First congrats on your new venture, I hope it will be rewarding as well as successful.

To answer your first question, your are required to have insurance no matter what. This doesn’t matter if you do work for a public entity or a private one. Most states I do believe require you to get insurance even before you get a contractors license.

For cheaper insurance for the demolition industry will be hard, call your own insurance company first and go for there. When you talk to a potential insurance company explain what kind of demolition you will be performing, even if it is 85% select and 15% full building demolition. This way they get an idea of what demolition you will be doing and they can write in some provisions, like you can not perform full building demolition on a building more then 3 stories high, etc.

On the phone estimate side, I never give a phone estimate over the phone. Most of the time they will never cal you back and they are just looking for a price. They are just calling everyone in the yellow pages.

I tell them that you would be interested and would like to take a look at the project. If they are serious and interested they will give you the information, if not move on, to me it’s not worth the time. You can not give a good estimate over the phone no matter what. Why? Because do you know all the regulations in that city? Has the owner performed a good faith survey? Can I get my truck/equipment in there? ETC.

These are questions that most of the time you want to research before pulling a number out of your ass.

Good luck and let us know if you have any more questions, we are here to help.