Tate Bros works with the builder who built the entire neighborhood which includes our home. The quality of their work is medium. They lay out their driveways in the most inefficient way possible, though. There are dozens of homes in our neighborhood that have driveways that bottle neck just before reaching the road, while a handful of others stay double wide. They include a "turnaround" in most driveways, which eats yard space, isn't large enough to park a car on, and is generally useless.
But the reason I'm leaving a 1 Star review is because of our personal experience with them. We noticed before we moved in that our driveway was not properly pitched and that water was pooling at a low point near the garage in about a 3 foot diameter dip. We told the builder we would only sign the papers if that issue (and a handful others) got fixed before we moved in. They made good on all the others, but passed us off to Tate to handle the driveway. Unfortunately, the crotchety old man who owns the company came and denied there was a low point. I ran the hose for him and stuck my finger in the inch of water, and he disagreed. Even with the evidence right in his face, he said there was no problem. This was after about a year of phone calls nonstop trying to just get him to come LOOK at the issue. The builder managed to convince him to grind out part of the driveway, which I thought was a bad idea because it would just make it LOWER, but I deferred to them. He said he's been doing this 50 years, knows what he's doing, blah blah.
This was almost 2 years ago. He ground out the driveway, and of course it's worse. The builder tried lowering the yard, but also did a crappy job, so now we have sand and dirt where the water evaporates, an ice sheet in the winter, and crabgrass grows in the sand in the low point if I don't sweep it out every few weeks.
Tate takes no time to design a driveway properly, and when asked to address an issue, they are terrible to deal with. Their website (updated 13 years ago) claims that 75% of their business comes from customer referrals. What a joke. Their contracting buddies refer them because they've been working together for 50 years (according to the builder).
Tate is one of those businesses that has work because of who they know, does crap quality work, and just keeps going because no one knows any better. I hope this yelp review can prevent a few people from getting stuck with them like we did. read more
