An Arizona owner on r/RoofingSales pays the crew that gets most of his work $110 a square for shingles and $200 for hot work, while other crews offer him $80 to $90. “I cannot remember the last callback I received,” he wrote in 2025, and to him that’s worth the extra money.
Owners describe finding good crews by word of mouth, through crews they already use, at the supply house and now and then on Facebook. Rates that owners and subs post for shingle labor run from $70 to $140 a square, and I found no government or industry survey to check them against. One owner who pays his crew the top rate per square in his city still walks its jobs.
To keep a crew from taking your customers, use a written sub agreement with a non-solicitation clause an attorney where you work has checked. Before the first roof, get proof of the crew’s own liability and workers’ comp. An owner on r/smallbusiness wrote in 2024 that the carrier counted underinsured subs as uninsured at audit and wanted three times his annual premium.
I run Zentora, a marketing company for roofers, and we haven’t measured anything about crews. I went through 119 posts and comments about sub crews, most on Reddit, plus federal rules and a few state statutes. The rules below are American, so check the legal parts with an attorney or CPA where you work.
Owners say good crews come through other crews and the supply house
A Louisville owner wrote on r/RoofingSales in 2025 that he met his crews at ABC and other distributors or through crews he already knew, then interviewed each crew chief. Another, on r/Roofing in 2023, had used the same sub for three years, and when he expanded, that sub brought him three more crews.
Of 44 Facebook posts I saved between September 29 and October 2, 2026, seven were crews looking for work in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and North Carolina, and four were companies looking for crews. Roofers Needed, a group I’m in with about 72,000 members, is used to recruit subs nationally. That’s four days of saved posts, and a post tells you nothing about how a crew roofs.
Whoever you find, ask who will be on your roof. “They’ll all say they have their own crew,” a general contractor wrote on r/GeneralContractor in September 2026, and he says they don’t. An owner on r/Roofing wrote in March 2026 that you may have to babysit a couple of crews before one works out.
Posted rates for shingle labor run from $70 to $140 a square
People in the trade posted these rates on Reddit and YouTube from 2024 to 2026:
- A roofer says bigger companies pay $70 a square.
- A sales manager says subs typically charge $75 to $125.
- One owner pays crew leaders $100 for one story at 9/12 and under, and $110 for two stories.
- A Michigan sub’s price sheet runs $100 to $120 with tear-off, rising with pitch.
- The Arizona owner above pays $110, $20 to $30 more than other crews offer him.
- A sub on Long Island cites $140.
Treat them as a range, since they span regions and years, and get your crew’s price sheet in writing, including what counts as a square. An owner on r/Roofing asked in 2024 whether it was normal for his installer to charge another square for every three bundles of starter. Labor is one line in your price, and How to Price a Roof: Price per Square, Overhead and Target Margin covers the rest.
A crew you pay well still needs its work checked
Two owners who rely on one main crew pay it above the going rate: the Arizona owner, and an owner on r/RoofingSales who makes his crew the highest paid per square in his city on his jobs. That second owner still double-checks the work, walks jobs with the crew, has it send pictures and keeps a job site manager. Another owner in the same thread says his crew slides back into old habits when he goes too long without checking on it.
Your sub agreement has to stop poaching, and local law decides whether it can
A Columbus, Ohio contractor warned in a Facebook group in October 2026 that without an airtight contract, subs will poach your customer and undercut you. A crew that shows up in its own marked trucks and hands out its own cards is collecting calls that could have come to you, a contractor on r/sweatystartup wrote in 2022, and he suggested magnetic decals saying the crew is subcontracted to your company.
A federal court stopped the FTC from enforcing its Non-Compete Rule in August 2024, and the FTC says the rule “is not in effect and it is not enforceable.” Whether a non-solicitation clause holds up is a matter of state or provincial law, which I haven’t researched, so have a local attorney write it.
Your insurance carrier can charge you for a sub whose coverage falls short
A contractor on r/GeneralContractor wrote in 2025 that a 1099 crew needs its own liability and workers’ comp, or your yearly comp audit will charge you comp on that crew. Florida’s statute makes a contractor who sublets work liable for comp on the sub’s workers unless the sub has its own coverage, and requires the contractor to get proof of that coverage.
Texas, where I work, makes comp optional for most private employers, though a contract or a government job can still require it. A sub and its workers aren’t your employees for comp there if the sub operates as an independent contractor under a written agreement taking on an employer’s responsibilities, so have an attorney check that wording. If you carry comp and hire a sub with no employees, Texas treats you as that sub’s employer for comp.
