Mobile-home / trailer demolition in the Jersey Shore

Safe disconnect, teardown, and haul-away of a single- or double-wide mobile home or trailer.

If this is the job you've got, you're not the first homeowner on the Jersey Shore to need it gone.

How this normally shows up

• An old mobile home or trailer you need removed from a lot or park
• A single- or double-wide too far gone to move or sell
• A unit you are clearing to place a new home or sell the land
• A trailer with utilities still hooked up that needs to be safely disconnected first

How it's normally handled

The crew disconnects power, water, and any propane or septic, then dismantles or crushes the unit and hauls it off, tires, frame, and all. Ground-level cleanup and a debris haul finish the job. Most single units are cleared in a day or two.

A mobile home is a haul-out as much as a teardown. The unit is stripped, cut into sections and trucked, and the pad, piers, tie-downs and skirting are their own line of work. In a park, the operator's own rules and schedule usually govern access, so the co-ordination is as much of the job as the machine time.

$2,000 – $8,000 — typical range, not a quote. What your job actually costs can only be settled by a registered crew that walks the site and looks at it.

Single-wide versus double-wide is not simply double

A double-wide is two units joined on site, so the marriage line has to be separated before either half moves, and it is roughly twice the roof, twice the frame and twice the disposal. But it also usually means a bigger pad, more tie-downs, and more added-on structure - the porches, decks, sunrooms and skirted storage that accumulate around a unit somebody has lived in for twenty years.

Those additions are frequently a larger share of the job than people expect, and they are rarely mentioned when the enquiry comes in. Walk the whole footprint before you accept a number, not just the unit.

In a park, the operator sets the schedule

This is the biggest single difference between a park removal and one on private land. The park operator's rules govern when trucks can come in, which route they take, where equipment may stage, and often what condition the lot has to be left in. Some parks require the pad left intact for the next unit; some require it removed. Some allow one day of machine noise; some allow a week.

None of that is negotiable by the crew and all of it changes the price. Get the park's requirements in writing before you take quotes, because a crew pricing without them is pricing a different job.

What is under and around the unit

The unit is the visible half. Underneath there is some combination of concrete pad or runners, piers, anchors and tie-down straps, skirting, steps, and the utility connections - and each is its own line of work. Asking to have the mobile home removed does not automatically include any of them.

Utilities are the long pole. Power, water, gas or propane, and sewer or septic all have to be disconnected and released before the demolition permit issues: in New Jersey the owner notifies every utility with a service connection and each has to confirm its equipment, meters and regulators included, has been removed, sealed or plugged safely. Propane tanks go back to the supplier rather than into a container. On a lot with its own septic, decommissioning the tank is separate work again.

Pre-1980 units cost more, and it is worth knowing why

Manufactured homes built before the early 1980s can contain asbestos in floor tile, sheet flooring and adhesives, in furnace and duct components, and in some wall and ceiling board. Federal rules on asbestos in demolition apply, which means a survey before the work and licensed abatement if it comes back positive.

Given how much of Ocean County's manufactured housing dates from the 1960s and 70s - through Manchester, Whiting, Berkeley, Barnegat and Lakehurst especially - this is a normal step on these jobs rather than an exceptional one. Assume the survey. Be pleased if it comes back clean.

The steel comes back the other way

One genuine offset: a mobile home sits on a welded steel chassis, and there is aluminium in the siding and windows on many units. Both have scrap value, and a crew that separates and weighs in the metal rather than landfilling it is recovering money on the job. On a double-wide that is not trivial.

It is worth asking how a quote treats scrap, because some crews price net of it and some do not. Two numbers that look far apart can be the same number underneath.

Where this work actually is in Ocean County

Manufactured housing in this county is concentrated rather than spread. The active-adult and manufactured-home communities through Manchester Township and Whiting, the parks in Berkeley Township around Bayville, Lakehurst, and the lots off the Route 539 and Route 9 corridors in Barnegat are where these jobs come from.

That matters for scheduling more than for price. A crew that already works those communities knows the operators, knows which parks want the pad left and which want it gone, and is not learning the rules on your job.