Contractor insurance

Asphalt and paving contractor insurance

Paving compresses a year of production into a short season, often on or beside a surface the public is still using. Traffic exposure and heavy equipment movement drive most of this conversation.

What the work usually involves

Driveway work and commercial or roadway work are very different risks, and the split is one of the first things a carrier will ask about.

  • Residential driveways and approaches
  • Commercial parking lots and access drives
  • Roadway paving, overlays and patching
  • Milling, grading and subgrade preparation
  • Sealcoating and crack filling
  • Striping and pavement marking
  • Hauling hot mix and moving equipment between sites

Risks worth talking through

Working in and beside live traffic

Crews on an active lot or roadway are exposed to the public, and the public is exposed to your operation. Traffic control, flagging and signage are risk controls that carriers ask about directly.

Hot mix and burns

Material arrives and is placed at temperatures that cause serious burns immediately. This is the characteristic severe injury in the trade.

Tack coat, sealer and overspray

Emulsion and sealer drifting or tracking onto vehicles, garage floors and adjacent concrete produces a steady stream of property damage claims that have nothing to do with the pavement itself.

Moving heavy equipment between jobs

Pavers, rollers and skid steers travel on trailers, frequently several times a week. Loading, securement and bridge or weight limits are all part of it, and a piece of equipment coming off in transit is a severe event.

Subgrade and drainage failures

Pavement that fails because of what is underneath it generates disputes about workmanship versus site conditions, and those are treated differently by a policy.

A compressed Minnesota season

Temperature limits push work into the margins of the calendar and into long days. Fatigue and schedule pressure show up in the loss history of this trade.

Coverage areas to review

General liability

For a paving operation, liability coverage is aimed at the public and the property around your work zone, which on a busy lot is a lot of people and a lot of vehicles. For paving, the recurring claims are damage to vehicles and adjacent property from material and equipment, and injuries to members of the public who entered an active work area. How the policy treats your completed pavement, as opposed to damage it causes, is worth understanding separately.

Workers compensation

If you have employees, burns, equipment contact and being struck by vehicles are the defining exposures. Whether your crews work on public roadways rather than private lots is material and should be stated plainly, because it changes the risk substantially.

Commercial auto

Dump trucks, tack trucks, sealer rigs and the trailers hauling pavers and rollers. Weight, radius, whether you haul for others and how equipment is secured are the usual points of discussion.

Equipment on site and in transit

Pavers, rollers, milling machines, sealer tanks and striping equipment represent substantial value and are frequently left on site overnight during a job. Coverage on the road, at a jobsite and at your yard can each be handled differently.

This page is general information, not legal, safety or coverage advice. What a policy actually covers depends on your business operations and on the policy, carrier, terms, conditions, limits and exclusions that apply. Nothing here confirms eligibility or guarantees that any coverage is available to you.

What to have ready for a review

  • Approximate split between residential, commercial and roadway work
  • Whether you work on public roads, and whether you provide traffic control
  • Whether you sealcoat and stripe in addition to paving
  • An equipment list with values, and what is left on site overnight
  • Vehicles and trailers, including how equipment is hauled
  • Employee count and peak-season payroll
  • Any work you subcontract, and whether you collect certificates
  • Any claims or incidents from the last several years

Questions we hear

Sealer got on a customer's garage floor and a neighbor's car. Is that typical?

It is one of the more common claims in this trade. Damage to other people's property arising from your operations is generally what liability coverage addresses, though the specifics always depend on your policy. Because these are frequent rather than rare, it is worth discussing how repeated small claims affect your program.

Does it matter whether I work on public roads or just private lots?

It matters a great deal. Roadway work introduces public traffic exposure, traffic control obligations and often contractual requirements from the public entity. It should be disclosed clearly rather than described generically as paving.

A lot I paved is failing because of the base underneath. Where does that land?

Usually in a dispute about whether the problem is your workmanship, the design, or site conditions you did not control. Policies commonly treat the cost of redoing your own work differently from damage that work causes to something else, so documentation of the subgrade condition before you paved is genuinely useful.

Ready to talk it over?

Call or text the office, or send a request and we will get back to you.

Call 320-275-3001 Text 320-275-3001 Get a Quote

Dassel State Insurance Agency is based in Dassel and works with contractors throughout Minnesota.

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