Thirty-nine years after he began building fences in 1987, Roy Garner works alongside the third generation of his family to enter the trade at Fence Craft, the Rocky Mount fencing company where he is president. This fall, Garner is talking about what has changed in residential fencing across Eastern North Carolina in that time, and about what he says has not changed at all.
Garner's career predates the company. Before the family incorporated Fence Craft Inc. on May 24, 2021, he owned and operated several fence companies and a concrete-cutting business, and his father, Bill, joined him in the work in 2002. His daughter, Bridget, who grew up around the business, and his son-in-law, Jeremy, are now active in Fence Craft as well. When it came time to incorporate, the family chose a name centered on the work itself rather than the Garner surname. Garner has said that choice grew out of some bad changes he had seen in the trade, and that the family's last name was never the point.
In North Carolina, a fence project generally does not require a state contractor's license unless its total cost reaches $40,000, the threshold set by the state's general contractor licensing law. Garner said that leaves most of the teaching to the job site, where the trade still passes from one installer to the next, as it did when he started in the late 1980s.
In his words: "Nobody gave me a license to learn this. The men I worked under showed me how to read a property line and when a post wasn't going to hold, and I've tried to show Bridget and Jeremy the same way, standing in somebody's yard. You don't pick that up from a video."Asked what has changed most since he started, Garner pointed first to the people buying fences rather than to the materials going into them: "Back then people called a fence company and mostly took what they were given. Now a homeowner comes to the estimate having read about vinyl and aluminum, checked the homeowners association rules and looked at a dozen fences online. I think that's mostly good for everybody, because it means we have to explain why we'd do something instead of just doing it."
The other half of his answer, about what has stayed the same, had to do with conditions that nobody in the business can control. "The soil in this part of the state is the same soil it was when I started, and the storms still come through every fall," he said. "The materials have gotten a lot better in 39 years. The shortcuts haven't."
Garner earned a degree in business administration from East Carolina University in 1992, five years into his fencing career, and he remains involved in planning and overseeing the company's projects. Those projects now reach eight counties from the company's shop on Dortches Boulevard in Rocky Mount. Fence Craft is a member of the American Fence Association, a national trade group for fence contractors, manufacturers and suppliers.
More information about the company and the family behind it is available on the Fence Craft website or by calling (252) 270-5100. Customers have reviewed the company's work on its Google Business Profile, where readers can read more about past projects.
About Fence Craft
Fence Craft is a family-owned fencing company based at 5614 Dortches Blvd, Rocky Mount, NC 27804, and incorporated in 2021. President Roy Garner has worked in the fencing trade since 1987, and three generations of his family have been part of the business. The company installs and repairs ornamental wood, vinyl, and aluminum fencing, as well as chain-link fencing, along with railings and gate systems, for homeowners and businesses across Nash, Warren, Johnston, Wilson, Edgecombe, Franklin, Halifax, and Northampton counties. Fence Craft is a member of the American Fence Association and backs its installations with a 12-month craftsmanship guarantee covering workmanship. More information is available at www.fencecraft.com]
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For more information about Fence Craft Inc. , contact the company here:
Fence Craft
Roy Garner
(252) 270-5100
customerservice@fencecraft.com
5614 Dortches Blvd, Rocky Mount, NC 27804