MONSTER TREE SERVICE

The Monster Tree Service franchise disclosure document requires comprehensive general liability at $1,000,000 per incident and $2,000,000 aggregate, a commercial umbrella of $1,000,000 excess over the underlying liability coverages, property and casualty insurance at full replacement value on your equipment and vehicles, business interruption insurance covering 12 months of lost income including royalty fees, automobile liability for non-owned vehicles, product liability at $1,000,000, workers' compensation as required by law, crime insurance for employee dishonesty at $5,000, and employer liability at $100,000 per incident.

The named insured on your certificate is your own legal business entity. The Monster FDD requires three franchisor entities to be named as additional insureds — Monster Franchising SPE LLC, AB Inc. in its capacity as Manager, and Monster New Franchisor, LLC — and a waiver of subrogation in their favor. "Per incident" is the FDD's wording; the standard insurance term is "per occurrence." Combined single limit means one limit applies to any mix of bodily injury and property damage in a single event.

That is what the agreement establishes. Here is what a climbing, cutting, felling operation actually faces — starting with the tree that does not fall where you planned.

The franchisor entity is Monster Franchising SPE LLC, a Delaware limited liability company organized March 24, 2021, with its principal place of business at 7120 Samuel Morse Drive, Suite 300, Columbia, Maryland 21046. It is part of Authority Brands. The 2025 franchise disclosure document, Item 8, sets out the following required coverages.

General Liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate. (The FDD says "per incident"; the standard term is "per occurrence.") General liability covers accidental bodily injury and property damage your operations cause — the core exposure for a crew dropping limbs and felling trees over houses, fences, and people.

Commercial Umbrella of $1,000,000 excess over all underlying liability coverages per occurrence and $1,000,000 in the aggregate. An umbrella adds limit on top of your general liability, auto, and employer liability for a claim that exceeds the primary limit. For this trade, that is not a formality — a single severe loss can exceed $1,000,000.

Property and Casualty at full replacement value on your equipment, furniture, fixtures, inventory, and vehicles.

Business Interruption covering 12 months of lost income, including coverage for royalty fees, with no co-insurance clause.

at $100,000 combined single limit per state for Medical/Personal Injury Protection and $100,000 Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist. 

(Medical Payments and Personal Injury Protection follow state law; the auto-liability limit you actually carry on owned vehicles should be confirmed against the Manual and your state minimums — the FDD's stated figure addresses non-owned exposure.)

Product Liability at a $1,000,000 policy limit.

Workers' Compensation as required by law in your area. Workers' compensation pays an injured crew member's medical bills and lost wages. Its sister coverage, Employer Liability, 

responds when an injured worker sues the employer; the FDD sets it at $100,000 per incident.

Crime Insurance for Employee Dishonesty at a $5,000 combined single limit.

This is the defining property-damage claim in tree care, and it is exactly the kind of loss general liability is built to address — until severity outruns the limit. Tree removal is controlled destruction. A climber sets the cuts, the ground crew manages the ropes, and a large stem comes down where the plan says it should. Most of the time it does. When it does not — a hinge fails, a rope slips, a hidden defect in the trunk changes the fall line — a multi-ton stem can land on a roof, a parked car, a fence, or a neighbor's structure.

Your general liability covers accidental property damage your operations cause, so a tree that lands on the customer's house is generally a covered loss. The danger is not whether it is covered. The danger is whether $1,000,000 is enough. A large tree through the roof of a substantial home — structure, contents, temporary housing, and the removal of the tree itself — can run well past a primary general-liability limit. That is precisely why the FDD requires the umbrella: the excess layer is what stands between a severe loss and the equity you have built in the business.

The protection is operational and financial together. On the operations side, plan the fall, rig for control, and use a crane on removals that cannot be safely dropped. On the coverage side, carry the required umbrella and size it to your worst realistic loss — because in this trade the worst realistic loss is a tree on a house, and a $1,000,000 primary limit can be the smaller half of the bill.

This is where the trade's real cost lives. A Monster Tree crew climbs, works from an aerial lift, and runs chainsaws at height and on the ground — the forensic review confirms significant fall hazards and chainsaw operation with high injury risk. An injured climber is not a maybe in this business; it is the exposure the entire workers'-compensation program is built around.

Two coverages respond. Workers compensation pays the injured crew member's medical bills and lost wages regardless of fault — a fall from a tree, a chainsaw laceration, a struck-by injury from a dropped limb. Employer liability, the sister coverage on the same policy, responds when the injured worker sues the employer alleging the employer's negligence contributed — an unsafe rigging practice, a missing fall-protection step. The Monster FDD sets employer liability at only $100,000 per incident, which is low for work this hazardous; a serious climbing injury can generate a lawsuit far past that figure, which is one reason the gap section recommends raising it.

The protection is classification and limit. Make sure your crew's payroll is correctly classified for tree work — the rate reflects the real hazard — and confirm your workers' compensation and employer liability limits match the severity of a fall from height. Underestimating either does not deny a claim; it sets up a year-end audit bill and leaves a serious injury underinsured.

Stump grinding looks like the safe end of the business — the tree is already down, the crew is at ground level. The hidden exposure is below the surface. A stump grinder chews several inches into the soil, and the ground around a mature stump can hide a gas line, an electrical service, a water main, or a buried fiber-optic cable. Hit one, and a routine grind becomes a serious claim.

The damage falls into two buckets, and they are covered differently. Striking a water line or a fiber cable is accidental property damage to a utility — generally covered by your general liability. Striking a gas or electrical line is more dangerous: it can cause a fire, an explosion, a service outage across a neighborhood, or a serious injury, and the resulting loss can climb fast. General liability responds to the accidental damage, but the severity can reach into the territory where the umbrella matters. There is also a real operational duty here: in nearly every state, calling 811 to have utilities located before you dig or grind is the law, and failing to do it can shift liability and complicate a claim.

