The short answer: a garage door business is mostly a repair business with an install business attached, and repair is won on answering the phone and fixing it on the first visit. Train properly on springs before you touch one for money, because they store enough energy to injure you badly. Carry the parts that fix most calls, price a service call with a call-out charge plus parts, and decide early whether you are chasing repairs, replacement doors or builder installs, because each needs a different truck and a different cash cycle.
Garage doors look like a narrow trade until you notice that almost every house has one, it is the largest moving object most people own, and it fails at the worst possible time: a broken spring at seven in the morning with the car inside. That is the business. Homeowners do not shop around for long when they cannot get to work.
This guide covers what has to be true before you take that seven o'clock call: safety and training, licensing and insurance, the stock that lets you fix it on the first visit, how to price, and the choice between repair and installation.
Springs are the part that hurts people
Every other decision in this trade comes after this one. Torsion springs and extension springs hold the energy that lifts a door heavier than two adults. Released carelessly, that energy breaks bones. Most of the serious injuries in the trade come from winding bars slipping, the wrong tool in a winding cone, or an extension spring without a safety cable.
So before your first paid job:
- Learn from someone who does it daily. A season working for an established door company, or a manufacturer's training course, is worth more than any video. Winding a spring is a procedure, and procedures are learned by doing them under supervision.
- Use the right tools. Proper winding bars sized to the cone, locking pliers or clamps on the track, and never a screwdriver in a winding cone.
- Replace in pairs and by the numbers. Measure wire size, inside diameter and length, match the spring to the door weight, and replace both springs on a two-spring door. A mismatched spring is the next call-back.
- Say no to the unsafe door. A door with a cracked bottom bracket under tension, or a spring nobody can identify, gets made safe and quoted properly rather than fixed in a hurry.
Your written safety procedure for springs is also the first page of your training manual when you hire.
Licensing and insurance
Garage door work is not licensed like electrical or gas work in most places, but that is not the same as unregulated. Three things to check locally:
- Contractor licensing. Some states and provinces require a general or specialty contractor license once a job passes a stated value, and door installation can fall inside it. Check your state or provincial contractor board.
- Electrical work. Plugging an opener into an existing receptacle is usually fine. Running a new circuit or receptacle for the opener is electrical work, and in most places that means a licensed electrician and a permit.
- Municipal business licenses and, on commercial doors, the site's own safety requirements before you are allowed to work.
Insurance matters more than the licensing. General liability covers the door that comes down on a car or the spring that damages a ceiling. If you employ anyone, workers' compensation is mandatory in most jurisdictions, and given the injury profile of spring work, it is not optional in any sensible sense either.
Register the business, open a business bank account on day one, and register for GST/HST or sales tax once you cross the registration threshold where you work.
Repair, replacement or builder work
Three businesses share the trade, and they reward different things.
Repair and service is springs, cables, rollers, openers, sensors and off-track doors. Jobs are an hour or two, paid on completion, and won on how fast you answer and whether you fix it on the first visit. It is the fastest to start and the most dependent on stock in the truck.
Replacement doors and openers is selling and installing new doors to homeowners. Higher tickets, a showroom conversation about styles and insulation values, supplier lead times of days to weeks, and a deposit when the door is ordered. The repair call is often where the replacement sale starts: a twenty-year-old door with a broken spring and a cracked panel is a replacement conversation.
Builder and commercial installs is volume door installation for builders, and sectional or rolling steel doors for commercial buildings. Repetitive, scheduled around other trades, paid on thirty to sixty day terms and often with a holdback. It scales, and it needs working capital and a second truck sooner than you expect.
Most people start with repair because the cash arrives the same day. Replacement follows naturally. Builder work is a decision to make deliberately, because it changes your cash cycle more than anything else.
The truck is the business
In repair, the difference between a profitable call and a loss is whether you fixed it on the first visit. A second visit for a part doubles your travel time and halves the client's patience.
