FENCE CONTRACTORS
Homeowners google “fence installation cost per foot” and call you with a number they found on a forum. If you match it, you have quoted their yard as if it were a roll of fencing. It is not. After using the fence bid calculator, you can send a price that already counted the posts, the gates, and the tear-out — work that used to hide inside a scratch-pad per-foot guess.
A run of L feet on spacing S needs a post at each end plus one every S feet: ceil(L ÷ S) + 1. A 140-foot backyard on 8-foot centers is 19 posts, not 140 ÷ 8 = 17.5 rounded however feels lucky. Each corner adds a terminal that is not already on that straight spacing.
Ends, corners, and gate posts are terminals — heavier stock, more concrete, more time. Line posts are cheaper. If you price every post as a line post, the hardware invoice is already over the bid.
A 4-foot walk gate and a 12-foot drive gate remove 16 feet of infill and add two kits plus hang time. Treating those 16 feet as privacy panels understates material and understates labor. The calculator subtracts the openings from infill and prices the kits and hours separately.
Pulling 40 feet of rotten stockade does not add 40 feet you can bill at the new-fence rate. It adds haul, dump, and crew time. Clay and rock do not change the panel price; they change how long each hole takes. Multiply labor hours by the site, not the material.
On a typical 140-foot, 6-foot wood privacy run with two corners, one walk gate, one drive gate, 40 feet of tear-out, and heavy clay, a $35/ft Facebook quote is below cost once posts and gates are counted. The installed price per foot on that job is a result, not an input. Quote the job, then glance at the per-foot figure to see whether you are in the range the homeowner has heard — and whether matching it would lose money.
Open the calculator and replace the starting figures with your own. Nothing is uploaded.
Posts along a run equal ceil(linear feet ÷ post spacing) + 1, plus one extra terminal for each corner. A 140-foot run on 8-foot centers is 19 posts; two corners make 21. Ends, corners, and gate posts are terminals and cost more than line posts.
A flat installed price assumes every foot is the same. Gates replace infill but add hardware and hang time. Corners and ends need heavier terminals and more concrete. Tear-out and rocky digging add hours with no extra footage to bill. Two 140-foot jobs can differ by thousands of dollars.
Loaded labor (wage plus payroll burden), concrete, gate hardware, tear-out and haul, permits and travel, overhead, and a target margin as a share of the price — not a markup on cost. The walk-away number is total cost, below which the job makes nothing.