The cold is coming: a two-week checklist before garage door spring season

By Steven Von · 2026-10-26 · 4 min read

January is the biggest repair month for most garage door companies. The eight things to fix in the next two weeks so every broken-spring call in the cold gets answered, booked and reviewed.

Somewhere in the next six weeks, depending on where you are, the first real cold night lands. The next morning your phone does something it has not done since February: it rings before 7 a.m. and keeps ringing. Springs that were at 9,000 of their 10,000 cycles snap in the cold. Doors that were slow all fall will not lift at all. Cars are stuck inside.

Most garage door companies treat this as weather. The ones that grow treat it as a season they prepare for, the way a tax preparer prepares for April. Here is the two-week checklist, in the order it matters.

1. Fix the phone before you fix anything else

In January a missed call is a lost $400 job, every time, because the homeowner with a car behind the door calls the next company within 90 seconds. Set up call routing so the business line rings the office, then two techs, then an answering service. Turn on missed-call text-back so anyone who hangs up on ring four gets a text inside 30 seconds asking "stuck open or stuck closed?"

Run your own numbers through the missed-call calculator with your January volume, not your August volume. The result is usually the most expensive line item in the business.

2. List the hours a human answers

35.9% of garage door listings show no hours on Google, and 22.7% claim 24 hours. On a Saturday morning in January the homeowner filters for "open now." If your profile says nothing, you are not in that list. If it says 24 hours and nobody picks up at 7 a.m., you are in the list and you lose the trust. Set real hours. Add Saturday and Sunday if you take weekend calls, which in January you should.

3. Stock the truck for the top ten doors in your market

A truck that has to run to the supply house between calls misses the next call. In December, stock springs for the ten most common door sizes and weights you see, plus cables, rollers, bottom brackets and a couple of openers. It ties up some cash for six weeks and it pays for itself the first morning three springs break on the same street.

4. Raise the Google Ads budget before everyone else does

Bids on "garage door spring repair" and "garage door won't open" climb 20 to 40 percent in January because every company in the metro wants the same calls. Raise your daily budget in mid-November so the account has a few weeks of data at the higher level before the spike, and so you are not learning during the most expensive weeks. Keep the negative list current: "DIY," "how to," "parts" and "Home Depot" waste the most in winter when more people try to fix it themselves first. The Google Ads guide has the full list.

5. Put the price range in the ad

"Spring replacement from $180, quoted before we start" filters the $29 shoppers and raises your response from everyone else. In January the homeowner is not shopping on price, but she is still afraid of the bait-and-switch she has heard about. The range in the ad is the reassurance.

6. Decide your January pricing now

You can charge the top of your published range when demand spikes. You should not charge above it. Write the sentence your techs will use if a customer asks: "Same price as last July, no surge pricing." Print it on the quote sheet. In a trade with a bait-and-switch reputation, being the company that did not gouge in January is worth more than the extra $80 a job.

7. Get the review ask ready for volume

January can produce more reviews than the next four months combined, if every tech asks. Reload the review text on every phone, check the link works, and put the whiteboard up: tech name, jobs, reviews. Across 14,382 garage door listings the median is 27 reviews. A two-truck shop that asks on every January job can add 30 or 40 in six weeks. That is the difference between the median and the map pack.

8. Post the cold-snap message the day the forecast turns

On your Google profile, on Facebook, and by text to your customer list: "Cold snap this week. Springs break in the cold. If your door has been slow or loud, call before it stops. Tune-up and lube [range], same-day spring replacement [range]." One post, the day the forecast changes. People who were ignoring the noise their door makes will call, and a tune-up visit that finds a worn spring is a quoted replacement before the snap.

What this looks like on January 15

If the list is done, a Thursday in mid-January looks like this: the phone rings at 6:50 a.m., the office picks up on ring two, the tech is there by 9 with the right spring on the truck, the price matches what the homeowner read on your site, she leaves a review from the driveway, and the next call is already booked. The company down the road has a voicemail box full of people who called it first and did not wait.

Every item on this list can be done in-house in two weeks. If you would rather have the phone and ads side done for you before the cold hits, missed-call text-back and Google Ads management are both on the free 14-day trial. No card, text or call (385) 534-3558.

Steven Von, Editor
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, garage door companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor