Origin story

Built after watching neighbors get burned

The directory started in Moses Lake, Washington, where Gorden Web Design works with small businesses and homeowners across Central Washington. Douglas Gorden Jr kept hearing the same story from neighbors and clients. A homeowner paid a deposit to a contractor who seemed legitimate, work never started, and the phone number stopped working. In a small town, that loss carries further. The money is gone, the project stalls before winter, and there is no office to visit to sort it out.

Rural Washington makes this kind of fraud easier. Homeowners outside the metro areas have fewer contractors to choose from, public license records are hard to read, and door-to-door operators know it. Some take deposits without an active license. Others work under someone else’s number or let bond coverage lapse. By the time a homeowner checks, the job money has moved on.

We built ContractorPilot to close that gap. Gorden Web Design maintains the directory from Washington state, starting with the towns we know firsthand, including Moses Lake, Wenatchee, Spokane, the Tri-Cities, Yakima, Ellensburg, and Tonasket. Every listing was added by the operator after verification. There are no user-submitted profiles and no paid placement. If a contractor is listed, we confirmed the license ourselves.

Verification

How we verify

Verification is the whole point of this directory. Verified means license, bond, and insurance were independently confirmed by us, not claimed by the contractor on a signup form. We check public state records and contact carriers directly, and we recheck listings on a schedule so lapsed coverage gets caught. All contractor data comes from publicly available state records, including Department of Labor and Industries records, business filings, and other public records.

1. License lookup. We look up every contractor with the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, using license records published through data.wa.gov along with related business filings and public records. We confirm the license is active, in the correct trade, and tied to the business actually doing the work.
2. Bond verification. We confirm the surety bond is current and matches the license on file. A bond is what gives a homeowner a path to recovery if a contractor breaks the rules, so a lapsed or mismatched bond fails verification.
3. Insurance confirmation. We call the insurance carrier directly to confirm active coverage. We do not accept a certificate PDF at face value, because certificates can be edited or canceled after issue. If the carrier cannot confirm coverage, the contractor is not listed.

Contractors cannot pay to skip these steps, and homeowners do not need an account to see the result. A listing appears only after all three checks pass, and it comes down if any of them fail on recheck.

What we are not

What we are not

We are not a lead auction. We do not sell your project to five contractors and let them bid for your phone number. We are not a pay-per-click platform, not a referral network or MLM setup, and not an AI-powered matching service. There is no bidding, no placement fee, and no algorithm deciding who you see.

We verify licenses and put real contractors in front of real homeowners. That is the full business model. It serves homeowners looking for contractors in Central and Eastern Washington and verified contractors who want a fair alternative to lead-auction platforms.

The team

One person, fully accountable

ContractorPilot is run by Douglas Gorden Jr, owner of Gorden Web Design, a one-person web studio based in Moses Lake, Washington. We build and maintain the directory ourselves, including the verification pipeline, the listings, and the site, drawing on the Gorden Web Design network of collaborators for design and technical work as needed. There is no call center and no sales team. That small size is deliberate. It keeps costs down, keeps every listing under direct review, and keeps support with the person who did the verification. The studio work behind the directory, including other web design and small-business projects, lives at Gorden Web Design, and directory support reaches the same desk that maintains the records.

Contact

How to reach us

We answer directory questions, corrections, and verification requests directly. For contractors, include the business name and WA L&I license number so we can look up the record.