Class code 0042: landscape gardening and drivers

By Adrian Middleton, Sword & Shield, PLLC · Updated Saturday, October 24, 2026

What code 0042 covers

• Landscape installation: planting trees, shrubs and sod; grading and soil preparation; installation of irrigation, drainage, retaining walls, pavers and hardscape by the landscape crew.
• Land clearing and site preparation for landscaping.
• Tree planting and removal performed as part of landscape work.
• Crew laborers and drivers.

What it does not cover

• Lawn maintenance: mowing, edging, trimming, fertilizing and routine bed care (9102), where records separate it.
• Tree trimming and removal as a standalone service, separately classified.
• Pool and spa construction, separately classified.
• Clerical and outside sales (8810, 8742) for employees who do nothing else.

How the Division assigns it on a stop-work order

On a stop-work order worksheet, the investigator assigns a class code to each uninsured worker for each period from two sources: the employer's records (payroll by job, job descriptions, invoices, permits) and the investigator's own observation on the jobsite. With no records, Rule 69L-6.028 directs the Department to impute payroll at the highest-rated class code the investigator observed. Skid steers, pallets of sod, paver stacks and irrigation pipe are recorded as 0042, which Rule 69L-6.021 treats as construction. A crew mowing commercial properties is 9102. A company that does both without payroll separated by operation gets 0042 for everyone, and with it the one-employee coverage rule and the three-officer exemption limit. Under the NCCI basic manual the governing class is the one with the most payroll, and an employee's payroll is assigned to a single code unless the records separate it by operation; interchange-of-labor splits require contemporaneous payroll records, not after-the-fact estimates. Getting a worker moved from code 0042 to a lower-rated code is a records argument, made line by line on Form DFS-F4-1595.

Misclassification patterns the investigator looks for

• A landscape company believing it is below the four-employee threshold while installing sod, pavers or irrigation: that is construction, and one employee is enough (s. 440.02(20)(b)2).
• Mowing crews that also install: all payroll to 0042 without a contemporaneous split.
• Crews paid cash per job: employees under s. 440.02(18)(c) if the work is construction, and under the six-factor test in s. 440.02(18)(d)1 if it is not. In either case the burden is on the company.
• Owners with non-construction exemptions while the company does installation: the construction limits and the $50 fee apply, and a certificate issued as non-construction may not satisfy the Division for a construction operation.

Clerical (8810) and outside sales (8742) are standard exception codes. A worker's payroll goes there only if their duties are exclusively clerical or sales and the records show it. An office manager who also runs materials to the jobsite, or an owner who sells jobs and swings a hammer, is assigned to the governing construction class for all of their payroll. This is the single most common reclassification on a penalty worksheet.

The rate

Florida's approved manual rate for this code is filed by NCCI and approved by the Office of Insurance Regulation effective each January 1. The Department's worksheet uses the rate in effect for each period of non-compliance, so a 24-month lookback can span three rate years. Rates are not stated on this page because they change; your agent, carrier or the current NCCI Florida rate pages have the figure. The free calculator takes the rate as an input.

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