. Your general liability policy will very likely pay for the drywall, the flooring, and the damage to the homeowner’s belongings. It will not pay to replace the water heater or to redo your installation, because your own workmanship is the thing you were paid to get right.

That is not a loophole and it is not a bad policy. It is how the form is built. But a contractor who does not understand it will misjudge what he is covered for, and he will find out on the job where it matters most.

What artisan contractors actually need, and what they don’t

An artisan contractor is a trade contractor. You do plumbing, electrical, HVAC, carpentry, drywall, painting, flooring or tile, cabinetry, landscaping or irrigation, pool service, screen enclosures, garage doors, appliance installation, dock and lift work, or general handyman services. You work on existing buildings, on service calls, on repairs, and on remodels, either directly for the property owner or as a sub under someone else’s contract.

That is a different business from ground-up construction, and it should be insured differently. You do not need builders risk on a project you do not own. You do not need a fleet program for two trucks. What you need is a general liability policy with the right classification, completed operations coverage that stays in force, protection for the tools and equipment that move between jobs every day, coverage on the vehicles you actually drive, and workers’ compensation that survives an audit. Get those right and the rest is detail.

Completed operations is the coverage you buy for tomorrow

Work you finished can come back years later. The connection that leaks, the panel that overheats, the tile that fails, the irrigation line that undermines a footing. Products and completed operations coverage responds to those claims, and it is where a service and repair contractor’s real exposure lives, because you leave dozens or hundreds of finished jobs behind every year and every one of them stays out there.

Two things are worth checking on your own policy. The first is whether completed operations is actually included rather than excluded, because on cheaper contractor policies it is sometimes stripped out and the contractor never notices. The second is the aggregate, which is the total the policy will pay across all claims in a policy year rather than for any single one. A contractor with a healthy per-occurrence limit and a thin aggregate is less protected than he thinks.

Certificates are not paperwork, they are the job

If you sub for general contractors, property managers, or associations, you already know that no certificate means no site access. What most contractors do not realize is how much the specific wording on that certificate costs them.

General contractors routinely require that you name them as additional insured for both ongoing and completed operations, that your coverage apply on a primary and noncontributory basis, and that you waive subrogation against them. Each of those is a real transfer of risk onto your policy, and each requires an endorsement that has to actually be on your policy rather than just typed onto the certificate. A certificate that promises coverage the policy does not contain is worth nothing at the moment a claim is filed, and the contractor holding it is the one exposed.

The same applies in reverse to anyone you hire. If you sub out part of a job, that sub’s certificate protects you, and if you cannot produce one, your own carrier will treat that sub’s cost as your payroll at audit. That surprise arrives as a bill, often a large one, months after the job closed.

Our clients request certificates through our service center and, once the first one is issued, can pull additional certificates themselves without waiting on us. For a contractor who needs a cert before he can start Monday morning, that is not a small thing.

Read the indemnity clause before you sign

Contracts from general contractors and property managers frequently contain hold harmless and indemnity language that makes you responsible for claims arising from work you did not perform. Your general liability policy covers contractual liability only within limits, and an unusually broad indemnity clause can obligate you personally beyond what any policy will respond to.

You do not need a lawyer for every service agreement. But before you sign a master subcontract that will govern your work for a year, it is worth having someone read the insurance and indemnity sections and tell you whether your policy can actually do what you just promised.

Your tools live in a truck, and standard property coverage knows it

Commercial property insurance covers property at a described location. Your equipment is at a different address every day. Contractors equipment coverage, written as inland marine, is built for tools and equipment in transit, at job sites, and stored overnight, and it is the correct home for compressors, generators, ladders and staging, specialty diagnostic tools, and the hand and power tools that represent a working contractor’s real capital.

Two details decide whether it pays. Theft from an unattended vehicle is treated differently by different forms, and some require forced entry or exclude overnight street parking entirely, which matters if the truck sits in a driveway. And higher value items often need to be scheduled individually rather than sitting inside a blanket limit. Ask which applies to you before something goes missing rather than after.

The truck is the gap we find most often

A contractor buys a pickup, titles it in his own name, insures it on his personal auto policy, and uses it for work every day. Then there is an accident on the way to a job with a trailer and materials behind it, and the personal auto carrier looks at the business use and the signage and the trailer and denies the claim. This happens constantly and it is entirely preventable.

Vehicles used in the business belong on a commercial auto policy. If employees run to the supply house in their own cars, hired and non-owned auto coverage extends protection to that use, which the business needs even though it owns none of those vehicles. And if you tow, the trailer and its contents need attention separately, because the auto policy covering the truck does not automatically take care of what is behind it.

Workers’ compensation, and Florida’s construction rules

Workers’ compensation covers employees injured on the job, and in the trades those injuries are the serious kind: falls, lacerations, crush and strain injuries, heat illness, and electrical contact. Florida treats construction-classified work differently from other industries for workers’ compensation purposes, and the exemptions available to owners and officers are narrower than many contractors expect. If you carry an exemption, or you believe you do not need coverage yet, it is worth confirming rather than assuming, because getting it wrong affects both your legal exposure and your ability to work for any general contractor who checks.

Classification matters as much as the coverage itself. Artisan trades carry very different rates, and a contractor coded into the wrong class is either overpaying every month or heading toward an audit adjustment he will not enjoy. Your general liability premium works the same way, since it is typically based on payroll or receipts and reconciled at audit. Reporting honestly through the year is considerably cheaper than settling up at the end of it.

An independent agency, based in Stuart

We are an independent agency, licensed in Florida, working with contractors in Stuart, Palm City, Jensen Beach, Hobe Sound, Port St. Lucie, Fort Pierce, Vero Beach, and throughout Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River, and northern Palm Beach counties.

Our focus is service, repair, and remodel work rather than new construction, and we have the market access to place trades that a standard package carrier will not touch, including marine and waterfront work like docks, lifts, seawalls, and boathouses. Independent means we place your coverage where it fits rather than where we are obligated to send it, and it means we will tell you when a policy you have been quoted is cheap for a reason.

Worth confirming on your current policy

• Whether products and completed operations coverage is included, and what the aggregate limit is

• Whether your classification matches the work you actually perform

• Whether the additional insured, primary and noncontributory, and waiver of subrogation endorsements your contracts require are genuinely on the policy

• Whether you hold current certificates for every subcontractor you use

• How your equipment coverage treats theft from an unattended vehicle, and whether high value items are scheduled

• Whether every vehicle used in the business is on a commercial auto policy, and whether hired and non-owned coverage is included

• Whether your workers’ compensation classification and any exemption you rely on are current and correct

• What your contracts obligate you to indemnify, and whether your policy can respond to it

Send us your policy and your contracts

We will read both, tell you what you are covered for, and show you where the certificate your next general contractor asks for is going to run into a problem. If everything is in order, we will say so.

Atlantis Insurance Inc 850 NW Federal Highway, Suite 129 Stuart, FL 34994 561-983-4333