Fence Ledger guide
Three quotes that differ by thousands are usually three different jobs. Here is how to tell.
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Getting three quotes and finding a two-to-one spread is normal, and it rarely means two of them are wrong. It usually means they have quoted different work.
One includes removing your old fence and hauling it away; another assumes the site is clear. One prices a 6×6 gate post set deeper; another uses the same 4×4 everywhere. One is pricing cedar, another pressure-treated pine. None of that is visible in a total.
The job is not to find the cheapest number. It is to work out what each number actually buys, which usually means asking.
A quote you can compare has these on it. A quote that has only a total and a length is not a quote, it is a guess with a signature line.
Four questions separate a firm price from an optimistic one.
Published US cost guides put labour at somewhere around 45 to 55% of an installed wood fence. That is the single most useful fact when reading a quote, because it tells you what the range means.
If a quote is far below the others, the saving has to come from somewhere: cheaper material, thinner posts, shallower holes, wider spacing, or a crew being paid less than the others pay theirs. Any of those can be a fine trade if you know you are making it.
It also explains why doing it yourself saves so much on paper. You are not buying a fence at half price; you are doing half the work.
The most useful thing you can take to a quote conversation is your own material count. Not to argue with — a contractor buys differently than you do, and their waste allowance is their business — but so you can tell whether you are being quoted the fence you asked for.
If your own count says twenty-one posts and a quote is priced on sixteen, that is a spacing difference worth a question. If it says thirty-five bags of concrete and the quote assumes seventy, someone is using the two-bags-per-post rule of thumb.
The calculators here produce a full list you can print, with the assumptions that produced it printed alongside. That last part is the part that makes it useful in a conversation: the numbers can be checked, including by the person disagreeing with them.
The price is only part of what you are agreeing to. The terms around it decide how much of the risk you are carrying, and they are usually the part nobody reads.
A deposit is normal — materials get bought before work starts — but a request for most of the money up front is not. The more usual shape is a deposit at signing, the balance on completion, and sometimes a payment in the middle on a long job. Whatever the split, it should be written down with what each payment is for.
A start date on its own is worth little without a rough duration and some statement of what happens if weather or a failed inspection moves it. Fence crews work outdoors and delays are genuine; a contractor who acknowledges that in writing is usually the one who turns up.
Then there is what happens after they leave. Ask what is warranted and for how long, and note that the material and the workmanship are usually covered separately — timber often carries a manufacturer warranty against rot that has nothing to do with whether the crew set the posts straight. Ask, too, whether the crew is insured, and whether anyone who is not their employee will be on your property. In much of the United States an unpaid subcontractor can place a claim against the property they worked on, even when you have already paid the main contractor in full, so knowing who is being paid by whom is not idle curiosity.
It is worth being clear that nothing on this site is a quote, and nothing on this site can become one. We have not seen your site, your access, your soil or your slope, and all four move the price.
The cost ranges here are national planning figures compiled from published guides, shown with their sources and the date they were collected. They are for knowing whether a quote is in the right neighbourhood. The quote itself has to come from someone standing in your garden.