Austin Metal Gates fabricates cantilever gates in Austin, TX, and is Travis County's specialist in trackless slide gate systems, specializing in counterbalanced frames, roller truck assemblies and post-mounted carriage hardware. We offer rigid steel frames and lighter aluminum builds.
Our team provides a full counterbalance layout for each opening, delivering a clean entry over gravel and grade for homeowners and a low-maintenance, track-free slide for both residential and commercial projects. The same crew that walks the grade with you sets the posts, and we weld the frame and its counterbalance tail in our shop to the drawings you sign.
From squaring the roller trucks on each support post to hanging a panel that floats clear of the drive, our team handles every detail. Serving Austin, Volente, The Hills and Lost Creek, we build for drives where a ground track would never stay level.
Why Austin Metal Gates
No stock panels cut down to fit, and no handoffs. The crew that measures your opening builds and installs the gate.
In engineering, a cantilever is a member fixed at one end and unsupported at the other, carrying its load back to the support. A cantilever gate uses the same principle. The panel hangs from rollers on posts at one side of the opening and reaches across the drive with nothing underneath it.
The gate frame runs through sets of rollers, called trucks, mounted on two support posts beside the opening. As the gate opens and closes, its frame rolls through those trucks. The posts carry the whole weight; the drive carries none of it.
Because the gate floats above the ground, there is no rail across the drive to clean, crack, heave or replace. Nothing on the ground catches a tire, a mower or a heel. That is why cantilever systems are the standard on commercial sites, and why they suit estates where the drive surface is anything but flat and hard.
A panel that reaches across an opening with no support at the far end has to be balanced. The balance comes from a counterbalance section, a tail of frame that extends back past the support posts.
Manufacturers size the counterbalance at roughly 40 to 50 percent of the clear opening, and the support posts are usually spaced about half the opening width apart. The practical result is that a cantilever gate needs a clear run beside the opening of about one and a half times the opening width to slide fully open.
The run sits along the fence line, on the inside of the property. It has to be clear of trees, walls, utilities and steps along its length. The ground under the run does not need to be level or paved, because the gate never touches it. That last point is the reason to choose a cantilever. A tracked slider needs a flat, poured line the full length of its travel. A cantilever only needs the gate to clear the ground.
West of the Balcones Escarpment, Austin climbs into the edge of the Texas Hill Country, a landscape of karst, limestone hills, thin topsoil and exposed rock. Driveways here twist, pitch and change grade quickly, and many are gravel or crushed stone rather than concrete.
A tracked sliding gate needs a level line across the opening. On a drive that pitches across the entry, that line has to be built, and on gravel there is nothing solid to fix it to. Swing leaves have their own problem when the drive rises toward the house, because they meet the grade as they open.
A cantilever gate travels across the drive in the air. We set its height so the bottom rail clears the highest point of ground along its path, and the gate slides above the slope rather than fighting it. Gravel stays where it is, and the grit that storm runoff leaves across a drive has no track to jam. For a sloped drive with gravel or uneven ground, gate suppliers point to cantilever as the recommended answer, and it is usually our first suggestion on Hill Country lots.
Everything a cantilever gate does depends on its two support posts staying plumb. They carry the full weight of the panel and its tail, plus the leverage of a frame reaching across open air.
Western Travis County ground is limestone close to the surface. Once reached, it gives a solid base for a support post footing, but it has to be drilled to depth. We size those footings for the finished panel weight, not for a generic post.
Aluminum has about one third the density of steel, so an aluminum cantilever of the same size puts far less weight on its rollers and posts. Steel gives a heavier, more rigid panel and a more imposing look. We draw both on wide openings so you can compare.
The trucks are set dead in line on both posts so the frame rolls through them without binding. Once the gate is hung, it should glide by hand before an operator is ever connected.
Cantilever gates automate with a slide operator, which drives the frame along its rollers. With no track friction, the operator works against the panel's rolling resistance and little else.
US gate installations must meet UL 325. For residential and commercial slide gate operators it caps travel speed at one foot per second when pulling 75 pounds or more, and it requires at least two monitored entrapment protection devices for each entrapment area in each direction of travel. On a cantilever those areas include the closing edge, the rollers and the counterbalance tail moving back along the fence, so we fit photo eyes and contact edges and screen the roller area.
Lakeway asks for a key switch for the ESD 6 fire department on coded gates. West Lake Hills requires electric driveway gates to include an integral emergency power source and an ESD 9 approved access box. We confirm your city's requirement at quote time, and battery backup is available on every operator.
Cantilever gates are quoted from a measured drawing, because the counterbalance tail and the ground under the run change every job. What moves the number:
Start with the free on-site measure, where we walk the opening and the run with you.
The process
Four steps, and nothing is fabricated until you have signed off on the drawings and the price.
We measure the opening, the slope and where power can reach, and talk through style, automation and access.
You get scaled drawings for your approval and for any HOA or city review, with one written price.
Steel is cut and welded to the approved drawings, then galvanized, powder coated or both.
Columns and posts set, gate hung, operator set up to UL 325 and every safety device tested with you.
Questions
On a level concrete drive either works. On a slope, on gravel or anywhere debris washes across the entry, a cantilever avoids the track problems entirely.
Plan on a clear run of about one and a half times the opening width, because the counterbalance tail travels with the gate. We measure it on site.
Often, yes. The gate slides above the ground, so we set its height to clear the high point along its path. Very steep grades change the layout, which we check at the site visit.
With battery backup the operator keeps working for a time, and a manual release lets you roll the gate open by hand.
Usually. Volente, for example, issues its own fence permits, and many associations review gates and fences. We supply the drawings and details the reviewer asks for.
We install the key switch or access box your fire district or city requires and confirm the requirement for your address when we quote.
Yes, throughout Travis County: Austin, Volente, The Hills, Lost Creek, Lakeway, Steiner Ranch, West Lake Hills, Rollingwood, Barton Creek, Sunset Valley and Shady Hollow.
Yes, a written warranty, which comes with your quote so you can read it first.
Free on-site measure across Austin and the west side. We call you back to set a time.
Calls only, we do not receive text messages.
