“On installation days, I’m there with the client. I’m up there on the roof with our crew checking on everything,” says Israel Villarreal, who runs the Harlingen branch of Daniel’s Roofing.
The company opened in Missouri in 2015, and Villarreal’s partners are still there. He is the active partner in Texas, where the company opened a single location serving the Rio Grande Valley in 2026.
The person who looked over the inspection and handled the deal is usually on the roof while the crew works. Villarreal says he is part of nearly every transaction and most of the conversations around it. When something goes wrong, he wants the homeowner to be able to bring it to him. “I’m there on every job site,” he says. “Worst case you have a problem, hey, I’m the owner and I’m willing to make a decision right then and there to make you happy.”
One homeowner saw that from the ground. After a 20-square reroof finished in a single day, he wrote that either Villarreal or Jesus, who also works with the company, oversaw the five-man crew the entire time.
The same habit shows up before the work starts. Villarreal keeps customers posted through the install and tells them when an issue comes up. He also breaks the estimate down line by line. “Instead of just giving them a blank sheet of paper that says a price for a new roof, we itemize everything so they know exactly what kind of material they’re getting on the roof,” he says. The company is credentialed with its shingle manufacturer, he says, so if a warranty claim ever comes up, his team can walk the customer through it with the manufacturer.
Jobs do not always go as written. “It’s construction,” he says, and things pop up. Change orders happen, and some of those charges land on the homeowner. On other jobs he decides the money matters less than the customer’s trust. “I would much rather take a loss if it means making a customer happy,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll eat this cost just to make you a happy homeowner, and I’ve done that several times.”
He says he sets the example himself and expects the crew to see it. “You can’t expect your team to follow you if you’re not leading in a certain way,” he says.
Most of the work is residential. “Residential is our bread and butter,” Villarreal says, though the company takes commercial jobs too. The branch covers the Valley, out to about 45 miles in either direction. Some jobs mean a drive of an hour or an hour and a half, so his next goal is a second small branch 30 or 40 miles away, in a different community. Branches across Texas would come after that. Selling, he says, is not in the picture.
He likes that the company carries a first name. Daniel’s Roofing, he says, sounds warmer than a corporate roofing name, and he hears it in how people open the conversation when they phone. Most callers ask whether they have reached Daniel, he says, “because it’s already personalized.”