Serving Salt Lake City, UT & Nearby Areas
(385) 438-3591
Serving Salt Lake City, UT & Nearby Areas
(385) 438-3591
Look them up yourself through the Utah Division of Professional Licensing, using the license number they give you or their company name. It takes about two minutes and it is free. Check that the license is active, that it covers roofing, that the name matches the company on your bid, and whether there is any disciplinary history. My own view is that a license is do not pass go, not proof of skill, so treat it as the floor rather than the finish line.
Run the license number through the state's contractor lookup before anyone gets on your roof.
Status, scope, and disciplinary history are public, so the worst outcomes are screened out for free.
Confirm the licensed name matches the company on your bid, then verify insurance separately.
Utah publishes every roofer's license, complaints and all. Looking yours up takes two minutes and it is the cheapest protection you will ever buy.
Mattie Tueller, Master Roofing
This is the single cheapest piece of protection available to you. It happens before anybody climbs anything.
If a company cannot produce a number, or the number does not resolve, that is the end of the conversation. There is no explanation for it that ends well for you.
Finding the license is the easy part. Reading it is where the value is.
Here is where I want to be straight with you rather than sell you on the check I just told you to run.
An active Utah roofing license proves three things: someone applied, someone paid. Nobody has taken it away from them. That is really useful. That's because it screens out the worst actors and gives you a lever if things go wrong.
What it does not prove is competence. The licensing path in this state is not demanding. That's an active license and a deep understanding of roofing assemblies are entirely different achievements that happen to share a piece of paper. Just how low that bar sits is its own subject, covered in the Utah roofing codes cluster.
The practical consequence: use the license as a filter, not as a decision. It eliminates candidates. It does not select one. Everything that actually separates a good roof from a bad one, meaning who does the labor, whether anyone checks the work. What is in the bid, sits downstream of the license and has to be asked about directly.
The license takes two minutes, and these three take about fifteen more. Together they are most of your protection.
Once those clear, the remaining work is comparing what is actually in each bid. The questions that surface that are laid out in what to ask before you hire a roofing company.
I hand out my license number before anybody asks for it. I would really rather you look it up than take my word for anything. That is not modesty. It is that verification is the one part of hiring a roofer that does not require you to know anything about roofing.
But I want to be honest about what you are confirming when you do it. In Utah a roofing license is closer to a permission slip than a credential. The state does not put much between wanting to be a roofer and being one. So an active license tells you that someone cleared a low bar and has stayed out of trouble since. That is worth knowing. It is not the same as evidence they can build your roof.
Here is the fair part: that is less a failure of the licensing board than a system built for a simpler trade than roofing has become. Plenty of excellent roofers hold nothing beyond the basic license. Plenty of bad ones hold exactly the same thing.
So at Master Roofing we treat the license as the floor and the rest of the vetting as the actual work. Run the lookup anyway, and run it first. Two minutes, no cost. It clears the worst outcomes off your list before you spend any energy comparing the rest.
Building codes, permit rules, and licensing requirements change over time, and they differ by city and county across Utah. Verify current requirements with your local building department before relying on anything here, and work with a licensed contractor who knows the rules in your jurisdiction.
This article is general information about Utah roofs, not an assessment of yours. Every roof is different, and no article can tell you what is actually happening on your specific house. Have a licensed roofing contractor look at it in person before you act on anything here.
Stop and ask why before you go further. Sometimes there is a real explanation, such as a parent entity or a recent name change. The company can document it. Sometimes it means the person selling you a roof is operating under someone else's license. That leaves you with no clear party to hold responsible. The name on your contract is the name that needs to be licensed.
Utah sets thresholds where licensing requirements kick in, and small handyman-scale work can fall below them. The practical issue is that anyone doing work on the system that keeps water out of your house should be insured for it regardless of the dollar amount. If they are not licensed, the more important question becomes whether they carry coverage.
They are different things and both are worth asking about. Licensing is state permission to do the work. Bonding is a financial guarantee that pays out in specific failure scenarios. Neither one substitutes for liability insurance. That's the coverage that actually responds if your house is damaged during the job.
The state record shows formal disciplinary actions, which is the most serious tier. For the rest, check the Better Business Bureau, court records in your county. Reviews across more than one platform. Look for repeated themes rather than individual bad reviews, since patterns are meaningful and one unhappy customer usually is not.
It is worth one more look if months passed between signing and scheduling, since licenses expire on their own cycle. It takes the same two minutes. The situation you are avoiding is a permit problem or an insurance gap discovered after the old roof is already off your house.
We're here to see what's going on with your roof. A real assessment starts with your history and your attic, not a number from the driveway. You'll get a straight answer about what's up there, what it needs, and what it costs. Sometimes the honest answer is: your roof looks great.