Author: Rich Prue

Every roofer has lived this moment: you gave a number, work started, and then something came up:  rotted decking under the shingles, a code-required upgrade, a material price jump, and now the final cost is climbing past what you quoted. How much room do you actually have, and how do you handle it without torching the customer’s trust? Estimate vs. fixed-price contract- know the difference An estimate is a professional projection based on what was known at the time. It’s not a locked-in guarantee. A fixed-price contract, by contrast, sets a specific total regardless of what’s discovered along the way,…

From Roofing Marketer to Roofing Company Owner: Tim Brown’s Strategy for Building Owl Roofing Tim Brown spent years helping roofing contractors grow through digital marketing at Hook Agency. After working alongside more than 100 roofing companies and spending time on job sites, roofs, and in attics, he made a different kind of commitment: launching Owl Roofing in the Twin Cities. Starting a roofing company gave Brown the opportunity to test the marketing, sales, customer experience, and local visibility strategies he has recommended to contractors for years. It also reinforced a core lesson for roofing business owners: long-term growth depends on…

State Farm is facing increasing legal and regulatory scrutiny over its handling of homeowners’ roof claims, with recent developments in Oklahoma and Alabama bringing renewed attention to how the nation’s largest home insurer evaluates wind and hail damage. In Oklahoma, previously protected internal State Farm documents have been made public as attorneys representing policyholders accuse the insurer of implementing claims-handling practices designed to reduce payments on wind and hail claims. The Oklahoma Attorney General has separately sued State Farm over similar allegations, while the Oklahoma Insurance Department says it is reviewing the newly released documents as part of an ongoing…

Tesla appears to have officially pulled the plug on one of its most ambitious home-energy products: the Tesla Solar Roof. Nearly a decade after Elon Musk unveiled the sleek glass roofing tiles as an alternative to traditional roofing materials with solar panels mounted on top, Tesla has stopped offering the Solar Roof through its website. The former Solar Roof page now redirects visitors to Tesla’s conventional solar panel offering. The change effectively brings an end to a product that generated enormous attention when it debuted in 2016 but never came close to achieving the installation volume Tesla originally envisioned. However,…

(Newton, Mass. – August 21, 2026) — METALCON will feature new onsite experiences and networking opportunities, along with a special community initiative, October 7–9 in Orlando, Florida. Celebrating its 35th year, the show will offer attendees the opportunity to explore where the industry has been—and where it is headed, while reinforcing its role as the gathering place for professionals who design, manufacture, specify and build with metal. From hands-on learning and emerging technologies to industry connections and experiences that recognize metal construction’s history and impact, METALCON will feature immersive activations from U. S. Steel and FRAMECAD, along with education, demonstrations…

Turnover in this trade gets blamed on pay more than anything else, but that’s rarely the real story. Good crew members and office staff usually leave because something else broke first.  Autonomy, trust, or just feeling like every day was another emergency to survive. The “Triple-Win” idea The concept worth borrowing here is simple to state and harder to practice: a decision is only a good one if you, your crew, and your company all come out ahead of it. Too many leadership calls quietly trade one of those against the other two- a schedule that works for the office…

TAMKO Titan XT and Atlas Pinnacle Pristine are unusually close competitors. Both are premium laminated fiberglass-asphalt architectural shingles, both carry UL 2218 Class 3 impact classifications, both have Class A fire ratings, both use an approximately 1½-inch-wide nailing zone, and both carry limited-lifetime warranties for qualifying single-family homeowners. Neither manufacturer publishes a guaranteed physical service-life figure, so “Lifetime” should be understood as a warranty term, not a promise that the roof will last for the homeowner’s lifetime. The biggest differences are straightforward: TAMKO Titan XT has the stronger wind proposition. Its high-wind limited warranty reaches 160 mph when its specific…

Every contractor who’s been in the trade long enough has a story about the job that went sideways- the measurement that was off, the flashing detail that got missed, the material order that showed up wrong. Mistakes aren’t a sign you’re bad at this job. How you handle them is what actually determines whether they cost you a customer or earn you a loyal one. Own it before they have to find it If you catch a mistake before the homeowner does, tell them. It feels counterintuitive.  Why bring up a problem they don’t know about yet? A contractor who…

Material prices go up. It’s not a question of if, only when and by how much. The contractors who protect their margins aren’t the ones who avoid price increases. They’re the ones who have a plan for handling them when they land in an email inbox. Start with a conversation, not an assumption Before you accept a new price sheet, ask your supplier what’s actually driving the increase. Is it raw materials, labor, freight, or all of the above? Understanding the “why” tells you whether there’s room to negotiate or whether the whole market is moving together. Negotiate before you…

Most roofing proposals look the same to a homeowner: a PDF with a price, some line items, and maybe a logo at the top. If you’re sending that same generic document to every prospect, you’re leaving your best sales tool on the table. A customized marketing page, sometimes called a personalized proposal page, is built for one homeowner specifically. It might use their name, their address, before photos of their actual roof, and messaging tailored to what they told you during the inspection. Instead of a static PDF, it feels like it was made for them, because it was. Why…