Picture a bollard lying flat on its side after a car has hit it. The post is still in one piece. Around the hole where it used to stand is a ring of broken concrete. The steel was fine. Everything holding it up wasn't.
That picture is the best argument I know against shopping for a bollard on price alone.
Most of a bollard is underground
When people compare bollards, they compare what they can see: the height, the finish, the colour, the shape of the cap. That's the part that matters least when a car hits it.
What stops a vehicle is the connection between the post and the ground. A steel post bolted to a thin slab with short anchors will often shear at the bolts or pull the anchors straight out. A post sitting in a shallow footing can rock out like a loose tooth. The post looks identical in both cases. The result isn't.
At Key Bollards, our core-drilled removable sleeves go 400 to 500 millimetres into the ground and are anchored so the bollard can't be levered out. Where drilling isn't possible, we use surface-mount options and choose them to suit the slab. I mention that not as a sales line but because it's the question I'd want any installer to answer clearly: how deep, into what, and fixed with what?
Steel isn't all the same
Two posts of the same diameter can behave completely differently depending on wall thickness. A thin-walled tube is lighter, cheaper to buy and cheaper to ship. It also dents and folds more easily. Heavier-gauge steel costs more for a reason.
Ours are made in Australia from Australian steel. Whoever you buy from, ask what the post is made of and how thick the wall is. If the answer is vague, that tells you something.
A bollard nobody locks protects nothing
The cheapest way to waste money on a bollard is to buy one that's annoying to use. If it's heavy and awkward to lift out, if the lock sticks in winter, if the key is on a separate ring nobody can find, it will end up leaning against the fence while the car sits unprotected on the driveway.
Good removable bollards should take seconds to unlock, lift and drop back in. The flush cap should sit level so you can drive over the sleeve when the bollard is out. These things sound minor in a showroom. They are the difference between a bollard that is used every night and one that isn't.
The lock is part of the barrier
Some low-cost bollards use keys shared across many units, or a padlock that can be cut in seconds. That's not a barrier against anyone who has bothered to buy the same product, or a pair of bolt cutters.
Every lock we fit is unique by default, with no master key sitting in a warehouse. Where a customer has several bollards, we key them alike so one key runs them all. Whoever you buy from, it's worth asking how many other people's keys open yours.
What failure actually costs
The real cost of a cheap bollard isn't the price difference. It's what happens on the night it fails: a car gone from the driveway, a shopfront to replace, stock lost, a business closed while repairs happen, an insurance claim and an excess. And then you buy the bollard again, properly this time.
I'm not going to put numbers on that, because every site is different. But set against any one of those, the bollard is the cheap part.
Be honest about what you're buying
There's one more thing I think buyers deserve to hear straight. There are impact-tested vehicle barriers built and certified to stop a truck at speed, tested to standards like IWA 14 or ASTM F2656. They're used to protect crowded places from deliberate attack, and they cost accordingly. If that's the risk you're managing, ask any supplier for test certificates and don't accept vague claims.
Most homes, shops and yards are dealing with something different: a car being driven off a driveway, a vehicle reversed into a roller door, a driver who hits the wrong pedal. A well-made steel bollard in a proper footing is built for those jobs. It just needs to be built and fitted properly.
What I'd compare between quotes
- Footing depth and fixing method, in writing.
- Steel type and wall thickness.
- Whether the lock is unique, and how keys are replaced.
- Who does the install: the supplier's own crew or a subcontractor.
- Whether the price is fixed, or an estimate that can grow once the drill hits the slab.
If two quotes differ a lot, the difference is usually in that list. It's worth finding out which part you'd be giving up before it's tested for you.