Supply-house credit, the fleet and the shelf: the personal guarantee, the supplier's preliminary notice on your customer's door, the number on the van, and use tax on what you pull from stock
In one paragraph
Three ordinary vendors shape a growing shop more than any customer does: the supply house that extends credit, the vehicles that carry the crew, and the shelf of stock in the yard. Each has a rule you should know before you sign anything. The supply-house credit application almost always contains a personal guarantee, and the supply house protects itself on every job by serving a preliminary notice on your customer within 20 days, which is lawful, ordinary, and alarming to a homeowner who has not been warned. Every commercially registered vehicle must carry your business name and license number in three-quarter-inch type, and heavier trucks bring CHP oversight. And materials pulled from stock for a job carry use tax if you did not pay tax when you bought them. This lesson is short on law and long on practice: how to read the credit terms, what to tell customers about supplier notices, how to letter the van, and how to keep the shelf from becoming an audit.
The rule
A material supplier who wants lien rights must give preliminary notice to the owner, the direct contractor and any lender within 20 days of first furnishing (Civil Code 8200(a), 8204(a)), and one notice covers all later deliveries to the job (8206(a)); every vehicle used in the business for which a commercial registration fee is paid must display the business name and license number in type at least 72 points or three-quarters of an inch (B&P 7029.6); CHP regulates the operation of motortrucks of three or more axles over 10,000 pounds GVWR and commercial vehicles of 26,001 pounds or more (Vehicle Code 34500); and a construction contractor, as the consumer of the materials it installs, owes use tax on items removed from inventory and used in California if tax was not paid at purchase (CDTFA).
Why it matters
The first supplier lien threat, the first CHP roadside inspection and the first sales tax audit each arrive as a surprise to a contractor who did not know the rule existed, and each is avoidable with one conversation and one habit. The credit application you sign in year one binds you personally in year five; the preliminary notice your supplier sends is the phone call from your best customer asking why a company they never heard of is 'putting a lien on my house'; the van without a number is a citation waiting at the permit counter. None of it is hard. All of it is worth an hour before the second truck arrives.