Cantilever or Ground Track for a Sliding Gate
Two Genuinely Different Machines
A ground track gate rolls on wheels along a rail fixed into the driveway surface, carrying its weight directly down into the ground beneath. A cantilever gate touches nothing in the opening: it hangs from roller assemblies mounted on posts to one side, with a counterbalanced tail extending back beyond the last roller. Nothing crosses the drive at any point.
What Each One Costs You in Space
A ground track gate needs a run alongside the boundary roughly equal to the opening width. A cantilever needs that plus its counterbalance tail, which is commonly around half the opening again. On a sixteen foot opening the difference is about eight feet of additional clear boundary, and that is frequently the fact that makes the decision on a constrained site.
The Case for a Ground Track
It is mechanically simple, the whole gate is shorter for a given opening, and the weight goes straight into the ground rather than into a pair of posts. That makes it well suited to heavy gates and to sites where the boundary run is tight. It also tends to cost less, because the counterbalance steel and the heavier posts a cantilever needs are not in the bill.
The Case for a Cantilever
Nothing crosses the driveway, so there is no rail to trap sand, leaves and grit, nothing to catch a low car, and no groove that fills with water. On coastal sites that immunity to debris is the argument that usually wins. It also copes with a driveway that is not perfectly level across the opening, because the gate never touches the surface it passes over.
Where the Failures Show Up
A ground track gate that is neglected does not fail suddenly, it gets progressively harder to move as the rail fills, and on an automated gate the operator starts drawing more current until it trips. A cantilever gate's wear is concentrated in the roller assemblies, which carry the entire weight of the leaf at two points and are the item to inspect. Neither is maintenance free; they simply ask for attention in different places.