A truck slammed into our driveway gate.

A guy drove up in our driveway to turn his truck around.

He said that his foot slipped off the clutch and that he will contact his insurance to pay for a new gate. But that was just the beginning of pain for me.

For 2 weeks afterwards, I had to lift the gate off the bottom rail to push it open manually, and then push it closed to lift the wheels back onto the rail. Not a very pleasant job, as at the second day, my bad left knee and my back started to pain. By day four the pain in bed at night cost me many hours of lost sleep. At day fourteen, I had enough, and we contacted a contractor to come and try to straighten the gate. He also couldn't get the gate a hundred percent straight, but at least he fixed it enough to run wobbly on the gate motor.

Then another shock came our way. The guy's insurance contacted us to ask for some identification documents and an affidavit of our ownership to prove that we were the genuine owners. So, we had to go to the Cop Shop (Police station) to get the documents signed and to get an accident case number. I asked the lady from the insurance company how long it would take to pay out for a new gate, and I had to sit down in shock, as she said 3 to 6 months. What could we do about it except to wait, and in the meantime the skew gate's teeth on the bottom of the gear rack started breaking off, as the gate was not running straight.

We were requested to send 3 new gate quotations to the insurance company and then a bright idea struck me. I phoned a guy at a steel repair company, and he suggested that we only needed a new frame for the gate. The insurance company was happy. as his quotation was the cheapest of the 3 that we sent. So, they accepted his quotation and a week later they paid out the full amount.

So, the steel guy and his crew arrived, and they took the broken gate off.

The new frame arrived, and we were in business.

Look at that! The new frame that was galvanized to prevent rust was offloaded.

Then the one guy started stripping the old gate of its internal parts.

And here, they fitted the internal parts of the old gate to the new frame.

Voila! Look at that shiny new gate, and it was a job well done as the gate is now running straight on the electric motor and we can open and close it with our remote.

Such is life, isn't it? We had to pay the first guy that tried to straighten the gate and the insurance company refused to cover the amount, as they said it was not a part of the 3 quotations. In the meantime, we had to run around getting the documents and the quotations for free. But it all was worth it in the end, as now I don't have to worry about the gate anymore. Just the way things are here.

What was the lesson learned? Don't let anyone drive up your driveway and bang into your gate :))

Hope that you enjoyed the gate story.

Photos by Zac Smith-All Rights Reserved.

Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.

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