Texas law also says a certificate of insurance “may not convey a contractual right to a certificate holder.” My reading, which the statute doesn’t spell out, is that a sub’s certificate doesn’t make you an additional insured on his policy, so ask your agent what would. Roofing Workers’ Comp and General Liability: What It Costs and How Audits Work covers the audit itself.
A crew you train and direct can count as your employees
An owner on r/Construction asked in 2024 whether he could still use 1099 crews alongside W-2 employees, and the answer depends on which agency asks. The IRS sorts the evidence on a worker into three groups:
- Behavioral: whether you control, or have the right to control, what the worker does and how.
- Financial: who runs the business side, such as how the worker is paid and who supplies the tools.
- Relationship: written contracts, benefits, whether the work continues and whether it’s a key part of your business.
Treat an employee as a contractor with no reasonable basis, and the IRS says you may be held liable for employment taxes for that worker.
The Labor Department stopped applying its 2024 rule in its own investigations in May 2025, though it says workers can still sue under it. Its February 2026 proposal to replace that rule, still not final on October 3, 2026, gives a roofing example: for a crew member who started with no roofing skills and was trained by the company, the skill factor “weighs in favor of the individual being an employee.” State laws can use their own tests.
Get a W-9 before the first check, since without a correct taxpayer ID you must withhold 24 percent of what you pay. For payments made in 2026, a 1099-NEC is due by the following January 31 for any sub you paid $2,000 or more, up from $600. Roofing Contracts and 1099 Rules: What a New Owner Needs in Writing covers the rest of the paperwork.
A subcontract won’t cover you for workers you know are unauthorized
Federal law treats anyone who “uses a contract, subcontract, or exchange” to get the labor of a worker they know is unauthorized as having hired that worker unlawfully. You don’t complete I-9s for a sub’s workers, though USCIS reminds employers they still can’t hire someone they know isn’t authorized to work. The 2025 civil penalty for knowingly hiring or keeping an unauthorized worker runs from $716 to $5,724 per worker for a first offense, and up to $28,619 for a third or later one.
OSHA can cite you for a sub’s fall hazard on a job you control
Under its multi-employer citation policy, OSHA can cite a controlling employer, meaning one with general supervisory authority over the site, including the power to fix safety violations or make others fix them. That employer owes reasonable care, and OSHA expects it to inspect more often when it knows a sub has a history of non-compliance. Whether that’s you depends on the job and the authority your contract gives you.
Fall protection, required on roofing work 6 feet or more above a lower level, houses included, was OSHA’s most cited standard in fiscal 2025. Roofers died at work at a rate of 48.7 per 100,000 full-time-equivalent workers in 2024, against 3.3 for all workers. OSHA’s maximum penalty is $16,550 per serious violation and $165,514 per willful or repeated one.
Your own crew swaps the per-square price for an hourly wage
A Detroit owner who said immigration fears and arrests had taken most of the workers in his area wrote on r/Roofing in July 2025 that he was building his own crew again, at $40 an hour for shinglers and $25 for tear-off. An owner on r/RoofingSales wrote in February 2026 that with enforcement keeping workers home, the ones still willing to work were charging double per square. That’s two owners in two markets, and I found no data on how far enforcement has moved roofing labor overall.
The median roofer on a payroll earned $26.65 an hour in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A contractor commenting on YouTube in 2026 said workers’ comp costs make roofers hard to hire as employees in Minnesota, which is why roofers there are all subs. An owner on r/sweatystartup gives his employees a path from crew lead at six months to project manager at two years, with a pay bump at each step.
Check the paperwork before the first roof and the work after every one
Before a new crew’s first roof, check four things:
- Who will be on the roof. Meet the crew chief and ask whether the crew does the work itself.
- Its coverage. Collect its liability and comp certificates and check the comp with your state or province. In Texas, the Department of Insurance points to NCCI’s TXCOMP search and a state list of non-subscribers.
- A W-9, before the first payment.
- A signed agreement with the price per square and what it includes, who supplies the tools, the employer-responsibility language if you work in Texas, and a non-solicitation clause your attorney has written.
After every job, walk the roof yourself or get the crew’s photos.
A new crew needs signed jobs to stay busy, so if you’re adding crews because you expect more work, run the free Google Maps heatmap first. Pick your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.