Carry the parts that fix most calls: the common torsion spring sizes, extension springs in pairs with safety cables, lift cables and drums, rollers, hinges, bottom seals, sensors and a couple of universal opener logic boards and remotes. Keep a written stock list and restock it every week, because a missing spring size costs you exactly the call you most needed.
The tools that matter beyond a normal service kit: winding bars, a spring gauge or calipers, a drill with the right drivers, clamps, a level and a tall stable ladder. Buy them properly; a cheap winding bar is a false economy in the one place this trade can injure you.
The site visit checklist is a good model for the list you keep in the truck: the same questions every time, so nothing depends on memory at seven in the morning.
How to price a service call
Most door companies price repairs the same way, and there is a reason for it.
A call-out charge covers the trip and the diagnosis, whether or not the fix takes five minutes. State it on the phone, before you arrive.
Parts and labor as a flat price per repair. "Replace both torsion springs, including labor and safety check" is easier for a homeowner to agree to than an hourly rate and a parts list, and it rewards you for getting faster rather than punishing you.
A written safety check on every call. Balance, reversing sensors, cables, rollers and hardware. It takes ten minutes, it finds the next repair, and it is the record that you left the door safe.
For replacement doors, quote the door, the removal and disposal of the old one, any track or opener changes, and the lead time, and take a deposit when you order. Supplier prices move, so put an expiry date on the quote.
The guide on setting your hourly rate covers the number underneath all of this: what an hour of your time actually costs once the truck, insurance and unpaid admin are counted.
Your first technician
One technician is a wage. Two trucks is a business, and the transition breaks on consistency. The second technician has to wind a spring the same way you do, leave the same safety check behind and carry the same stock.
Hire someone who has worked on doors before if you can, and train them on your procedures regardless. Ride along for the first weeks. Write down the standard: how the spring is measured and replaced, what the safety check covers, what gets photographed, and how the driveway is left. That written standard is what lets a client who calls you twice get the same visit both times.
Where Zeus fits
A repair business lives on the first visit, and the first visit depends on what you know before you arrive. Every address keeps its own record in Zeus: past visits, what you fixed, the photos and what you noticed for next time, such as the opener model, so the second call to the same house starts with the right spring size in the truck. Your standard repairs sit in the Price Book as saved lines with current prices, so a two-spring replacement is priced the same way every time. The client signs on the phone and the invoice goes out from the driveway, recorded the way the money actually arrived: cash, a cheque, an e-transfer or a card on the terminal you already carry. The Day Board holds every call and every technician, so a seven o'clock emergency can be slotted in without phoning everyone. It keeps working in a garage with no signal and syncs when you are back in the truck.
The address record is what Run the Job is about, and everything else in Zeus is listed there. Quoting and invoicing cost nothing to start and do not run out, and the pricing page shows what the paid sizes add. Put it on your phone before the next seven o'clock call.
Every house has a door, and every door eventually breaks at a bad moment. The business is being the name that answers, arrives with the right spring and leaves a record that makes the next visit shorter.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to start a garage door business?
A solo repair start covering tools, a starting stock of springs, cables, rollers and opener parts, business registration and a year of liability insurance lands, as a rough planning figure, between $8,000 and $20,000, with the truck as the largest variable. Stock is the item people underestimate: fixing it on the first visit means carrying parts you may not use for weeks.
Do I need a license to repair garage doors?
Often not a trade license, but check three things: whether your state or provincial contractor board requires a contractor license for door installation above a job value, whether any electrical work for an opener needs a licensed electrician, and your municipal business license. Liability insurance is the requirement clients and builders ask about in practice.
Is garage door repair dangerous?
Spring work is. Torsion and extension springs store enough energy to cause serious injuries when they are released carelessly. Train with an experienced technician or a manufacturer's course, use proper winding bars and clamps, fit safety cables on extension springs, and never improvise a tool.
Should I charge by the hour or per repair?
Per repair, with a stated call-out charge. A flat price for a defined repair is easier for a homeowner to accept, rewards you for getting faster and keeps the conversation about the door rather than the clock. Keep your hourly cost as an internal number so you know each flat price still makes money.
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