On most commercial and multi-family roofs, trusses win. Installed cost is usually lower, the schedule is weeks shorter, and the engineering comes stamped from the plant. Stick framing wins on complex custom roofs, remodel and match-existing work, sites a crane can't serve, and small scopes where truss lead time costs more than it saves. Here's how we make the call — and why, in mid-October, the calendar matters as much as the plans.
The cost math
A truss package costs more as material than a pile of rafter stock. It wins anyway because it deletes labor: no rafter cutting, no ridge beams, no separate ceiling joists, no field engineering, and no structural engineer's fee for the roof design — the truss plant's stamp covers it. On a straightforward roof, the installed truss number comes in meaningfully under stick, and the more repetitive the building, the wider the gap. A 48-unit building with one truss profile repeated a hundred times is where trusses look their best.
The gap narrows with complexity. A roof with a dozen planes, vaults, and dormers turns into a truss package full of one-off girders and field-framed infill anyway — at that point you're paying truss lead times to still hand-frame half the roof, and stick starts to compete.
Speed is the real separator
A crane and an experienced crew will set the trusses on a good-sized multi-family roof in days. The same roof stick-framed is weeks of cutting and hand-framing. Right now that difference isn't a preference — it's whether the building is dried-in before the snow flies or your crews spend December shoveling decks. Roof speed drives everything behind it: sheathing, weather barrier, and every interior trade waiting on a dry building. We walked through that sequencing in our multi-family framing schedule post.
Where stick framing wins
- Complex custom roofs. Cathedral spaces, curved or layered planes, one-off architectural roofs — a good stick framer builds what a truss plant can't quote cleanly.
- Remodels and additions. Matching existing pitches and tying into fifty-year-old framing is hand work.
- Crane access. Tight infill lots, overhead power, soft ground in shoulder season — if the crane can't set up, the trusses can't fly.
- Late design changes. A truss package is frozen the day you release shop drawings. Stick framing absorbs a moved wall; a truss order doesn't.
- Small scopes. On a small roof, lead time plus crane mobilization can outweigh every dollar the trusses save.
Lead times — the October problem
Truss plants in our region typically run two to six weeks from approved shop drawings to delivery, and the back half of that range shows up exactly when everyone is racing to dry-in at once — which is every fall, including this one. The trap isn't the plant; it's the approval loop. Shop drawings sitting in an architect's inbox for a week is a week of winter you don't get back. Our rule: release the truss order at permit, chase the shop-drawing approval like it's a pay app, and book the crane against a confirmed delivery date, not a hoped-for one.
Don't forget floors
The same trade-off runs through the floor system. Open-web floor trusses cost more than I-joists but give plumbers and HVAC a clear chase to run through — on a corridor building, that can save more in mechanical coordination than the trusses cost extra. It's the same decision as the roof: pay the plant to solve problems, or pay the field. There's no universal right answer, only the right answer for that building — which is why we price both when it's close. You can get rough numbers from our ballpark estimator, and the full scope of what we frame is on our services page.
How we usually land
Across 1,000-plus units, our default is trusses for roofs and most floors, stick for the odd corners trusses can't reach — and a hard bias toward whatever gets the building dry before winter does its thing. The plans decide, but the calendar votes.
Trying to get a roof on before the snow? Send us the plans and we'll tell you which way your building leans — with lead times that reflect what plants are actually running right now.