Carpenter Insurance

General Liability Insurance For Carpenters

For damage on the jobsite and the work after you pack up.

General liability insurance, written through our carpenter liability program, may cover injuries and damage your crew causes on site, along with the completed operations claims this trade is famous for: the railing that gives way, the stair stringer that cracks, the deck that fails a summer or two after the final walkthrough.

General liability can help pay for:

• Customer property damaged during the job.
• Completed operations claims after the work is done, decks and railings included.
• Third parties injured around the jobsite.
• Legal defense, whatever the merit of the claim.

Tools And Equipment Coverage For Carpenters

For the saws, nailers, and hand tools that earn a living.

Tools and equipment coverage, written on an inland marine form, may cover your gear in the truck, on the jobsite, and in storage, and the overnight van break-in remains the most common claim in the trade. An installation floater can also pick up materials and millwork staged on site before they are built in.

Tools coverage can help pay for:

• Theft of tools from vehicles, job sites, and storage.
• Damaged or lost saws, nailers, and specialty tools.
• Rented equipment and staged materials, when scheduled.

Business Owners Policy For Carpenters

For qualifying operations that want the package price.

A business owner's policy can bundle liability and property coverage for qualifying carpenters at a package rate, with tools, auto, and completed operations included. Here is how a BOP works.

A business owner's policy can help pay for:

• Third party injury and property damage claims.
• Covered losses to your shop and stored materials.
• Lost income during a covered closure.

Also worth pricing as the operation grows: contractor E and O for design-build and spec disputes, excess liability for GC contract limits, the license and contract bonds many states and bids require, builder's risk when you carry the structure itself, and the rest of our contractor programs.

What's Not Covered Under These Policies

Every policy above has an edge, and carpentry claims get denied at predictable points. These are the gaps we check on every incoming operation.

• Redoing your own work. The failed deck produces two bills: rebuilding it and repairing the damage it caused, and liability coverage is built for the second, not the first.
• Your subcontractors' own liability. Their certificates belong in your file with your company named as additional insured, or your policy needs to be rated for them.
• Injuries to your own crew, which belong to workers' compensation rather than liability coverage.
• Design errors on design-build jobs point to contractor E&O rather than the liability policy.
• Work trucks on personal auto policies, the most common denied claim in the trades.
• Tools and staged materials left unscheduled on any policy.
• Employment disputes with staff that involve employment practices liability.
• Warped boards, checking, and settling, which is wood being wood, not an insurable loss.

The broader list lives in our rundown of what general liability typically does not cover.