Roofing Companies
"Look up their state licence" is sound advice in one of the states APC Roofing works in and useless in two of them. That is the first thing worth knowing about vetting roofing companies, because the single most repeated piece of hiring advice on the internet does not describe how this trade is actually regulated. Identical materials, installed by two different outfits, can hand you twenty-five years or five — so the checking is worth doing properly rather than performatively.
Where you check depends on which state you are in
Florida licenses roofing contractors at state level through the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and the distinction matters: a certified roofing contractor may work anywhere in Florida, while a registered one may work only in the jurisdictions named on the registration. Both are searchable on the department's public licence lookup. Kansas issues no roofing licence, but roofing contractors are required to hold a registration certificate from the Kansas Attorney General's office, which maintains a searchable directory of holders. Colorado and Missouri have no statewide roofing licence or registration at all. In those two the requirements are set by the city or county — the same office that will issue the permit for your job — so the check is a phone call to your local building department asking whether the company is licensed there and can pull a permit at your address. Your state consumer protection office is the other place worth knowing about; the federal directory of them lists the right office for each state.
Verify the insurance rather than accepting the certificate
Two policies matter. General liability covers damage to your property. Workers' compensation covers the people on your roof — and if a company carries none and someone is injured at your house, you can find yourself drawn into the consequences. A certificate of insurance is a photocopy of a claim, not proof of one. Call the insurer named on it and confirm the policy is active on the day work is scheduled to start, not the day the quote was written. It takes five minutes and almost nobody does it.
Read the scope, then read the warranties
One price on one page tells you nothing about what you are buying. A real proposal names the material and its wind rating, says whether the old roofing is being torn off or covered over, specifies the underlayment, states which flashings are being replaced rather than reused, addresses ventilation, gives a unit rate for replacement decking, and includes disposal and permit fees. Two quotes that look far apart often turn out to describe two different jobs — so ask each company to itemise, then compare line against line rather than total against total. Then ask about warranties, plural: every roof carries a manufacturer's material warranty and, separately, a workmanship warranty from whoever installed it. They cover different failures, most roof problems trace to installation rather than to the product, and the workmanship side is the one most often described in conversation and never written down. Ask how long it runs, what voids it, whether it transfers if you sell, and what happens to it if the company closes.
The signals that should slow you down
A large deposit demanded before any material is ordered. Pressure to decide today. A discount for cash with no written contract. Refusal to pull a permit, or a suggestion that you pull it yourself — which puts the liability on you. An out-of-state plate with no local address in a neighbourhood that was hailed on last week. And an offer to cover or absorb your insurance deductible, which both Florida and Colorado prohibit by statute on insurance-funded roof work; a company offering it is telling you exactly how it regards the rules it operates under. Colorado gives homeowners one more protection worth knowing: you may rescind a roofing contract within seventy-two hours of learning your insurer has denied the claim in whole or in part. None of these is about how a company first made contact with you — plenty of good work starts with a knock on the door after a storm, and plenty of bad work starts with a referral. The signals above are about what happens next.