The protection is process first. Call 811 and have lines marked before any grinding near a structure or a utility corridor, keep the locate ticket, and grind to known depths. On the coverage side, confirm your general liability has no exclusion for underground or below-grade work — some contractor policies carry one — so a struck line is covered rather than argued.

Tree work does not respect property lines. A limb dropped on the customer's side can swing into the neighbor's yard, a falling stem can clip the fence between two lots, and debris can scatter across a boundary. The neighbor is not your customer, has no contract with you, and is often the most motivated person at the scene — which makes third-party property damage a frequent, distinct exposure in this trade.

Your general liability covers accidental property damage you cause to a third party, so a limb that crushes the neighbor's fence or dents their parked car is generally a covered loss, the same as damage to your own customer's property. The complication is usually severity and frequency rather than coverage: a single job can generate damage on two or three adjacent properties, and a stem that travels onto a neighbor's house raises the same limit question as a tree on the customer's roof. This is another place the required umbrella earns its keep, because a single felling that damages multiple properties can aggregate quickly.

The protection is to plan the work from the neighbor's side of the line, not just the customer's — notice where adjacent structures, vehicles, and fences sit, rig to keep debris on the work site, and confirm your general liability treats third-party (neighbor) damage the same as customer damage, with the umbrella sized for a loss that spreads across more than one property.

Your premium depends on your state, your crew payroll, your revenue, your equipment, and your claims history. What you can control is understanding how the number is built — and why this trade's program costs more than any other in this cluster.

General liability and workers' compensation are both auditable, and on a tree crew the workers'-compensation side dominates. 

General liability for a tree contractor is usually rated on gross receipts — a rate per $1,000 of revenue — and tree care sits at the higher end of that scale because of the property-damage severity. Workers' compensation is rated on payroll at the 0106 rate described above, and it is typically the single largest line in the budget.

The worked example in the section above shows the workers'-compensation mechanics. On the general-liability side, the rate is higher than a light trade: if your general liability runs near $12 per $1,000 of revenue and you grow from an estimated $400,000 to an actual $600,000, the audit adds about $2,400 (200 × $12). Stack that on the workers'-compensation audit, and you can see why estimating both close to reality matters more here than anywhere else in home services.

Monster Tree's FDD is one of the more thorough in the system — it requires an umbrella, business interruption, product liability, and even a small crime limit. The gaps lie in a few limits the FDD sets too low and the base-policy exclusions it does not address. The recommendations below are Rikor's baselines, calibrated for a newer franchisee and scaled by crew payroll, revenue, and equipment. A single-crew operation and a multi-crew operation with cranes sit at different points on every line.

Employer Liability above the $100,000 FDD minimum. The FDD sets employer liability at $100,000 per incident — low for work where a fall from height or a struck-by injury is the realistic worst case. Rikor's benchmark is $1,000,000 each accident, disease per employee, and disease policy limit. A serious climbing injury can generate an employer-liability lawsuit far past $100,000, and raising this limit is the most important coverage upgrade a tree-care franchisee makes after getting the umbrella right.

**Umbrella sized to a tree-on-a-house loss — raise above the $1M floor.** The FDD requires a $1,000,000 umbrella, and that is the floor, not the target. Reason from your worst realistic loss: a felled tree through a substantial home, a struck-by fatality, or a stump-grinder strike on a gas line can each exceed $1,000,000, and a single job can damage multiple properties. Many commercial and municipal tree accounts also require $2,000,000 or $5,000,000 certificates. For an operation removing large trees over structures, a $2,000,000 to $5,000,000 umbrella is the realistic working layer, and it is the single best dollar a tree-care franchisee can spend on severity.

Contractors Pollution Liability, exposure-gated. Monster Tree franchisees who apply herbicides, fungicides, or treatments — and land-clearing work that disturbs soil or handles fuel — carry a pollution exposure general liability typically excludes. Where you apply chemicals, Rikor's benchmark is Contractors Pollution Liability at **$1,000,000 each occurrence and aggregate**. Gate it to whether you actually do treatment or spray work.

Inland Marine for high-value equipment. Your property policy covers equipment broadly, but a tree operation's bucket trucks, chippers, stump grinders, climbing gear, and rented cranes are high-value, mobile, and easily damaged. Inland marine — an equipment floater — covers that gear in transit and on the job, on an actual cash value basis, and is essential for a business whose tools are worth as much as its trucks.

Confirm no subcontractor exclusion. You will use 1099 crane operators and contract climbers on the biggest removals. A subcontractor exclusion on your general liability would strip coverage for liability arising from their work — the highest-severity jobs you bring them in for. Confirm the exclusion is not present.

Cyber at $250,000, The FDD does not require cyber, but Monster Tree franchisees run online booking, scheduling, customer data, and payment processing. Rikor's baseline is $250,000, including social-engineering and funds-transfer-fraud coverage, the most common small-business cyber loss.

Commercial Crime above the $5,000 FDD limit. The FDD requires only $5,000 of employee-dishonesty crime coverage, which protects the franchisee's own money at a token level. If you want meaningful protection against theft — including theft of equipment or customer property — Rikor's benchmark is a commercial crime policy at $250,000 on a Loss Discovered form. Tree-care theft exposure is lower than for trades whose workers are alone inside homes, so weigh this against your actual exposure; the equipment-theft angle is usually the stronger driver here.

EPLI at $250,000, scaling with crew size. The FDD does not require employment practices liability. A growing crew creates real employment exposure — wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment — that general liability does not touch. Rikor's baseline is $250,000, scaling past roughly 10 employees or $750,000 in revenue.