Des Moines, Kent
Des Moines homes date to a median year of 1974, a decade ahead of the wider service area's stock. See what that means for your rollers and track, from a company based five miles away in Kent.
Pricing
We don't post a flat number here because roller jobs vary more than people expect. A straight roller swap on a door that's otherwise sound is a small job.
But in Des Moines, where the median house went up in 1974, we often open the garage and find the rollers aren't the only thing worn - the track itself is bent, dented, or was never realigned after decades of the door riding on hardened, dry-lubricated wheels.
That turns a roller call into a roller-and-track call, and the price follows the parts, not a script. What we can tell you: nylon rollers with sealed bearings cost more per unit than steel, but they run quieter and don't need the periodic lubrication steel rollers demand.
On a door built to 1970s spec, upgrading all ten rollers at once usually costs less overall than doing it in twos and threes over several years, since each truck visit carries its own labor. We'll give you the number for your door once we're looking at the track and the rollers together, not before.
One honest limit: if your track brackets are also rusted through or bent past what a rework will hold, roller replacement won't fix the noise or the binding. That's a track and bracket job, and we'll say so instead of billing you for rollers that won't solve it.
Watch-outs
On a house built around 1974, the rollers on the original door are almost always steel with a plain bearing, not sealed. Over fifty years, the grease dries out, the bearing seizes, and the roller stops turning freely in the track - it starts dragging and wearing a flat spot instead of rolling.
That flat spot is what makes the thump you hear every time the door passes that point in the track. A second failure mode we see more in this older stock: the roller stem bends slightly where it meets the hinge, usually from years of a door running slightly out of square.
A bent stem lets the roller ride against the edge of the track rather than centered in the channel, which chews up both the roller and the track edge at the same time. Replacing the roller without straightening or shimming the hinge just repeats the wear.
Worst case on an older door: the track itself has worn a groove wide enough that a new roller still rattles in it. At that point roller replacement alone doesn't quiet the door - the track needs resetting or replacing, and we'll tell you that up front rather than sell you rollers that won't hold the fix.
On the truck
We carry both steel and nylon rollers in the common stem lengths and roller diameters used on doors from the 1960s through the 2000s, since that's the range this whole area falls into. Sealed 10-ball bearing nylon rollers are what we install by default unless a customer specifically wants steel to match an older door for appearance or cost reasons.
We also carry track shims, hinge sets, and short sections of standard track on the truck, because on a door built around 1974 the roller rarely fails alone - the hinge or the track has usually taken some wear too, and driving back to Kent for a part turns a one-visit job into two. What we don't stock on the truck is full custom track for oversized or nonstandard door openings; that gets ordered ahead of the appointment once we've measured on site.
Local causes
Des Moines' housing stock centers on a median build year of 1974, a decade older than the median of 1983 across the wider Kent service area.
That gap matters for rollers specifically: doors from the mid-1980s on more often came with wider track brackets and, later, nylon rollers as standard. A 1974 door is more likely running the narrower two-inch track and steel rollers that were standard before that shift.
Add the region's cold, moderate climate and you get a specific failure pattern here: steel roller bearings that were fine all summer stiffen up as temperatures drop, and a door that's dragged slightly all year suddenly binds hard on a cold morning. That's usually the point homeowners call - not because anything broke overnight, but because the cold exposed wear that had been building for years.
We don't have a count of how many Des Moines doors are still on original hardware versus already upgraded, so we won't guess at a percentage. What we can say is that age alone, on a door this old, is reason enough to check the rollers before they fail completely and take a cable or the opener down with them.
Downtime
A straight roller swap, once we're on site with the right parts, doesn't take the door out of service for long - the door stays operable through most of the job since we work roller by roller rather than pulling the whole panel down. Where it runs longer is when the track needs straightening or a section needs replacing alongside the rollers, since that requires taking more tension off the door at once.
We travel from Kent to reach Des Moines, about five miles, so factor that into scheduling rather than expecting a same-morning fix for a same-morning call. We don't have a stated response-time figure for this area, so we're not going to invent one here.
DIY or pro
Swapping a single roller on a door that's still under spring tension is not a job to learn on your own garage. The rollers nearest the bottom brackets sit close to the cables and the spring system, and pulling the wrong one while the door is closed can drop the section on your hand.
If you're comfortable with basic tools and want to handle it yourself, the safer starting point is the top rollers with the door open and blocked, since they carry no cable tension.
Steel rollers on a 1974-era door often come out easier than you'd expect once the retaining clip is off, but check the track for scoring or a widened groove before you put a new roller into a worn channel - a new roller in a bad track will just wear out again in months.
Where we'd tell you to stop and call rather than continue: any roller near the bottom bracket, any door with a visibly bent track, or any door where the springs look original. That's not us protecting the job - that's where an amateur roller swap turns into an emergency room visit.
Questions
Houses here have a median build year of 1974, a decade older than the broader service area's 1983 median. That means a lot of original doors are still running steel rollers on narrower track, hardware that predates the sealed nylon rollers common on doors built from the mid-80s on. Age on that hardware adds up.
No. We're based in Kent, about five miles away, and we drive out to Des Moines for jobs. There's no local depot here, so scheduling accounts for that drive rather than assuming a same-hour arrival.
On a door from the 1970s, if one steel roller has failed from dried-out grease, the others are usually close behind - they were installed the same year and have seen the same wear. Doing them together in one visit usually costs less than repeat truck visits over a few years.
If the bearing hasn't seized and the roller still turns freely, lubrication can buy time. But once a steel roller bearing has dried out and started wearing flat, oil won't restore the roller's shape - it'll quiet the noise for a week and come back.
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Kent Garage Door Co repairs and installs garage doors, springs and openers in Kent, WA and the surrounding area.
