HORSEPOWER BRANDS

What HorsePower Brands requires of its franchisees

General liability at $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate is the consistent floor across the majority of HorsePower Brands' active brands. Mighty Dog Roofing is the exception — roofing operations carry elevated GL floors reflecting the height work, structural exposure, and property damage risk that defines that trade. Commercial auto at $1 million combined single limit applies across all HorsePower brands that operate service vehicles, which is effectively every brand in the family. Workers' compensation follows state statutory limits. Employers' liability — the coverage layer above WC — is $1 million across all three sub-limits for all trades.

The additional insured requirement follows the brand-specific entity structure that defines most franchise families. HorsePower Brands entities are organized under a consistent naming pattern for brands built within the HorsePower platform. Varsity Zone (HVAC) operates under HPB HVAC LLC. Heroes Lawn Care operates under HPB Lawn Care LLC. Bumble Bee Blinds operates under HPB Blinds and Shutters LLC. Blingle operates under HPB Lighting LLC. Mighty Dog Roofing operates under MDR United LLC — reflecting that brand's separate development history before acquisition by HorsePower Brands.

FDD extractions are pending or in progress for Gatsby Glass, Stand Strong Fencing, iFOAM, and Groovy Hues. Requirements for those brands reflect Rikor's benchmark for their respective trades until extractions are confirmed. What is consistent across all brands is that "HorsePower Brands" as a family name does not appear as the additional insured entity on any certificate. The brand-level entity is what matters, and it is different for each brand.

Requirements diverge most significantly between HorsePower's roofing brand and its service brands. Mighty Dog Roofing operates in one of the highest-risk trades in the residential contractor space. Its GL requirements, umbrella requirements, and WC classification structure are substantially more complex than those of a lawn care or lighting brand in the same family. Each brand's full requirements are covered in its individual article below.

How HorsePower Brands insurance requirements vary by brand

The commercial auto exposure is the thread that connects almost every HorsePower brand — and it is where the most consistent coverage gaps appear. Service brands like Heroes Lawn Care and Varsity Zone operate daily from vehicles. Every truck is a moving liability. A rear-end collision en route to a job, a parking lot incident before a service call, a vehicle accident after equipment is loaded — these are commercial auto events, not GL events. A policy that has a $1 million auto limit on paper but an incomplete vehicle schedule can create a gap between what appears to be covered and what the carrier will respond to.

For Mighty Dog Roofing franchisees, the exposure stack is different from every other brand in the family. Height work creates workers' compensation exposure at elevated frequency and severity. Property damage from a roofing job can run into six figures before subcontractor and material costs are tallied. The completed operations tail for roofing work is long — a leak that traces back to flashing installed two years ago is a completed operations claim. Roofing also brings subcontractor exposure into the picture: most Mighty Dog franchisees work with sub crews, and every uninsured subcontractor payroll is a workers' compensation audit liability at year end.

What HorsePower Brands franchisees get wrong about insurance

The inland marine gap is the most common coverage error in this family. HorsePower Brands operators — particularly those in lawn care, HVAC, roofing, and specialty trades — carry equipment as a core operational asset. Mowers, blowers, spray rigs, insulation equipment, ladders, and tools are the assets that generate revenue. They are also the assets that general liability and commercial auto policies do not automatically cover when they are in transit, on a job site, or stored overnight in a trailer or truck bed. An inland marine endorsement — also called an equipment floater — is the specific coverage that protects commercial equipment outside the walls of a fixed location. Many HorsePower franchisees start operations without it, and the first time they find out is when something is stolen, damaged, or destroyed and the claim gets denied.

The additional insured entity error affects multi-brand HorsePower operators in the same way it affects operators in every multi-brand family. Varsity Zone requires HPB HVAC LLC on the certificate. Heroes Lawn Care requires HPB Lawn Care LLC. These are different legal entities. Blingle requires HPB Lighting LLC. Bumble Bee Blinds requires HPB Blinds and Shutters LLC. Mighty Dog Roofing requires MDR United LLC. A franchisee who adds a second or third HorsePower brand and copies their existing COI creates a non-compliant certificate for every brand beyond the original. The compliance audit at grand opening is exactly when this error surfaces.

The WC class code problem is particularly acute for HorsePower operators in trades with diverse job functions. Varsity Zone HVAC technicians classify under a different NCCI code than Heroes Lawn Care crews. Mighty Dog Roofing classifies under one of the highest-rate roofing codes in the country. When a franchisee's workers' compensation policy carries the wrong class code — either from the initial program setup or from a code that was never updated when the operator expanded — the year-end audit produces a balance due that arrives with no negotiation available.

What does HorsePower Brands franchise insurance cost?

For HorsePower brands with confirmed FDD data, insurance cost reflects the trade's risk profile. HVAC service (Varsity Zone) and lawn care (Heroes Lawn Care) typically run $4,000 to $9,000 annually at single-territory startup — lower frequency severity than roofing or construction, but with commercial auto and equipment costs that grow with vehicle count.

Mighty Dog Roofing franchisees operate in a different cost band. Roofing insurance in the residential contractor market carries GL premiums that reflect height exposure, property damage frequency, and completed operations tail risk. Single-territory roofing franchise insurance at startup runs $8,000 to $16,000 annually. That figure assumes a WC policy that correctly classifies roofing labor, a commercial auto schedule that covers all active vehicles, and a completed operations sub-limit adequate for the claim tail. A program that underweights any of these lines will reflect a lower premium — until audit.

Window treatment installation (Bumble Bee Blinds) and outdoor lighting (Blingle) operate at lower cost: $2,500 to $5,500 annually at startup. Glass work (Gatsby Glass) and fencing (Stand Strong Fencing) run $3,500 to $7,000, reflecting property damage exposure from glass breakage and structural installation.

FDD Item 7 estimates — where available — represent first-year minimum operations. As revenue grows, GL premiums and WC premiums on audited bases grow with it. The Item 7 figure is the starting deposit. The final cost is determined at renewal and audit.