Every callback on a fence you built years ago starts at the gate. It’s the only moving part on the whole job, the part the customer touches every day, and the part that gets priced each, not by the foot. The calculator above uses example rates of $350 per walk gate; the example rate table shows the double drive gate at $750.
The hinge post is the whole gate
A gate is only as good as the post it hangs from. A hinge post carries live, swinging weight that a line post never sees, so it gets the beef-up: a heavier post, a deeper hole, more concrete. Skimp there and the best-built gate on earth slowly follows its post out of plumb, and the customer calls you, not the post. The beef-up is materials and time, and it’s one of the reasons a walk gate isn’t priced like four feet of fence.
Sag is a when, not an if
Wood gates rack toward the latch corner over time; that’s the frame fighting gravity, and gravity is patient. Diagonal bracing or a cable turnbuckle is the defense, and it should be built in on day one, not added on the warranty visit. Double drive gates are the hardest case: two leaves meeting in the middle display every quarter inch of movement, and there are two hinge posts to keep honest. That’s why the example double gate rate ($750) is more than two example walk gates ($350 each): it’s not double the material, it’s double the precision.
Gates on a full fence quote
Price the run by the foot and the gates each, on their own lines. A worked example from the rates on this site: 150 feet of 6 ft wood privacy at the example $38 rate is $5,700; add a $350 walk gate and a $750 double drive gate and the quote is $6,800, with gates carrying about a sixth of the job. Itemizing it that way also gives the customer a real choice: drop the drive gate, keep the fence, and everyone can see exactly what that decision saves. The full quoting method is in how to price a fence job, and the per-foot side of the math lives on the wood privacy fence calculator.
When the customer asks “and what if we add a gate on the side?”, the answer should take ten seconds. PriceDesk runs this math with your own gate prices on your phone, free for 14 days.