What a supply house credit application asks for, what the personal guarantee really means, how ABC Supply, SRS, QXO, White Cap, and the big-box pro programs compare, and the few moves that actually get you better pricing.
Short answer first. Open a credit account at one specialty distributor for your core trade, one lumberyard or general supply house for everything else, and a free big-box pro account for the 6 a.m. emergency run. Run as much volume as you can through as few accounts as you can, pay inside terms every single time, and ask for a job quote on anything big instead of taking the counter price. That is most of what "contractor pricing" really is. The rest is knowing what the credit application is going to ask for, what you are signing when you sign the personal guarantee, and what your supplier can do to your customer's house if a bill goes unpaid.
Here is how each piece works, with the details pulled from the suppliers' own sites as of early October 2026.
The first thing to understand about a supply house is that the price on the shelf is not your price. Distributors price by account. Two roofers buying the same bundle at the same branch on the same morning can pay two different numbers, because the price is tied to how much each one buys, what they buy, and how they pay.
That is not a secret. It is the business model. ABC Supply says about 99 percent of its sales go to professionals, and its contractor app advertises "real-time access to your preferred pricing." Preferred pricing is the whole game. Your job is to give the supplier reasons to make yours better.
The math is worth doing once. Say a typical reroof carries $9,000 in materials and you do 40 a year. That is $360,000 of materials. Two points better pricing is $7,200 a year that lands straight on the bottom line, for doing nothing different on the roof.
Most residential contractors need three accounts, not ten.
Here is how the big names describe themselves.
| Supplier | What they sell | Size, by their own numbers | Contractor app or portal |
|---|---|---|---|
| ABC Supply | Roofing, siding, gutters, windows and doors, plus tools | 1,000+ locations in the U.S. and Canada, privately held | myABCsupply |
| SRS Distribution | Specialty trade distribution, roofing first | 1,250+ locations with GMS, all 50 states | Roof Hub |
| QXO (formerly Beacon) | Roofing supply, the former Beacon Roofing Supply | 1,150 locations company-wide | QXO app, replacing PRO+ |
| White Cap | Concrete accessories, tools, fasteners, building materials, waterproofing, safety | About 550 branches in North America | Online credit application |
| Builders FirstSource | Lumber, sheet goods, trusses, wall panels, windows, doors, millwork | About 565 locations in 43 states | myBLDR |
| 84 Lumber | Lumber and building materials for pros and do-it-yourselfers | 320 facilities in 34 states, privately held | Credit through your rep or local store |
A few things worth knowing about each.
ABC Supply was founded by Ken and Diane Hendricks and is still privately held. Its myABCsupply app does 24/7 ordering, delivery tracking with delivery photos, your account pricing, statements, and online invoice payment, and it is available in Spanish and Polish, which matters if your foreman does the ordering.
SRS Distribution has been owned by The Home Depot since June 2024, and Home Depot put GMS underneath SRS in September 2025. Home Depot's May 2026 numbers put SRS at more than 1,250 locations across all 50 states and five Canadian provinces, a count that includes the GMS branches. SRS's Roof Hub app lets you order, track the delivery truck by GPS, see delivery photo verification, check product availability, and pull invoice history from your phone.
Beacon is now QXO. QXO closed its roughly $11 billion purchase of Beacon Roofing Supply on April 29, 2025, and QXO's own site now says "Beacon is now part of QXO" and that "the PRO+ program name is going away," with online ordering, project management, and rewards tracking moving to QXO.com and the QXO app. If your branch still says Beacon on the sign, it is the same branch and the same people. The 1,150 location count is QXO company-wide, so do not read it as a roofing-only number.
White Cap is a different animal from the roofing distributors. It sells concrete accessories and chemicals, tools and equipment, building materials and fasteners, erosion and waterproofing products, and safety products across about 550 branches. If you pour flatwork, set footings, or burn through anchors and fasteners, it belongs on the list.
Builders FirstSource and 84 Lumber are the lumberyard side. Builders FirstSource reports about 565 locations in 43 states, builds roof and floor trusses, wall panels, and millwork itself, and its myBLDR portal handles online estimates, ordering, delivery status, and job scheduling. 84 Lumber runs 320 facilities in 34 states, is privately held, and sells to both contractors and do-it-yourselfers. You apply for a commercial credit account through your sales rep or your local store.
Do not overlook the regionals. VendorRack also lists Lansing Building Products, Richards Building Supply, US LBM, Foundation Building Materials, and ProSource Wholesale. A strong local house where the counter guy knows your name and your jobs can beat a national on service any day of the week.
Both are free. Both are worth having for the emergency run. Neither replaces a real supply house on a full roof or a framing package.
The Home Depot's Pro Xtra is free to join. Home Depot's own store pages describe volume pricing on orders of $2,500 or more, paint savings of 10 percent once you spend $1,000, 15 percent at $3,500, and 20 percent at $6,500, and an Elite tier after $25,000 of spending that brings preferred pricing. Home Depot also lists trade credit accounts and purchase history tracking.
Lowe's version is MyLowe's Pro Rewards, the program formerly called MVPs Pro Rewards. It is a free business account that does not require a credit card. Lowe's lists points at 1 to 1.5 per dollar depending on tier, with 100 points worth $1, a Member Volume Discount on eligible orders through a quote of $2,000 or more, and a 20 percent paint discount once your annual qualifying paint spend reaches $3,000. Lowe's business credit cards add 5 percent off, subject to credit approval, but Lowe's says that discount cannot be combined with the Member Volume Discount, Contractor Pack, or Buy in Bulk pricing. On a big quoted order, the two do not stack. Pick the bigger one.
