Class code 0042 and friends: how your crew gets rated

The honest answer is that your workers’ comp premium is a rate times your payroll, and the class code is the rate. Everything else on the workers compensation policy is detail. A landscape crew rated under 0042 and the same crew rated under an excavation code will pay very different premiums for the same six people, and the difference is decided by how the work is described, how the payroll is recorded, and who on the crew does what. Here’s how the codes get assigned, where the payroll split rules bite, and why a landscaper who plows is the hardest account in our trades to rate cleanly.

The codes that show up in our trades

Workers’ comp classifications come from NCCI, the rating bureau Colorado uses. NCCI Colorado State Advisory Forum 2025; Colorado DOI Order O-26-010 (Oct. 27, 2025) Each code describes a kind of work and carries a rate, and the carrier assigns the codes to your policy based on what your business does. The five that cover almost everyone we insure:

That fact carries a verify badge because the snow code, 9402, comes from reproductions of the NCCI scope rather than from the bureau’s own look-up, which sits behind a login. The landscaping, excavation, and tree codes are confirmed. If you get a different code on your quote than the one you expected, ask us why before you assume it’s wrong; there’s usually a reason in how the operation was described.

The words “& Drivers” in the code name matter. A code that includes drivers puts your truck drivers in the same class as the crew they haul, rather than in a separate trucking classification. On a landscape outfit that’s almost always what you want.

The governing class

Every workers’ comp policy has a governing classification. It’s the basic class that carries the most payroll, not counting the standard exceptions we’ll get to. The governing class describes what your business primarily is, in the carrier’s eyes, and it sets the frame for every other code on the policy.

That sounds like paperwork until you look at a real crew. Say you run a hardscape and paver operation out of Castle Rock. Half your payroll is on paver patios and small retaining walls on expansive clay, which typically lands in 0042. A third is a mowing route, which typically lands in 9102. The rest is a foreman on a mid-size excavator cutting driveways, which may read as 6217. Your governing class is 0042, because that’s where the most payroll is. The other two codes still show up on the policy with their own payroll and their own rate. Nothing about the governing class makes the excavation payroll cheaper; it just tells the carrier what kind of business is asking.

Where the governing class does real work is on the edges. A carrier that writes landscaping but not excavation will look at the governing class first. And when an auditor can’t decide where a stray task belongs, the governing class is the default.

Payroll splits: the rule and the catch

Most crews in our trades do more than one kind of work, so the question every owner asks is whether payroll can be split between codes. The answer under NCCI rules is yes, with a condition that most contractors fail.

The condition is records. Payroll for an employee who works in more than one classification can be divided between those classifications only if your payroll records show the actual wages or hours for each kind of work. Not an estimate. Not a percentage you agreed on with your old agent. Timesheets, job-cost reports, or a payroll system that codes hours by task.

Without those records, the whole payroll for that employee typically goes to the highest-rated classification that applies to them. That’s the catch, and it’s where the money goes at audit. A laborer who mostly mows but spends two days a month on the excavator has to be documented as mostly mowing, or the auditor is entitled to put all of his payroll in whichever of the two codes carries the higher rate, which in our experience is usually the excavation code. Same crew, same year, much bigger bill, and the audit article shows how that conversation goes.

Two more rules from the same family:

• One employee, one primary code, per task. You don’t split an hour. The timesheet says what the person was doing that hour and the payroll follows.
• Some things don’t split at all. Under most NCCI rules, if an operation is included in the description of a classification, you can’t carve it out into a cheaper one. The driving that goes with landscape gardening is inside 0042 because the code says “& Drivers.” Trying to move it to a trucking code is a reclassification argument you’ll usually lose.

Standard exceptions

A few kinds of work are rated separately no matter what your governing class is, because they carry the same risk in every business. NCCI calls them standard exceptions. The two that matter for a dirt or landscape outfit are clerical office employees and outside salespersons.

Clerical means someone whose work is in an office, away from the crew and the yard, doing books and estimates and phones. The moment that person drives a truck to a job or runs a string trimmer on a busy Friday, they typically lose the clerical classification for the whole period, not just the afternoon. Outside sales works the same way: someone who bids jobs and visits sites but doesn’t do the work.

