If you install flooring for a living, you know your tools aren't just expensive—they're how you make your living. A good flooring nailer can run $500-$1,500. Add in your miter saw, moisture meters, knee pads, trowels, and specialized installation tools, and you're easily carrying $5,000-$15,000 worth of equipment to every job. Now imagine all of it disappearing from your truck overnight.
Construction tool theft is a massive problem. The industry loses between $300 million and $1 billion every year to equipment theft, and only 22% of stolen items are ever recovered. For flooring installers who move between job sites daily, the risk is constant. That's where equipment and tools insurance—technically called inland marine insurance—becomes essential.
What Makes Inland Marine Insurance Different
Here's the thing most flooring installers don't realize: your standard business property insurance doesn't follow you to job sites. If you have a shop or warehouse, commercial property insurance protects what's inside—but the second you load your truck and head to a client's home, that coverage stops. Your tools are essentially uninsured the moment you leave your business location.
Inland marine insurance was designed specifically for this problem. Despite the confusing name (which comes from old maritime shipping insurance), it covers property that moves around. For flooring contractors, this means protection for your tools and equipment whether they're in your truck, at a customer's house, stored temporarily in your vehicle overnight, or being transported between jobs. It also covers materials you're responsible for—those expensive hardwood planks or specialty tiles—from the moment they're in your care until the installation is complete.
The coverage typically includes theft, vandalism, fire, accidents, and damage from natural disasters like floods or lightning. If your truck is broken into and your flooring nailer is stolen, you're covered. If your equipment is damaged in a vehicle accident on the way to a job, you're covered. If tools are stolen from an unlocked job site, you're covered (though insurers will want to see you took reasonable precautions).
Scheduled vs. Blanket Coverage: Which Do You Need?
When you're shopping for equipment insurance, you'll encounter two main approaches: scheduled coverage and blanket coverage. Understanding the difference can save you money and headaches when you file a claim.
Scheduled coverage means you create a detailed list of your high-value equipment, with each item getting its own coverage limit. You'd list your flooring nailer, your high-end miter saw, your laser level—essentially anything worth more than $500-$1,000. Your insurer keeps this detailed inventory on file, and if one of these items is stolen or damaged, there's no question about whether it was covered or what it was worth. You've already established that.
Blanket coverage takes a different approach. Instead of itemizing every tool, you get a single coverage limit that applies to all your equipment as a group. For example, you might have $20,000 in blanket coverage for all your flooring tools. This is simpler to set up and maintain, and it's perfect for smaller items that would be tedious to list individually—your hand tools, measuring tapes, chalk lines, and utility knives.
The downside to blanket coverage is that it often comes with lower per-item limits and higher deductibles. If you have $20,000 in blanket coverage but the policy has a $1,000 per-item limit, and your $2,500 flooring nailer gets stolen, you're only getting $1,000 back—not enough to replace it.
Most flooring installers use a hybrid approach: scheduled coverage for expensive items like your nailer, saws, and specialized equipment, and blanket coverage for everything else. This gives you full protection for your priciest tools while keeping the premium reasonable.
What This Coverage Actually Costs
Here's the good news: equipment insurance for flooring installers is surprisingly affordable. Industry data from 2025 shows that flooring installation businesses pay an average of just $14 per month—that's $169 annually—for tools and equipment coverage. Even if your premium runs higher because you have more expensive equipment, you're typically looking at $200-$400 per year for solid protection.
Compare that to the reality of tool theft. The average loss per construction equipment theft incident is around $6,000, and that's just the direct replacement cost. Industry studies show that hidden costs—renting replacement equipment, project delays, rescheduling fees, potential lost contracts, and increased insurance premiums after a claim—often add up to 3-5 times the value of what was stolen. A $6,000 theft can easily cost you $18,000-$30,000 when everything shakes out.
Your actual premium depends on several factors: the total value of your equipment, what types of tools you own, where you work (theft rates vary significantly by region), how you store your equipment when not in use, and your claims history. Installers who work in high-theft urban areas or who leave equipment in vehicles overnight will pay more than those who have secure storage.
Installation Floater Coverage: Protecting Client Materials
Here's a scenario that keeps flooring contractors up at night: A client orders $8,000 worth of imported Italian tile for their kitchen remodel. The tile is delivered to the job site on Thursday. You're scheduled to install it Monday. Over the weekend, someone breaks into the house and steals the tile. Who pays?
Without installation floater coverage, you might be on the hook. Once materials are in your care, custody, and control—even if you haven't started work yet—you can be held liable for damage or loss. Installation floater coverage extends your inland marine policy to protect client materials from the moment they're delivered or you take possession until the installation is complete.
This is particularly important for flooring installers because materials are often delivered before you're ready to install, and they can be valuable. Hardwood flooring for a 2,000-square-foot house can easily run $10,000-$20,000. Luxury vinyl, specialty tiles, or exotic hardwoods can cost even more. If something happens to those materials while they're in your care—theft, fire, water damage from a burst pipe—installation floater coverage protects you.
How to Get Started With Coverage
Getting equipment insurance is straightforward, but you'll need some information ready. Start by creating an inventory of your tools and equipment. For items you want scheduled coverage on, note the make, model, serial number, and current replacement value. Take photos of everything—these help with claims and can sometimes get you better rates by showing insurers you maintain your equipment well.
Estimate the total value of all your equipment, including the smaller items that would fall under blanket coverage. Be honest about where and how you store tools—lying to save $50 on your premium isn't worth it if a claim gets denied because you said you had secure storage when you actually leave tools in your truck.
Many insurers offer equipment coverage as part of a Business Owner's Policy (BOP), which bundles inland marine insurance with general liability and commercial property coverage. For flooring installers, a BOP averages around $109 per month and gives you comprehensive protection. This is often more cost-effective than buying policies separately.
Ask insurers about deductibles and how they calculate payouts. Some policies pay replacement cost (what it costs to buy new equipment today), while others pay actual cash value (replacement cost minus depreciation). For a three-year-old flooring nailer, that difference could be hundreds of dollars. Replacement cost coverage costs slightly more but is usually worth it.
Equipment and tools insurance isn't just about protecting your investment in flooring tools—it's about protecting your ability to work. When nearly 12,000 pieces of construction equipment are stolen every year and most are never recovered, insurance is the only thing standing between you and a catastrophic business interruption. For less than $200 a year, you can work with confidence knowing that if something happens to your tools, you'll be back on the job quickly instead of scrambling to replace thousands of dollars in equipment out of pocket.
