The checklist everyone hands you opens the same way. Are you licensed, are you insured, how long have you been in business.
Texas has no state license for a fence contractor, so the first question on that list cannot separate one bidder from the next. The questions that can are the ones a one-truck outfit answers badly, and they are all about who measured your yard, what wood the price was written against, and how many crews stand behind your install date.
Texas Has No Fence License, So Ask These Two Things Instead
No state agency licenses a fence builder here. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation regulates roughly 40 occupations, and fence contractor is not on the list (TDLR, 2026). Licensing sits with cities and counties, if it sits anywhere. So “are you licensed” earns a yes from almost anyone with a truck, and the yes tells you nothing about your install date.
Two things are still worth verifying, and both are checkable in a few minutes.
- A certificate of insurance, emailed by the insurer. A photo of a card proves nothing. Ask for the certificate with your name and your address on it, sent from the agency.
- Dates you can check somewhere other than the company’s own website. We have held BBB accreditation with an A+ rating since March 2003. Any founding year or credential you are given should be verifiable the same way.
- A count of finished work, not a count of years. We installed more than 2 million feet of fence across more than 20,000 projects in the last 12 months. Volume is what proves a company can absorb a bad week.
Five Words a Fence Bid Uses That Buyers Skip Over
Five terms carry almost all the money on a fence quote, and two quotes that look $600 apart are often just two different answers to these words. Read them before you read the price, because a bid that names all five is already a better bid than one that names two.
| Term | What it means on your quote |
|---|---|
| Linear foot | The measured length of your fence line. Almost every quote is priced by this unit. |
| Picket grade | The quality tier of the fence board, #1 through #3. #1 has the fewest knots. |
| Ground contact | Wood treated to be buried in soil. Posts need it. Pickets above the dirt do not. |
| Embedment | How deep the post sits in the hole before any concrete goes in. |
| Craftsmanship warranty | Covers how the fence was built. It does not cover the boards themselves. |
Ask Who Measured the Yard Before the Number Was Written
A price nobody measured is a guess, and a guess gets corrected on install day at your expense. We give a rough number over the phone from your address, then a salesperson comes out, walks the line, measures the footage, and confirms the fence type and picket grade before the real quote goes out. On 95% of real leads that quote lands the same day.
The vague version sounds reasonable at first. “We’ll figure the footage when we get there.” “Call it about $30 a foot.” Neither one is a price. It is a placeholder that gets adjusted once your old fence is already in a dumpster and you have no use left.
Ask a second question here too: who is the person who measured, and will you see them again? On our jobs the salesperson who walked your line is the one who coordinates the install and comes back for the walkthrough.
Make Them Name the Picket Grade and the Post Depth
Ask what happens to the fence in a 60 mph gust, and the answer is about posts. Engineers size a solid privacy fence the way they size a solid freestanding wall, with the wind loading the full face of it (ASCE/SEI 7-22, 2022). Every bit of that push ends up in the posts and their footings. So post material, depth, and concrete belong on the quote in writing.
Grade matters just as much, and it matters more the closer you live to the coast. On the decay hazard index, Houston scores 77.2 and Dallas 44.3 (USDA Forest Products Laboratory, 2009). Wet, hot air eats cheap wood on a schedule. “Cedar” is not a spec until someone writes a grade next to it.
| Bid line | What a complete answer names | Why it decides the fence |
|---|---|---|
| Picket grade | #1, #2, or #3, printed on the quote | Grade drives knots, warping, and how fast boards grey out |
| Post depth | Post material and how deep it goes before concrete | Wind pushes the fence face and the buried post resists it |
| Concrete footings | Whether every post gets concrete, including line posts | Footings are what hold a line straight in Texas clay |
| Removal and haul-off | Who tears out the old fence and what day it leaves | Removal on an established lot is real labor and real cost |
Ask How Many Crews Stand Behind Your Install Date
Most fence companies are small, and the numbers say so plainly: about 599,000 specialty trade contractor establishments employ roughly 5.26 million people, fewer than 10 workers each on average (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). One crew, one truck, one bad day. When that crew is out, your date moves, and no amount of good intentions changes it.
We run over 100 crews. Houston carries 25 to 30 of them, and every other market runs 5 to 15. Crew depth is local, which is the part that matters to you, because a crew in Fort Worth cannot save a Tuesday in Cypress. Work starts within about 4 days of an accepted quote, and most residential jobs finish the same day they start.
So ask it plainly. How many crews do you have in my metro, and what happens to my date if the one assigned to me is out?
Ask Who Absorbs a Rain Delay or a Sick Crew
The answer you want names a date, names a person, and says the price does not move. Budgets break on the ordinary stuff: 37% of homeowners who renovated went over budget, most often because product or service costs came in higher than expected (Houzz, 2026). A fence quote should protect you from that at signing, not renegotiate it at the halfway point.
Weather does move dates in Texas, and any contractor who says otherwise is selling you something. What should not move is the number. Ask whether the picket price is locked when you sign, and whether a rain day pushes you to the back of the schedule or the front of the next open slot.
| What you hear | What it usually means | Ask this next |
|---|---|---|
| “We’ll get to you once the weather clears” | No date is being held for you | “What day am I scheduled, and who leads that crew?” |
| “Prices may change if lumber moves” | The materials for your job are not bought yet | “Is my picket price locked at signing?” |
| “We’ll know the footage on install day” | Nobody has measured your yard | “Can someone measure the line before I sign?” |
