MIGHTY DOG ROOFING

The Mighty Dog Roofing franchise agreement requires general liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate per location, written on an occurrence form and including products and completed-operations coverage. It also requires auto liability at $1,000,000 combined single limit with physical damage, a contractors equipment floater, employment-practices liability at $250,000, workers' compensation with $1,000,000 employers liability, contractors professional liability at $1,000,000, property coverage, and an umbrella.

The named insured is your own legal business entity. The agreement requires you to name MDR United LLC and its subsidiaries and affiliates as additional insureds, on a primary and non-contributory basis, with a waiver of subrogation, through a carrier rated A-VII or better.

That satisfies your franchisor. Here is where the requirement ends and your real exposure as a roofing operator begins.

The franchisor entity is MDR United LLC, a Pennsylvania company at 2525 N. 117th Avenue, Omaha, Nebraska. The 2026 franchise agreement (Item 8) sets one of the more detailed insurance sections in this trade — it names not just limits but the policy form and several endorsements.

Two terms control the structure. Primary and non-contributory means your policy pays first and does not ask the franchisor's insurer to contribute. A waiver of subrogation is your insurer's promise not to chase the franchisor for reimbursement after it pays a claim.

What the agreement requires you to carry:

General Liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate per location, on an occurrence form, including products and completed-operations coverage, personal and advertising injury, fire damage liability, and medical payments.

Auto Liability and Physical Damage at $1,000,000 combined single limit (a single shared limit for injury and property damage) for owned, non-owned, and hired vehicles, with comprehensive and collision deductibles no higher than $1,000.

Contractors Equipment Floater covering the mobile equipment used in the business.

Employment Practices Liability (EPLI) at $250,000 aggregate, with a third-party endorsement and naming the franchisor as co-defendant (the agreement references form CG 20 29 or its equivalent). EPLI covers employment claims like harassment, discrimination, and wrongful termination.

Workers' Compensation at statutory limits, plus Employers Liability at $1,000,000 by accident, $1,000,000 disease policy limit, and $1,000,000 disease each accident.

Contractors Professional Liability at $1,000,000 to cover errors-and-omissions claims. The FDD allows this and pollution coverage to be combined with the general liability policy.

Property Insurance at 100% of the replacement cost of your business personal property, and Umbrella Liability excess over general liability, auto, and employers liability.

All policies must be written by a carrier rated A-VII or better by A.M. Best, name MDR United LLC and its affiliates as additional insureds, be primary and non-contributory, and carry a waiver of subrogation.

Roofing is the rare trade where heavy material is in the air all day. Bundles of shingles get hoisted up; tear-off debris, old flashing, and broken decking come down. On a Mighty Dog job that includes siding, gutters, or windows, there is even more material moving around the structure. When something comes off the roof and hits the customer's property — a skylight, a deck, an air-conditioning unit, a parked car — that is a general liability claim, and your occurrence-form policy generally responds.

What franchisees underestimate is how fast these add up on a single job. A dropped bundle that cracks a sunroom roof, a piece of flashing that gouges the hood of a car in the driveway, a tool that punches through a screened porch — one busy tear-off can produce several property-damage claims at once. The customer's own property is in the drop zone the whole time, not just the neighbor's. Confirm your general liability has no falling-object or debris exclusion, and that the limit fits a job where multiple structures sit close to the work. A few minutes of setup — plywood over the AC unit, moving the customer's vehicles, tarping the deck — prevents most of these losses for almost nothing.

Mighty Dog franchisees run crews, and during storm season or a busy stretch, those crews are often supplemented with subcontractors. The franchise agreement anticipates this and requires it: your subcontractors must carry insurance in the amounts you carry, they cannot exclude principals from their workers' compensation, and their liability policies must name MDR United LLC as an additional insured. That requirement is there for a reason — an uninsured sub is your exposure, not theirs.

Here is how the exposure works. Many roofing subcontractors operate as sole proprietors and try to opt out of workers' compensation to save money. If one of those subs falls off a roof on your job with no coverage of their own, you can be treated as their employer for workers' compensation purposes — your policy pays as if they were your crew. The same logic runs through liability: if a sub's mistake causes property damage and the sub has no general liability, the claim reverts to you. Your own policy needs independent-contractors coverage so it extends to the subs you bring in, and you need a certificate from every sub on file before they touch a roof. The agreement requires you to keep that evidence; the practical reason is that a missing certificate turns a sub's accident into your loss.

The most expensive roofing claims rarely happen on the job. They happen later — after the crew is gone, after the invoice is paid, after the customer has stopped thinking about the roof. A nail driven through a shingle, a valley sealed wrong, a vent boot that was not flashed correctly, or decking that was already rotten and got covered over: any of these can let water into the home weeks or months down the road. That is a completed-operations claim, a claim for damage from work you already finished.

Mighty Dog's FDD gets this right by requiring an occurrence form with products and completed-operations coverage — which is exactly the structure that responds to a leak that surfaces after the job. An occurrence policy covers a loss based on when the damage happened, not when the claim is reported, so a leak found six months later is still covered if the policy was in force when you did the work. What the policy will not do is pay to redo the roof itself; that falls under the "your work" exclusion, which removes coverage for the cost of correcting your own faulty work. What it can cover is the *resulting* damage — the ruined ceilings, floors, and contents inside the home. The distinction is the difference between a small repair bill and a large one.

Storm season is when roofing money is made — and when workers' compensation bills are made too. The premium you pay at the start of a policy is an estimate based on the payroll you expect. The real number is settled at year-end through an audit: the carrier's review that compares the payroll you estimated against what you actually ran, then adjusts the premium up or down. Add a second or third crew for a busy storm stretch, and your actual payroll can blow past your estimate — on the most expensive workers' compensation classification in home services.

