How Brennan Roofing Co San Francisco Was Born in San Francisco
We came to San Francisco because we kept hearing the same story from homeowners in neighborhoods like the Sunset, the Richmond, and Bernal Heights. They’d hired a roofer. They’d been quoted one number. Then the crew showed up, tore off shingles, and suddenly the price changed. New plywood. New flashing. “We didn’t see that coming.” The homeowner was standing in their own driveway, looking at a mess, holding a bill they never agreed to, with no good options.
That moment, repeated across too many kitchens and too many front porches in this city, is what brought Brennan Roofing here. We believed San Francisco deserved a roofer who puts the price in writing before any work starts, and who doesn’t move that number when the crew arrives. A roofer who treats the fog, the salt air, and the steep roofs of this city as a craft, not a quick transaction. So we built our local team around one idea: do it by the book, the first time, and stand behind it in writing. It’s not complicated. It’s just rare.
Travis Oakley’s Personal Connection to the Roofing Trade
Travis Oakley didn’t grow up dreaming about roofing. He grew up working with his hands and learning that a job either gets done right or it gets redone. The first time he climbed onto a roof, it was a flat commercial building on a hot afternoon. He remembers the smell of hot tar, the weight of the felt roll, and the way the whole city looked different from up there. Below, no one noticed the roof. Up there, it was the whole job. That stuck with him.
Over the years, Travis learned the trade the way it actually gets learned: standing next to people who’d been doing it longer, in weather that didn’t care about your schedule, on roofs that had been done wrong by someone else and needed to be done over. He saw what happens when flashing is installed backwards, when underlayment gets skipped to save time, when nobody checks the nailing pattern. He tore off roofs that were barely five years old and already failing. And he made a decision: he would rather lose a bid than win a job by cutting a corner he’d have to explain later.
What gets him out of bed now isn’t the view from the ridge line, though that’s still good. It’s the standard. Roofs done to standard and inspected like it matters, because it does. That’s the whole thing. If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be building something else, because the satisfaction is the same: start with materials, follow a plan, and end with something that holds up. But roofing is where he landed, and San Francisco is where he chose to stay.
Meet Travis Oakley – The Person Behind Every Job
Travis Oakley is the Owner & Founder of the San Francisco branch of Brennan Roofing. He leads the local crew that serves San Francisco, Daly City, San Bruno, and the surrounding Bay Area. His background is in hands-on construction, and his training comes from years of working on real roofs in real weather, learning the trade the way it should be learned: slow, careful, and by the book.
What makes Travis different is simple. He doesn’t treat roofing like a sales job. He treats it like a craft, and he treats your house like it was his own. When he walks a roof, he’s not looking for a way to inflate the estimate. He’s looking for what’s actually wrong, and he tells you the truth about it.
Outside of work, Travis is the kind of person who notices how things are put together. A fence, a deck, a roofline. He’s always looking. And the thing he values most, on a job and off, is doing what you said you’d do. That’s the commitment he brings to every homeowner we serve.
Our Promise to San Francisco Homeowners
We work to The Garrison Code, and it’s not a marketing slogan. It’s a list of five things we actually do. Show up inside the window we gave you. Price in writing before any work starts. Do it by the book, the first time. Leave the site clean and squared away. Stand behind the work for a full year.
Each one of those came from a homeowner’s real frustration. The estimate that moved. The crew that never called. The nails left in the yard. The roof that leaked six months later and nobody came back. We don’t want to be that company, and we aren’t. Our work is guaranteed in writing for a full year, and if it fails in that time, we come back and make it right at no charge. That’s not a gesture. That’s the deal.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed: Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires.
- Insured & bonded: We carry the coverage homeowners should expect before anyone sets foot on their property.
- Local experience: This branch was built by people who know San Francisco roofs, not by a corporate training manual.
- Strong local reputation: Homeowners across the Bay Area keep calling us back, and they send their neighbors.
- Written guarantee: Every job is covered by The Garrison Standard, in writing, for a full year.
Here’s why that matters. When you hire a roofer, you’re letting people onto your house, into your home’s structure, and you’re betting real money that they’ll do it right. A license means they’re accountable. Insurance means you’re protected. A written guarantee means the company has skin in the game after the check clears. Those aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re the minimum for anyone we’d let work on our own roof.
Rooted in San Francisco
San Francisco isn’t a backdrop for us. It’s the reason we do the work the way we do. The marine layer that hangs over the Outer Sunset demands a different approach than the heat out in Walnut Creek. The salt air off Ocean Beach eats at metal flashing in ways that inland roofs never face. And the older housing stock, from the Victorians in Noe Valley to the stucco boxes in the Excelsior, means every roof is its own puzzle. We know these neighborhoods because we work in them. That’s the point of being local.
Written by Travis Oakley, Owner & Founder at Brennan Roofing Co San Francisco, serving San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area since 2000.