Drive-through gates

Listen to this radio show (MP3 download) or read below.

Radio interview source: Jody Duclos, sales and marketing manager, REM Enterprises, Inc.

One of my jobs as a kid on the farm was to jump out of the pickup when my dad stopped at a gate. I was the gate opener and closer. It would have been nice to have a gate that opened and shut automatically.

Jody Duclos sells drive-through gates, and says men might consider getting one of these.

"That way your wife doesn't have to get out and open the gate all the time for you," Duclos says. "That's the number-one reason people come here. And it's always the women who are after it because they're the ones opening the gates all the time."

With a drive-through gate, all you do is drive up to it, give it a nudge with the bumper, it goes down, and you drive over it. It pops back up once you're through. It's easily installed in the fence line using the existing gate location. You control the speed at which the gate pops back up by adjusting the springs, or where it bolts on to the main frame.

As you're driving over the gate, you don't have to worry about it snapping up and damaging the underside of your vehicle.

"You can bump up to it, put your front wheels on, go over fairly fast, and you can get onto it with your back wheels before it even touches anything underneath your vehicle," Duclos says.