The garage door; most people don’t even think about this ubiquitous little piece of equipment, but think about it for a minute right now. Your garage door is either manual or automatic, but think about how easy it is to open and close. One of the reasons it’s so easy to open and close is because garage doors have tracks. Garage door tracks guide the path of the garage door itself and make it seamless in operation.

In the early days, of course, people didn’t have cars. Instead, they traveled by horse and buggy. Once cars began to become commonplace in the early part of the 20th century, public parking garages became the norm, whereby people parked their cars in a public space and paid a monthly fee. As cars became more a part of everyday life, people began to figure out ways to park their cars near their residences, or even right on their properties. Thus the first incarnations of the modern garage were born.

The first garage doors used the same basic mechanisms carriage houses did, with strap hinges and doors that opened outwards. These doors were cumbersome and awkward to open, hinges broke off, screws pulled out, and they were very hard to open when it snowed.

New designs were inventing, including the first sliding doors, but side room was needed to open these doors. The first garage door tracks to appear were on these sliding door designs, though, so that doors could slide easily open.

Clarence D. Johnson invented the first “lift” type garage door in 1921. It rolled in tracks much like today’s overhead doors. These doors were heavy and needed to be suspended over the head to lift them, with extension springs and pulleys providing the lift. Most of today’s garage door designs are similar to Johnson’s “lift” design of 1921. These garage door tracks are horizontal, with a radius, and they’re mounted to the ceiling and header in the “back hang” position. Most garage door tracks are either two or three inches in profile size and are reinforced so that the horizontal track is stiffer.

There are lots of different garage door track configurations to choose from, and you’ll need an appropriate one for your particular setup. Most often, “single car” or “double car” tracks are used in residential locations, with double car track of a little heavier gauge and a longer angle so that it’s stiffer. Vertical track (as opposed to horizontal track) is lighter than horizontal track, with additional safety features like knockout lock holes.

Horizontal, or vertical?

The lighter track can twist if it’s not adequately supported or if it’s used in very windy conditions, while horizontal track is sturdier and subject to more frequent loading. When you’re considering replacing your garage door tracks, you have to be careful to choose a track whereby rollout is not going to happen; rollout happens when wear begins to occur and the track curl opens up so that the rollers can fall out of the track. Ask your door’s manufacturer for data so that you can choose the proper garage door tracks for your particular situation.