Florida Tree Service Insurance

A three-man crew takes down a ficus in a Fort Lauderdale back yard. The top section swings wrong on the way down and puts a limb through the homeowner's barrel tile. The claim is maybe eighteen thousand dollars of roof. The general liability carrier denies it, and the denial has nothing to do with how the cut was made. The policy was written as a landscaping policy, and the form attached to it excludes tree felling.

That denial is common in South Florida because the trade and the insurance product are badly matched. Broward and Miami-Dade run thousands of tree crews against ficus, banyan, royal poinciana and oak, and the work spikes every time a named storm crosses the state. Most of those crews bought a general liability policy online in ten minutes by picking the closest trade on a dropdown, and the closest trade was landscaping.

Tree work is not landscaping to an underwriter. It carries height, chainsaws, cranes, falling weight and power lines, and it sits in a different class code with a different threshold under Florida law. This guide covers where that class code actually lands, why Broward stopped licensing tree trimmers in 2025, which exclusions decide a dropped-limb claim, and what a real program costs in 2026.

Code 0106 Is Not on Florida's Construction List

Florida requires workers' compensation in private employment at four or more employees, then separately requires it in the construction industry at one or more employees. Section 440.02(10) defines the construction industry, and Rule 69L-6.021 of the Florida Administrative Code is where that definition becomes a list. The rule enumerates the specific NCCI class codes that count as construction, and there are 83 of them.

Class 0042, landscape gardening and drivers, is the first entry on that list. Class 0106, the code for pruning, spraying, repairing and trimming trees, is not on it anywhere. Neither is 9102, lawn care maintenance. Roofing at 5551 is on the list, which is why a roofer needs coverage at the first employee.

So a company whose payroll is genuinely all 0106 is outside the construction definition and sits under the four-employee rule, not the one-employee rule. That surprises most owners in the trade, who assume the danger of the work puts them in the construction bucket. Danger is not the test. The class code is.

Do not read this as permission to run three employees uninsured. A single climber injury runs past six figures, nothing in Chapter 440 caps your liability for an injury you did not insure, and the general contractors and property managers who feed you work will demand a certificate regardless of what the statute requires.

There is also a verification step worth taking. The rule adopts the NCCI Florida exception pages, and the Division of Workers' Compensation reads your actual operations rather than the code on your application. Get your classification confirmed in writing by your carrier before you rely on it for anything.

One Landscaping Job Moves You to the One-Employee Rule

Few tree services stay purely in 0106. You take down a tree, the homeowner asks what can go in the gap, and you sell a replacement planting. You grind the stump, truck in soil and lay sod over it. You prep a bed. All of that is 0042 work, and 0042 is construction.

The moment you have 0042 payroll, you have construction payroll, and the one-employee rule follows it. A company can be construction for part of its payroll and non-construction for the rest. The exposure is decided by what your crews actually did, which the auditor reconstructs from your job records at the end of the policy year.

Split the payroll cleanly on the policy and keep job records that support the split. A misclassification found on audit corrects in the wrong direction, because the auditor assigns unsupported payroll to the highest-rated code in your operation. On a tree service that is the climbing code, and the correction arrives as a single bill.

Two further traps sit here. A corporate officer exemption covers that officer and nobody else, so it does nothing for your crew. And an uninsured subcontractor's payroll lands on your audit as though those people were yours, which is how a two-employee company ends up paying comp on nine.

Broward Stopped Licensing Tree Trimmers in 2025

Broward County used to require a Certificate of Competency to trim trees commercially, with a county training course and an ISA or ASCA examination behind it. That requirement ended on 1 July 2025. The county's own licensing page now states that tree trimming contractors no longer need the certificate, and the course and exam requirements went with it.

The driver was state preemption of local occupational licensing under section 163.211, which wiped out local licenses imposed before January 2021. Senate Bill 1142 had extended the sunset to 30 June 2025, and the deadline then ran out. Pompano Beach published its own notice in August 2025 listing tree trimming among the Broward categories no longer recognised or required for permitting, alongside flooring, sealcoating, striping and paver installation.

Nothing replaced it at state level. Neither the Department of Business and Professional Regulation nor the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services licenses arborists or tree services, so there is no state tree trimming licence to hold. ISA certification is a credential, not a licence. Mangrove work is the exception and still runs through the Professional Mangrove Trimmer programme.

With the licence gone, your certificate of insurance is the only screening tool an HOA or property manager has left. Expect more COI requests, more additional insured demands and higher required limits, not fewer. The firms that can produce a clean certificate inside an hour are winning the commercial accounts.