The reason this matters is premium. The clerical and sales rates are much lower than any field code. Owners are tempted to describe a working foreman as an estimator, and auditors are used to seeing it. If the estimator’s truck has a Boss blade on it in January, the auditor is going to ask who was driving.

Owners and family

Owners and officers get their own treatment. In Colorado, sole proprietors and partners are generally not covered unless they elect in, and corporate officers and LLC members may be able to elect out under the state’s rules. In Colorado, a corporate officer or LLC member who owns at least ten percent of the corporation or company and controls, supervises, or manages its business affairs may elect to reject workers' compensation coverage by written notice on a Division-approved form sent by certified mail to the insurer (C.R.S. 8-41-202), while a working general partner or sole proprietor is not covered unless they elect to be included by endorsement as an employee of the insured (C.R.S. 8-40-302(5)(b)). (C.R.S. 8-41-202(1), (4); 8-40-302(5)(b)) Check the current rules with the Division of Workers’ Compensation before you decide. If an owner is included, the carrier typically rates their payroll at a set figure, not at what they actually paid themselves, and assigns it to the class of the work they do. An owner who runs the John Deere 772GP grader is rated as a grader operator, not as an executive, however the org chart reads.

Family members are simply employees, for both the coverage requirement and the rating.

Your spouse doing books is clerical. Your son on the sod crew is 0042. The one-employee article covers why family and part-time status don’t get anyone out of the policy.

The seasonal-combo problem

Now put all of that on a landscaper who plows.

From April to October, most of the payroll is in 0042 and 9102. From November to March, the same people are driving plow trucks and running a skid steer with a pusher box on commercial lots, which typically rates under 9402 if it’s stand-alone snow work. The crew didn’t change. The code did.

Three things go wrong on that account, in our experience.

The split doesn’t exist. The owner estimated all payroll as landscaping because that’s what the business is called. At audit, the winter payroll gets moved to the snow code, the premium goes up, and the owner feels ambushed by a bill for work he did months ago.

The records don’t support it. The owner knew about the snow code and told the carrier to split it, but the timesheets say “labor” all year. Without task-level records, the auditor can put the whole year’s payroll for each person in whichever applicable code carries the higher rate. Which code that is depends on the carrier’s rates for those codes in Colorado, and it can go either way.

The carrier doesn’t write both. Some carriers are comfortable with landscaping and not with commercial snow, or the reverse. A policy written as a landscaping account with snow left out of the description is a policy the carrier can argue about after a plow truck injury. The seasonal combo article is about that whole gap, and this is the workers’ comp piece of it.

The fix isn’t complicated. Describe both operations at the start. Estimate payroll by season and by code. Keep timesheets that say “plow” in January and “sod” in June. Then the split holds at audit, and the premium tracks the actual work.

Common reclassifications

NCCI runs a class inspection program that reclassifies policies where the description doesn’t match the operation, and its published results say the trades with mixed work get moved the most. In our trades, the patterns look like this:

Every one of those is a description problem before it’s a premium problem. The class code follows the work; the audit just catches up. The same description drives the classification on your general liability policy, so a fix on one usually means a fix on both.

What to check on your own policy

Pull the declarations page and find the classification schedule. It lists each code, a short description, and the estimated payroll under it. Then ask three questions. Does the governing class describe what you actually do? Is there a code for every operation, including the winter one? And could you prove the payroll split with the records you keep today?

If the answer to the third one is no, that’s the thing to fix before renewal, not after the audit. It’s also the first thing we mark up in a policy review for any landscaping contractor who plows, and it comes up on tree service accounts almost as often. A crew in Denver that does maintenance, installs, and a plow route is three codes, and it should look like three codes on the page.

The premium drivers behind all of this, payroll and codes included, are in the landscaping insurance cost article. The short version: the code is the rate, the payroll is the base, and the records are what let you keep the two honest.

Serving businesses located in Colorado. Coverage is determined by the policy language and the carrier.