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A resource from RocketLevel for restoration company owners and office managers, from the first truck to commercial programs, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About a 9 minute read.
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Reviewed October 2026. Policy forms and state insurance rules vary, and both change. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with a licensed agent or a construction attorney before you rely on it.
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Restoration is a higher-risk trade than most. You work in contaminated water, fire residue, mold, and disrupted buildings, with expensive equipment moving between job sites and crews in other people's property every day. A generic small-business policy is not built for that, and the gaps do not show up until a claim does. You do not need to become an insurance expert, but you do need to know the coverages a restoration company should carry and why, so you can have an informed conversation with an agent instead of hoping the policy you bought years ago still fits.
General liability covers third-party bodily injury and property damage, and it is the foundation. Commercial auto covers your vehicles and is not optional once you run trucks. Workers compensation covers your crews' injuries, and whether you must carry it, and from what headcount, is state law, so look up yours. In Texas, Labor Code 406.002 makes coverage elective for a private employer. The price of going without it is set by Labor Code 406.033: in a suit by an injured employee, a nonsubscriber cannot argue contributory negligence, assumption of the risk, or the negligence of a fellow employee, and it loses the exclusive-remedy bar that keeps a covered employer out of court in the first place. Commercial property covers your building, contents, and equipment at your location. These are the table stakes, and most shops have them, though often under-reviewed as the business grows.
Your general liability policy may exclude pollution, so read yours, because restoration work is full of exactly the exposures that trigger that exclusion: mold, sewage and category 3 water, asbestos and lead disturbance, smoke and contamination. Contractors pollution liability, and related environmental coverage, is the policy built for this. A restoration company without it is one mold or contamination claim away from paying that claim itself, because the general liability policy it counted on may exclude it. If you remember nothing else from this page, ask your agent about pollution coverage by name. Then read the mold terms, because some contractors pollution forms cover microbial matter in full, some sublimit it, and some exclude it. Commercial clients also ask how long the coverage reaches back and forward, because contamination claims surface late. The trigger, the retroactive date, and the tail are laid out in Commercial Insurance and Credentials: What You Need to Qualify, and the full treatment of the gap is in Pollution and Environmental Liability Insurance.
Your commercial property policy may cover equipment only at your address, not the thousands of dollars of air movers, dehumidifiers, and gear sitting in customers' buildings on any given day. Inland marine, sometimes called equipment or tools-and-equipment coverage, covers property in transit and off-site, which for a restoration company is most of your equipment most of the time. Given how much capital your fleet represents and how often it walks off or gets damaged on a job, this is coverage that can pay for itself in a single loss.
A few coverages get overlooked until they matter. Professional liability, errors and omissions, covers claims that your work or advice was deficient, a real exposure when you certify a structure dry or sign off on a remediation. An umbrella policy sits on top of your other limits and is inexpensive relative to the protection, which matters when a single large-loss or injury claim can exceed a base limit. Some carriers write contractors pollution and professional liability together on one form built for remediation contractors, which closes the gap between two separate policies. Ask whether yours is offered that way. Depending on your work you may also need higher auto limits, employment practices coverage, or cyber, which covers breach response, system restoration, and downtime once you hold customer data and run payments through your own systems. Don't try to buy everything. Review the list with an agent against the work you actually do.