Terms come after a credit application. Until then you are buying cash or COD, and ABC Supply even keeps a separate COD application for exactly that. The credit application asks for more than most guys expect.
ABC Supply says to contact your local branch for its online credit application or its COD application. The printable credit application posted on ABC's site asks for:
The same form spells out a monthly late payment charge of 1.5 percent. QXO's online application promises the application is sent immediately and processed within 24 hours.
Build the packet once and keep it in a folder: your EIN, license number, bank contact, a realistic number for monthly purchases, and three trade references. If you are new and nobody has given you terms yet, start with the rental yard, the paint store, or the equipment dealer. If you still do not have three, open a COD account, buy steady for a few months, and apply again.
Read this part twice. A personal guarantee means that if your company does not pay the supplier, you do, personally. Your LLC does not protect you from a debt you personally guaranteed. That is the whole point of the guarantee.
For a young company with thin credit, signing one is often the price of getting terms at all, and ABC's own form says it will speed things up. Just sign it with your eyes open. Keep the account current, keep the limit sized to what you actually buy, and once you have a year of clean payment history, it costs nothing to ask your credit manager whether they will drop it.
Terms are the best free money in the trades. A supplier that gives you net 30 is lending you the materials for a month at zero interest. Used right, that means the roof is on and the homeowner has paid before the supplier's bill is due.
Read how your terms are written. "Due 30 days from the invoice" and "due on a set day of the following month" are two different calendars, and it matters when you are timing a deposit.
The right way to use terms is simple. Collect a deposit before you order, bill progress payments as the work moves, and pay the supplier out of that job's money. Our guide to getting paid faster walks through deposits and progress billing that keep you ahead of your supplier's due date.
The wrong way is using next week's deposit to pay for last month's materials. That works right up until a slow month, and then every bill is late at once.
Late is expensive. A 1.5 percent monthly late charge, like the one on ABC's form, is 18 percent a year. That is credit card money.
If your supplier ever offers a prompt-pay discount like 2/10 net 30, meaning 2 percent off if you pay within ten days, take it whenever the cash is there. You are earning 2 percent for paying 20 days early, which works out to roughly 37 percent a year. Nothing else in your business pays like that.
One more thing to set up right on day one: sales tax. Whether you pay tax on materials at the counter or collect it from the homeowner depends on your state and how your contracts are written. Ask your CPA before you hand any supplier a resale or exemption certificate. Our bookkeeping guide covers coding every materials invoice to a job so you can see it.
No rep is going to hand you a better price because you asked nicely. Here is what moves it.
The apps have gotten good, and they solve the fight every roofer has had at least once: the material that "was delivered" and is nowhere on the job.
ABC's myABCsupply and SRS's Roof Hub both show delivery photos, and Roof Hub adds GPS tracking on the truck. QXO's app covers ordering, account management, delivery tracking, and bill pay. Builders FirstSource's myBLDR covers estimates, orders, delivery status, and job scheduling. SRS also built a Roof Hub Estimator that builds good, better, best pricing and converts an estimate into an order with one click.
Use the photo the minute the drop lands. Wrong color, short a pallet, dropped on the wrong side of the driveway, all of it is a five-minute call on delivery day and a lost morning on tear-off day.
Returns are the other half. Over-ordering is a real cost, not a safety net. Before you need it, ask your branch what its return window is and whether it charges a restocking fee, then get unopened material back fast. Leftover bundles sitting in your shop are money you already spent.
This is the part a lot of contractors learn the hard way. Under mechanics lien laws, material suppliers generally have lien rights against the property they deliver to, even though their deal is with you and not the homeowner. If you do not pay the supply house, it can go after your customer's house.
That is why homeowners sometimes get a preliminary notice in the mail from a supplier they have never heard of. In California, for example, a supplier protects its full lien rights by sending that notice within 20 days of first furnishing materials to the job. Tell your customer at signing that it is normal and expected, so it reads as paperwork instead of a threat.
On bigger jobs, collect a lien waiver from the supplier when you pay for that job's materials, and hand it to the homeowner with your own final waiver. Our guide to lien waivers covers the conditional and unconditional versions and when to use each.
Paying a supplier late does not just cost you a late fee. It puts your customer's title at risk, and that is the fastest way there is to lose a referral.
If you are starting from scratch or cleaning up a mess, here is the whole thing.
That is it. No secret handshake, no special trade association card. Volume, clean payments, and a quote on the big ones.
If you are not sure which branch in your area is worth it, ask in the Contractor Coalition. 13,900+ residential contractors have opinions about their supply houses. And when you are ready to compare suppliers side by side, browse the Supply & Materials vendors on VendorRack.
Browse VendorRack to compare the roofing distributors, lumberyards, and building supply houses that serve residential contractors, with reviews from real contractors.
Quick answers to what contractors ask us most about supply house accounts.
No fluff and no sales pitches. Just the tools, software, and services worth your money, tested by contractors like you.
Browse the roofing distributors, lumberyards, and building supply houses that serve residential contractors, all in one place, all vetted by the trades.
The directory where residential contractors find the tools, software, and services they actually trust.
