Meet the Team - Ironworks Gate Co.

Meet the Kennedale Team Behind Ironworks Gate Co.

We started putting this Kennedale crew together back in 1984, and the idea was simple: find people who treat a gate the way a carpenter treats a front door. Not as a machine, but as something a family drives through every single day. Most of our team lives within twenty minutes of the shop on Kennedale Parkway. They know the streets, the soil, the way the wind comes across Village Creek, and they know that a gate that worked fine in Michigan will act completely different after ten summers of Texas heat. What unites them is a habit of finishing work so clean that we could come back a year later and not find a thing to touch.

Our People

Marcus T. - Lead Technician, Gate Repair & Automation

Marcus has been with us for seventeen years, which means he’s seen just about every gate failure a Dallas-Fort Worth homeowner can throw at him. He’s certified on six of our nine automation brands, and he’s the one we send when another company has already been out twice and the gate is still dead. Marcus keeps a little notebook in his truck with wiring diagrams he’s drawn by hand over the years, and he can tell you which LiftMaster boards failed early in 2019 and why. Outside of work, he restores old Ford pickups, which is probably why he’s so patient with gates that haven’t been lubricated since the Obama administration.

Dana R. - Senior Installer, Driveway & Estate Gates

Dana runs our new gate installations and the bigger estate projects that take a few days rather than a few hours. She started as an apprentice on this same crew eleven years ago and earned her welding certification through Tarrant County College. Her specialty is the structural side: setting posts in North Texas clay so they don’t lean after the first heavy rain, framing gates that won’t sag, and making sure a 450-pound driveway gate swings true. Dana is the one who walks every homeowner through the final adjustment before she loads up, and she won’t leave until the gate closes with the same sound on day one and day ninety.

Paula G. - Service Coordinator, Kennedale Dispatch

If you call us at 2 a.m. because your gate is stuck open and your dog is eyeing the street, Paula is probably the voice you’ll hear. She’s been answering our phones for nine years and she knows the schedule, the parts inventory, and which technician lives closest to just about every neighborhood we serve. Paula is the reason our “live person answers 24/7” promise actually holds up: she takes the call, asks the right questions, and gets a technician moving without anyone having to leave a message and wait. She’s also the one who reminds us all to eat lunch, which is not a small job around here.

Eli B. - Apprentice, Gate Parts & Welding

Eli joined us three years ago straight out of a welding program, and he’s been apprenticing under Marcus and Dana since his first week. He handles a lot of the hands-on work: cutting and fitting replacement pickets, grinding out old welds, fabricating brackets that match what was there in 1987. Eli grew up in Kennedale and still lives with his folks off Little School Road, which gives him a particular sense of ownership when we work on gates he’s driven past his whole life. He’s methodical almost to a fault, which is exactly what you want from someone holding a grinder next to your brick column.

One Standard, Every Job

Every one of us, from Marcus on a complex automation repair to Eli on a hinge replacement, works under the same rule: the job is done right or it isn’t done. That’s not a slogan we hang on the wall. It’s the Keystone Standard, and it means every gate we touch in Kennedale and across the metroplex carries the same 90-Day Done Right Promise, in writing. If something’s off after we leave, we come back and make it right. No paperwork, no arguing, no fine print. The customer gets a square deal up front, an upfront price settled before a single bolt is turned, and a gate that closes like it did the day it was hung. That’s how a company plans to still be in town forty years from now.

Written by Victor Salinas, Owner at Ironworks Gate Co., serving Kennedale since 1984.