How Gatewood Fence & Gate Was Born in Arlington
The first time Hal Gatewood drove through Arlington looking at fences, he wasn’t selling anything. He was counting the failures. Sagging posts leaned into alleys. Gates dragged against concrete driveways, scraping grooves into the slab. Welds popped at the hinge. And every one of those failures, he knew, had started with a simple choice someone made: fix it right or fix it cheap. Too many companies had picked cheap. Hal had spent years in the trade watching that choice play out, and it bothered him more than he liked to admit. Not the mistake itself. Mistakes happen. It was the shrug that followed. The invoice that went out anyway. The phone call that never came back. Arlington deserved better than that, he thought. Not a bigger fence company. A more accountable one. So when Gatewood Fence & Gate opened its doors here, the promise was simple and personal: put the name on the truck, put the shop down the road, and stand behind every single gate we touch. That’s how it started in Arlington. Not with a marketing plan. With a decision that the work should speak for itself, and the person behind it should be reachable.
Hal Gatewood’s Personal Connection to the Gate Repair Trade
Hal Gatewood came to gate work the way a lot of people come to the thing they’re meant to do: sideways. He wasn’t raised in a fence family. He didn’t inherit a shop. He learned the trade the slow way, hand over hand, job after job, standing in driveways and backyards and commercial lots while snow melted into his boots or the Texas sun burned the back of his neck. The first time he fixed a gate that three other companies had given up on, he understood something about himself. It wasn’t just the satisfaction of the work. It was the look on the homeowner’s face when he ran the gate open and closed, smooth and quiet, and then handed them the bill. Lower than they expected. That look stuck with him.
What keeps him in this trade after more than a decade is the same thing, really. Gates are personal. They’re the first thing you touch when you leave in the morning and the last thing between your family and the street at night. A gate that sags bothers people. It nags at them. They push past it every day and feel that small drag, that scrape, that wobble. Hal loves fixing that. He loves watching someone walk out and open a gate that finally moves the way it should, with no effort, no noise. There’s a pride in it that has nothing to do with a paycheck. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t sometimes drive past an old job just to see the gate still hanging true. If he weren’t doing this work, he would probably still be doing something with his hands. Maybe not gates. But it would be something tangible, something he could stand back and look at. That’s who he is. The kind of person who wants to point at a thing and say, I fixed that.
Meet Hal Gatewood - The Person Behind Every Job
Hal Gatewood is the Owner and Founder of Gatewood Fence & Gate. He leads the Arlington team personally, and his background in the trade runs deep: years of hands-on gate and fence work, from simple chain-link repairs to full custom driveway gates and automation systems from brands like FAAC, BFT and Viking. He’s the kind of tradesman who reads the manufacturer’s manual twice and then calls the engineer anyway. What sets him apart from a corporate technician is simple: Hal is not filling a route. He is not working against a quota. He’s the person whose name is on the truck, and he takes that literally. You’ll find him in the shop, not behind a desk. And if something isn’t right, he’s the one who comes back. His commitment to his customers is direct: if you call with a problem, he’ll treat it like it’s his own gate, his own fence, his own home. Because in this community, that’s exactly how it feels.
Our Promise to Arlington Homeowners
We don’t do vague promises. Here’s what we actually commit to, on every job, in writing.
Honest pricing. You get a written estimate before we start. The price we quote is the price you pay. No surprises at the end of the job. If we find something unexpected while we’re working, we stop and talk to you about it. You decide. We don’t.
Quality parts and materials. We use components that are built to outlast the weather and the wear. Cheap hardware saves a few dollars today and costs hundreds later. We’d rather fix it once.
We stand behind the work. Every fences and gates job is covered by our 90-day written guarantee. If something fails because of our workmanship, one call brings Hal back. That’s not a policy. That’s just how we operate.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed - every pro working under our name is required to hold the license their state requires.
- Insured and bonded - so your property is protected while we’re on it.
- More than a decade of local experience - years of hands-on gate and fence work in Arlington, Fort Worth, Colleyville and surrounding communities.
- Strong local reputation - built one job at a time, driveway by driveway, gate by gate.
Why does this matter to you? Because when you invite someone to work on your property, you’re trusting them with more than just a gate. You’re trusting them with your home, your schedule and your peace of mind. A license means they’ve met a professional standard. Insurance means you’re protected if something goes wrong. Local experience means they know the soil, the weather and the common failures in your specific neighborhood. And a reputation built over time means there’s a record to check, not just a flashy ad.
Rooted in Arlington
Arlington isn’t a pin on a map to us. It’s the streets we drive every day, the hardware stores where we buy our materials and the neighborhoods where we’ve worked for years. We know how the clay soil here shifts and settles, and we know what that does to a gate post. We know which homes in older Arlington neighborhoods tend to have the same hinge-post failures because we’ve fixed them. This is where we work, where we shop and where we’ll run into you on a Saturday. That’s not a marketing line. That’s just the truth of being a local business. The name is on the shop, and the shop is down the road.
Written by Hal Gatewood, Owner at Gatewood Fence & Gate, serving Arlington since 2001.