The problem
A FedEx truck struck the entrance gate at a distribution facility. The gate is 35 feet of heavy-duty steel — the sort of gate that protects a yard full of freight, and the sort that a business genuinely cannot operate without.
The customer had already had two companies out. Both recommended replacing the gate completely, and neither quoted less than $25,000.
How we diagnosed it
- Impact damage on a gate this size looks catastrophic, and that appearance does a lot of work in a replacement quote. What matters is which parts actually took the load.
- Here the damage was concentrated: the rollers the gate runs on, and two of the posts. The gate structure itself — the expensive part, the part that takes weeks to fabricate and a crane day to install — was sound.
- Replacing a structurally sound 35-foot gate because its rollers and posts were destroyed replaces the one part of the assembly that did not fail.
What we did
- We recommended repairing it, replacing only what the impact had actually damaged, and we were back the next day to do the work.
- Replaced: six 2-inch rollers, a ten-foot 4x4 post, and a 2x6 heavy-duty post.
- The price was $6,880 against estimates that started at $25,000 — and the customer received a five-year warranty on the work.
Watch this repair
No other gate repair company in Dallas–Fort Worth publishes video of their work.
The outcome
The gate runs correctly on its original structure. The facility was back to a secure yard the day after the assessment rather than waiting weeks for a fabricated replacement.
What you should take from this
On a commercial gate the structure is almost always the most expensive component and almost never the thing an impact destroys. Rollers, posts and hardware take the load and are designed to be replaceable. Before accepting a five-figure replacement quote, it is worth asking a straight question: which parts are actually damaged, and which are being replaced because they happen to be attached to them?
