LEGAL // LICENSING & INSURANCE
Who we are, and what stands behind the work
Get Your Fence On LLC is licensed and insured, and we build in both Missouri and Kansas. This page exists so you can check that before you let anyone dig on your property, instead of taking a stranger's word for it. It also explains what those two words actually mean on a fence job, because they get used loosely by people who are counting on you not to ask.
We are licensed to perform fence installation in the areas we serve across Missouri and Kansas. Fencing is licensed locally rather than by a single statewide contractor board, so the permit and licence requirements that apply to your job depend on your city or county. We tell you which ones apply to your address before we start, and we do not ask you to pull a permit we should be pulling ourselves.
That local structure is worth understanding, because it is where most confusion comes from. A contractor who is properly licensed in one city is not automatically licensed in the next one over, and neither of you finds that out until an inspector does. Before we quote your job we check what your specific jurisdiction requires, and if the answer is that no licence or permit is needed for your fence, we will tell you that too rather than inventing paperwork to look thorough.
We carry general liability insurance covering the work we perform on your property. If you want to see it, ask and we will send our certificate of insurance. You are entitled to see it before work begins, from us or from anyone else you are considering, and a contractor who will not show you one has told you something important.
General liability is the policy that responds if we damage your property or someone else's while working. It is not the same as workers' compensation, which covers injury to the people doing the work, and neither is the same as your own homeowner's policy, which is not designed to absorb a contractor's mistake and whose insurer will generally look to the contractor's coverage first. Three different policies, three different questions. Ask about all three, of us and of anyone else bidding.
Do not take a logo on a truck as evidence. Ask for the certificate of insurance and read the dates on it, because a certificate is a snapshot of a policy on the day it was issued and an expired one proves nothing. The certificate names the insurer and the policy number, and you are entitled to call that insurer and confirm the policy is still in force. Ask to be listed as a certificate holder, which means the insurer notifies you directly if the policy lapses.
Check that the business is registered where it says it is. Get Your Fence On LLC is a Missouri limited liability company, and state business registries are public and free to search. Ask for the permit for your job once work is scheduled, and confirm the name on it matches the company you hired. If a contractor subcontracts your job to someone else, the subcontractor's insurance is the one that matters for their portion, and gaps between the two are exactly where uninsured losses live.
We install with our own crew and do not subcontract the work out. That is a scheduling and quality decision first, but it is also an insurance one: when one company holds the licence, the insurance and the tools, there is no seam between two policies for a loss to fall through. If you are comparing bids, ask each contractor plainly whether the people who show up will be their employees, and ask what happens to coverage if they are not.
A fence crew digs holes near buried utilities, works along property lines, and leaves something permanent behind. If a line gets hit, a post lands on the wrong side of a boundary, or someone is hurt on your property, the question of who carries the risk is answered by the paperwork, not by the handshake. Ours is in order and we are happy to prove it.
Fencing carries a particular kind of exposure that most home services do not. The work is on the boundary, which means it involves your neighbour whether or not your neighbour is part of the conversation, and it is below grade, which means it involves whatever the utility companies buried before you owned the place. Those two facts are behind almost every fence dispute we have ever been called to look at.
Before we dig, underground utilities are located through the state 811 service. We do not skip it, and we do not start before the locate is complete. It is free, it is required by law in both Missouri and Kansas, and it is the difference between a fence post and a repair bill.
Here is how it actually works, so nothing about the process surprises you. A locate request is filed for your address and the utility operators mark their buried lines with paint and flags in a standard colour code. The request has a waiting period before digging may begin, and the marks are valid for a limited time, after which the request has to be renewed. If a utility does not respond in the required window that is not permission to start digging, and we treat it as a reason to follow up rather than a reason to proceed. Private lines that run from your meter to a shed, a pool or a grill are not covered by the public locate, so tell us about anything you or a previous owner put in the ground.
We build where you tell us to build, and where the fence goes is ultimately your decision as the property owner. What we can tell you is that a plat map, a neighbour's recollection and an old fence line are three different things and they disagree more often than people expect. If there is any doubt about where your boundary runs, a current survey is the only document that settles it, and it costs far less than moving a finished fence.
If your fence is going on or near the line, talk to your neighbour before we start rather than after. It is not a legal requirement in most places, but a fence is permanent and a conversation is free.
If your property is in a subdivision with a homeowners association or recorded covenants, those rules often govern fence height, style, colour, material and setback, and they can be stricter than anything your city requires. Approval from an HOA is separate from a municipal permit and one does not substitute for the other. We can build to whatever specification your association requires, but obtaining that approval is the homeowner's to secure and it is worth starting early, because review committees frequently meet monthly.
Licensing and insurance cover what happens during the job. What happens after is covered by our written workmanship warranty, which is a separate document and is published in full on this site. Read it before you sign anything, including ours.
Call us first and call us early. Most of what goes wrong on a fence job is fixable quickly and gets worse with time and silence. If the issue is one our insurance should answer for, we will tell you so and give you the policy information you need rather than making you find it. If it is something we should simply come back and fix, we would rather do that than have you living with it.
We will not start digging before the locate is complete, we will not ask you to pull a permit that is ours to pull, and we will not tell you a fence is fine on a boundary we have not been shown documentation for. If any of that costs us a job to someone willing to move faster, that is the trade we are making on purpose.
Get Your Fence On LLC Phone: 573-355-2711 Email: Admin@GetYourFenceOn.com Web: getyourfenceon.com. Ask for the certificate of insurance, ask which permits your job needs, ask whether the crew are employees, and ask anything else you would rather have in writing. If we cannot answer a question about our own licensing or coverage in writing, that is an answer too.
Questions about this document? Call or text (573) 355-2711 or email Admin@GetYourFenceOn.com .