One statute helps on the residential side. Section 163.045 bars a local government from requiring a notice, application, approval, permit, fee or mitigation to prune or remove a tree on single-family residential property when the owner holds documentation from an ISA-certified arborist or a Florida-licensed landscape architect that the tree poses an unacceptable risk. Know it, because homeowners cite it and get the scope wrong. It covers single-family residential property and nothing else.

The Exclusions That Decide a Dropped-Limb Claim

The denial in the opening paragraph is an endorsement problem. A general liability policy rated as landscaping can carry an exclusion for tree felling, for tree removal, or for chainsaw operation outright. Your declarations page will not say so on its face. The exclusion lives in the endorsement schedule behind it.

Four more restrictions show up repeatedly on tree accounts:

• A height cap. Coverage stops above a stated working height, commonly 15 or 30 feet, which removes most of what a climber does.
• An aerial work or a logging and lumbering exclusion, usually sitting several pages into the endorsement stack.
• A power line proximity carve-out, often barring work within 15 feet of an energised line.
• Care, custody and control, which excludes damage to the property you were working on. This is the one that kills the limb-through-the-roof claim, because the roof was part of the job site.

Read every endorsement whose title contains the words exclusion, limitation, restriction or height, then put one question to your agent in writing. If a limb we are removing damages the customer's roof, does this policy pay? Keep the answer. An arborist-specific form from a carrier that wants the class will narrow or remove the aerial and felling restrictions, and that is what you are shopping for.

What a South Florida Tree Service Program Costs in 2026

Workers' compensation is the biggest line, and the rate direction is good. On 17 November 2025 Florida Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworsky approved a statewide overall workers' compensation rate decrease of 6.9 percent for policies written on or after 1 January 2026, which the Office of Insurance Regulation called the ninth consecutive year of decreases.

Do not price a renewal off a published rate for 0106. The tables that circulate online put it somewhere between roughly 6 and 11 dollars per 100 dollars of payroll, and they disagree with each other badly enough that the spread is nearly double. The number that matters is your filed rate multiplied by your experience modification, then adjusted for schedule credits. Ask for the rate and the mod in writing, and ask what drove the mod.

General liability for a small Florida tree operation typically runs somewhere around 900 to 2,800 dollars a year, with Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach accounts sitting at the higher end of that band. National medians land near 1,400 to 1,900 dollars, which understates South Florida. Limits of 1 million per occurrence and 2 million aggregate are the practical floor for commercial work.

Two lines get underestimated. Commercial auto on chip trucks, dump trailers and bucket trucks is frequently the second largest premium on the account, and a bucket truck is not a light commercial vehicle to a rater. Inland marine covers the chipper, the stump grinder, the saws and the climbing gear, and a stolen chipper is a five-figure loss that a general liability policy does not touch. Our commercial insurance page covers how these lines fit together, and our workers' compensation page explains how the experience modification is built and what moves it.

Storm Work Is Where the Gaps Show Up

Hurricane season is when a tree service makes its year and when its insurance problems surface at once. Volume triples, you hire whoever can hold a saw, and out-of-state crews arrive with certificates you have no time to verify.

Every one of those temporary hires is payroll you did not report at binding, and the audit will find it. Report mid-term payroll changes rather than letting them accumulate. The premium is owed either way, and a surprise audit bill in January is how storm profit disappears.

Watch the scope creep too. Tarping a roof after you clear the tree off it starts to look like roofing work, which is a licensed trade under Chapter 489 and a different class code. Hauling debris adds trailer and disposal exposure. And get the homeowner's authorisation and scope in writing before the saw starts, because emergency work agreed by handshake in a driveway is the single most disputed kind of job in the trade.

Seven Questions Before You Renew

• Is my general liability rated as tree service, or as landscaping with tree work going on underneath it?
• Does any endorsement exclude felling, removal, chainsaw use, aerial work or work above a stated height?
• If a limb damages the structure we are working next to, does care, custody and control bar the claim?
• How is my payroll split between 0106 and 0042, and do my job records support the split?
• What is my filed workers' compensation rate, what is my experience modification, and what drove it?
• Are my chipper, grinder, saws and climbing gear scheduled on an inland marine policy at replacement cost?
• Can I produce a certificate with additional insured status for a property manager the same day they ask?

A tree service is one of the harder commercial risks to place in Florida and one of the easiest to place badly. The gap between a policy rated for the work and a landscaping policy with a felling exclusion costs nothing extra until the day a limb goes through a roof. Have someone read your endorsement schedule before that day, not after it.