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Welcome to the world of a trainee examiner assigning you a file.  I'd guess they just went through a training class and received one of those guages as part of the course.  The nice thing is they double as ball mark repair tool if you hit a nice high wedge onto a soft green.   You should call and find out if they want a photo with a pitch guage too.

Just watched the link myself.  That guage is different than the one that landed on my desk several years ago from a forgotten source.  It was like a 2-tined fork minus the long handle, with a tapered & calibrated space between the 2 tines.  Served the same purpose as this one shown on the Haag video, but much more functional repairing the ball marks than the Haag model appears to be. 

You can pick up a shingle gauage from this location  http://www.toolexperts.com/SG2345.html  the cost is under $ 50, everybody wants something to fall on  so they don't have to take the responsibility. I had a roofing company for over 25 years and never used one 

DavidR, As a contractor I never had to use one most folks wanted to change their roofing system so I did, as an adjuster I use the guage and also a tape and level which shows the pitch of the roof design. I do agree with you a picture is worth a 1000 words and if the house needs to know if the deck is a walkable or not is allright with me, later

Both of the above statements are correct, particularly "a picture is worth a thousand words".   But any oldtimer (or midtimer for that matter) can tell you that the shingle guage has no real purpose in the storm loss adjusting world.  It is, as advertised, a warranty tool.  When roofs are damaged by hail or windstorms of significant degree, I have not seen a warranty yet that covers the loss on asphalt/comp products that you can measure with the guage.  Other roofing systems, yes, a warranty might come into effect on hail/wind.  The tool will show the thickness/weight of the shingle if the examiner knows what he is looking at, but it should also be obvious without the guage.  That is, to an examiner that has ever actually been on a roof.

The risk photo as always required will adequately show if the roof is a walk-on, or a 6/12 or steeper.  But the problem exists that the inside examiners nowadays may not have any field experience whatsoever.   If they require & request the pitch guage and shingle guage, I guess we just have to humor them and trust that they understand what it is that they are asking for and why.  Do you think they would really have any reason to request a reinspection if the pitch guage photo was missing, but the risk photo depicted a slope of of 6/12 or greater?  

I think the majority of field adjusters with any time under their belt will tell you they have never used either guage, and never had a file turned back because of the lack of them either.

This is not a matter of being stubborn...it's just common sense.  Maybe that doesn't matter anymore.  

David, You sound like an adjuster that know what they are doing, those are getting hard to find lol, have you ever seen a 15 year, 25 yr and 40 yr straight asphalt shingle they quit making them in the 70's when Owens Corning went into the shingle making business when they bought out the old Fry Shingle co. Now those shingles have a tendency to swell and that would show something that is not on the gauge lol but if you tear a piece of a damaged shingle you will see there is no fiberglass mat in the composition, unless you run into a old shingle around 37 years old you won't find a asphalt shingle lol. During the Hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 I was doing a lot of desk adjusting for some General Contractors out of 100 estimates that I checked there were probably 100 supplements written, all for the lack of construction knowledge, I still find that today with the contractors that I work with however it looks like it is getting better, until this morning when I ran across a estimate from a large insurer and it looks like it was estimated by a in house adjuster. They had use the current Xactimate price list, but changed prices on the list for their benefit, I crossed checked the estimate for base charges and changed around some of their applications, anyway the wind up was there is a difference of 5,000 between their estimate and the 3 different types that I worked on. I'm going to call them tomorrow and find out what they are doing, it doesn't seem ethical to use someone’s name and price list then change the price list figures. Let me ask you a question when doing a large job roofing siding, windows shutters painting, at what point do you eliminate the base service charges, if you set the labor efficency on restoration, service remodel Xactimate 24 will automatically default to the necessary Base service charges unless you turn them off on the price list, this estimate has some items with base service charges and some with out, and they are large quantity items not min charges.My rule of thumb is to use Base service charges on small jobs like repairs&etc, but I'm always open for an adjustment  lol

You need to be careful how you get rid of BSC's, you need to set the price list properties to FACTOR IN the BSC's. That takes the couple hours labor to get to the site and so on, and distributes it to the unit costs so they rise slightly.  If you simply delete them, the unit cost is slightly too low (if BSC's were "broken out" then deleted).

Or you break out the BSC's, and it shows up as pure labor, no materials.

The answer to your question is that when a complete re-roof is being done, the BSC's should be factored in.  That is what the large carriers tell their adjusters to do.  Some large carriers set the entire estimate as "factored in" and that is OK, as long as the adjuster knows that if one of the trades has a very small part of the project that he may have to call out a Min Chg rather than just paint the small bathroom at 60 cents a Sf.  Or call out a separate labor entry and explain why - I do that all the time.

The Xactimate help is rather cryptic on this point, but with Xact 24 you want to go to "real time training" and find the topic with this title:

Labor Efficiency and Base Service Charges in Xactimate

In order to understand how Base Service Charges work in Xactimate, you must also know how the Labor Efficiencies are set up in Xactimate. Xactimate uses base service charges for most price list labor categories. Base Service Charges help ensure that the unit price will cover these expenses for all jobs. When you print an estimate, Xactimate adds the amount of the base service charge for each labor category.

Bob, When I do an estimate I usually check out the size of the job, if it is over the min charge then I factor in the base service charges  if its a min charge then I use the base charge, on Xactimate 24 under the matrix section is the base charge section a dould click  the push the bullet that you want to use:  yes , do not apply , or factor in being in the contractor business for a bit I understand the methods of construction and all of the set p and other charges that occur on a job site

Maybe I am missing something, but the shingle guage is not ment to determine the age of the shingle. The shingle guage is to determine what the life expectancy of the shingle was manufactured to be. It measures the thickness of the shingle. Many times the difference in thickness from a 25 -30 yr. shingle may be difficult to determine just by looking at it. What year the MH was built has no bearing on what a shingle guage was designed to do.