Part B · licensing

A county licence is not a Kirkwood licence

A roofing company can be fully legitimate, properly insured and correctly registered with St. Louis County, and still not be cleared to work inside the Kirkwood city limits. Nothing visible from your driveway distinguishes the two.

Start from the fact that there is no state licence

Missouri does not licence roofing contractors. There is no state board, no state number, no state examination and no state register. Three separate bills went to Jefferson City to create one and all three failed. So when a roofer says he is licensed, the word cannot mean what it means for an electrician or a plumber in a state that licenses those trades. It has to mean something narrower, and the narrower thing is almost always municipal.

This is the load bearing point. Because there is no statewide credential, the only licensing that exists in Missouri roofing is the licensing a city or a county chooses to do for itself. Which means licensing is geographic. Which means it can be true at one address and not true at another, three miles away, for exactly the same company on exactly the same day.

Ask these before you sign, then compare the two answers

None of these are hostile. A contractor who works in Kirkwood regularly will answer all four in under a minute and will not mind being asked. A contractor who cannot answer them has told you something important without meaning to.

• Are you licensed with the City of Kirkwood, or with St. Louis County? The correct answer to this question is not "yes". It is one of the two, or both.
• Whose name goes on the permit application? If the answer is yours, ask why. A homeowner pulling their own permit on a contractor's work is a known way of shifting responsibility onto the person least equipped to carry it.
• Have you worked inside the city limits this year? Not "in Kirkwood" loosely, which people use to mean the general area. Inside the limits, with a permit, this year.
• What is your certificate of insurance, and can I have a copy sent directly from the agent? Insurance is separate from licensing and neither substitutes for the other. A certificate forwarded by the contractor is a PDF. One sent by the agency is a fact.

In a state with no roofing licence, the only credentials that exist are municipal, financial or from a manufacturer. They are three different things and they are routinely blurred into one word.

Credential means three different things in this state

Municipal licensing

A city or county gives a contractor permission to work in its jurisdiction, usually with a fee, sometimes with a bond or an examination. This is the only thing that is actually a licence. It is geographic and it does not travel.

Insurance

General liability and workers compensation. This is what protects you financially if someone is hurt on your property or your house is damaged. It is not a licence, it is not a quality signal, and it is the one item on this list that you should verify directly with the issuing agency rather than accepting on paper.

Manufacturer programmes

Shingle makers run installer programmes with tiers and badges. They are commercial relationships between a manufacturer and a contractor. They can be a genuine signal about training and about what warranty a manufacturer will register, and they are not a government credential of any kind. Keys Roofing installs Atlas and Malarkey and does not claim a tier it has not been given.

What a homeowner can actually verify

Quite a lot, and it costs nothing but phone calls.

1. The city. Call the City of Kirkwood building division and ask whether a named company is licensed with the city. This is public information and the counter exists to answer it.
2. The insurer. Ask for the agent's details and call the agency yourself. Confirm the policy is current and covers roofing operations.
3. The Missouri Secretary of State. Business registrations are searchable. It will not tell you whether a roofer is any good. It will tell you whether the entity on your contract exists and under what name.
4. The address. A registered local address is not a guarantee of anything, but it is checkable, and a company with a yard in town has more to lose from a bad job in town. Twelve roofing contractors hold Kirkwood addresses, and the list is published on this site.

Who holds a Kirkwood address · Why no state licence exists