The math is unforgiving for roofing because the rate is so high. Workers' compensation premium is your payroll divided by 100, multiplied by your state's rate for the roofing class code (NCCI 5551), multiplied by your experience modification. That state rate runs from roughly $9.90 to over $15 per $100 of payroll, and the state's rating bureau sets it — not the carrier. So if you estimate $250,000 in payroll and a strong storm season pushes your actual payroll to $400,000, that $150,000 difference at a roofing rate near $13 per $100 produces an audit bill around $19,500 (1,500 × $13). It arrives as one lump sum months after the season is over, often after you have already spent the revenue that crew earned.

Your premium depends on details specific to your operation — state, payroll, revenue, vehicles, and claims history. What you can understand is how it is built, and why roofing lands at the top of the cost range.

Workers' compensation is the largest line, and roofing is the most expensive WC trade Rikor covers. The rate is set by your state's rating bureau for the roofing class code (NCCI 5551), and the carrier applies it — the insurer does not pick the price. Both workers' compensation and general liability are auditable, meaning the year-end audit trues up the estimate against your actual payroll and revenue. For a roofer, the general liability is rated on revenue or payroll, and payments to subcontractors who cannot show their own coverage get added to the base — the same dollars the FDD's subcontractor-insurance requirement is designed to keep documented.

A realistic example on the general-liability revenue basis. Say you estimate $400,000 in revenue when the policy starts, and after a strong storm season you finish at $650,000 — a $250,000 difference. If your general liability is rated near $8 per $1,000 of revenue for roofing, the audit adds about $2,000 on that growth (250 × $8). Workers' compensation runs the same way on payroll, at a much higher rate, so the WC piece of an audit is almost always the larger number. Both usually arrive together as a lump sum a few months after the policy year closes.

PROSE:

Roofing is the highest-cost insurance trade in this entire database, and a complete franchise program for a territory with one or two crews commonly runs from $20,000 to $40,000 or more per year. Treat any figure in the FDD's Item 7 as a floor, not a real estimate — a roofing Item 7 built on standard market rates will understate your true workers' compensation cost.

The cash-flow takeaway is the useful part. Estimate your payroll and revenue close to reality, and if storm season grows your crews fast, call your carrier mid-year for a mid-term adjustment — a re-rate during the policy term that spreads the increase across your remaining installments instead of dropping it as a single audit bill. An audit is reconciliation, not a penalty; if you overestimated, it refunds you. Because subcontractor pay is the variable most likely to move a roofing audit, Rikor's subcontractor compliance monitoring tool tracks those certificates in real time so a lapse surfaces before the audit, not after. See how subcontractor compliance works →

Mighty Dog's FDD is one of the strongest in this trade — it already requires occurrence-form general liability with completed operations, an equipment floater, contractors E&O, and an EPLI endorsement most roofing agreements never mention. The gaps are narrower than usual, which makes the ones that remain worth naming precisely. These recommendations are Rikor's baselines for a newer franchisee, and they scale with your revenue, payroll, and job size.

Add drone liability coverage — the FDD does not name it. Mighty Dog markets AI-powered drone roof inspections. A drone is an aircraft, which standard general liability excludes, and it is not a ground vehicle, so commercial auto does not cover it either. A drone incident — striking a window, a power line, a person, or simply falling out of the sky — is an uninsured event under your otherwise-thorough stack. Carry a standalone drone liability policy or a UAV endorsement at $1,000,000, and confirm whoever flies holds an FAA Part 107 certificate, because operating without it can void coverage.

Size the umbrella to your worst realistic loss — the FDD sets no dollar minimum. Item 8 requires an umbrella excess over general liability, auto, and employers liability, but it does not state a limit. Reason from severity: a catastrophic fall-from-height injury, a whole-house water-intrusion loss, or a commercial storm job can each run past your $1,000,000 primary limits. A $2,000,000 umbrella that follows form over those three policies is a reasonable floor for a newer roofer, and commercial accounts will push you higher — $2,000,000, $5,000,000, sometimes more — so let the certificates you intend to chase set the number.

Confirm the equipment floater limit matches your real gear. The FDD requires a contractors equipment floater but sets no amount. Size it to the actual replacement value of the ladders, harnesses, compressors, nailers, and drone equipment you carry, on an actual-cash-value basis — there is no universal number, and an under-sized floater leaves you short when a truck is broken into.

Confirm the contractors E&O actually covers your assessment work. The FDD requires $1,000,000 in contractors professional liability and allows it to be combined with general liability. On storm and inspection work — especially drone-based assessments — your judgment is the product, so confirm the policy's professional-services definition covers roof assessment and scope recommendation, and that any faulty-workmanship language has not been quietly endorsed out.

Cyber at $250,000 — the FDD does not require it. Mighty Dog runs AI drone inspection software, storm-tracking technology, online booking, and payment processing, and stores customer data. That is a real breach and funds-transfer-fraud exposure. Rikor recommends $250,000 for a newer operator, scaling above $750,000 in revenue.

EPLI is required at $250,000 — keep the third-party endorsement and co-defendant language. The FDD requires it with the third-party endorsement and franchisor co-defendant (CG 20 29). That third-party piece matters for roofing crews who interact with homeowners on site. As you pass 10 employees or $750,000 in revenue, scale the limit toward $500,000.

Commercial crime is a lighter exposure here. Exterior roofing crews are not trusted alone inside occupied homes for long stretches, so crime is not automatic. Carry it if you handle customer deposits or funds, at a $250,000 baseline on a loss-discovered form.