How to Move Your Mobile Home: The Basics of how a Mobile Home is Moved

Many people are amazed when they see a mobile home, which can be up to 80’ long and 18’ wide, being moved down the highway.  How can they do that?  Well, believe it or not, they were designed to be moved.  Unlike when someone moves a stick-built house that was never intended to be moved down the highway, every mobile home comes off the factory floor on wheels and ready for its first outing.  The design has been tested and refined almost continuously since the first mobile homes were engineered in the 1940s. The way a mobile home is built, and ultimately transported, begins with the chassis.  Just like a car, a mobile home has two or more steel beams that run the entire length of the home, from front to back.  To these beams are connected the axles and wheels on the underside, and the floor on the top side.  At the front of these beams, at one end, is the “tongue”- the “hitch” of the mobile home that the transporter pulls from and connects to his or her truck.  The tongue looks like a huge steel “V”, with the hitch connecting at the sharp point of the “V”. One of the first differences you will see with a lot of mobile homes is how many axles and wheels they have, and where they are positioned.  Every manufacturer seems to have their own design.  The number of axles and wheels, logically, is somewhat determined by the weight of the home; the heavier the load, the more wheels to spread that weight.  But often you will find some manufacturers use more axles and wheels than others, so you should not be concerned at how many your home has; as long as it is the number that it was intended to have by the manufacturer. Mobile homes, although they were designed to be moved, were not designed for ease of move, and many of the interior, and exterior, features do not move well without reinforcement or removal.  Like a spacecraft being towed to the launching pad, moving the mobile home is not good for it.  The home would rather not be moved at all, even though it has the basic capability. There are several basic steps to moving a mobile home.  This will give you an overall idea of the process. By Frank Rolfe Frank Rolfe is a mobile home park investor and owns over 100 parks with his partner Dave Reynolds. Frank also leads regular Mobile Home Park Investing Bootcamps through the MobileHomeUniversity.com.