Mobile Home Moving Fail

Here’s another mobile home moving fail story for everyone. Complete fail, long single-wide stuck in a ravine when Phil gets there.

⏱️⏱️Chapters⏱️⏱️
00:00 Intro
00:12 Got a call that a mobile home mover was hung up
00:40 His rollers are $1500 18 years ago, not something you want to loan out
01:20 Way out past Elkins, AR stuck in a ravine
01:30 70′ single wide trailer
01:55 Wheels on the ravine side are hanging off the road
02:25 Under the trailer and mobile home, the mover had 3 guys working
02:40 Trailer was above their head almost 7′ high
03:00 Telling the 3 guys to get out of the ravine
03:15 Jacked the house up, had to get more stuff to do it
03:45 Ended up moving it 3′ at a time 7 times
04:15 Had to jack it up 2 more times because it kept dropping back into the ravine
04:30 20′ after the ravine he couldn’t go anywhere
04:50 Murphy’s law was in full effect
05:00 Normal routine is the driver drives the route, checks it out before they do the move
05:40 The movers had to pay a guy for the tree they needed to cut
06:00 Back the next day in a snow storm
06:25 Had to go straight up through a ditch to get to the property
07:00 Day 2 and running out of daylight again
07:30 The mover decided Phil was in charge
08:00 Trying to get the mobile home up a steep hill and set in place
08:30 Have another heavy duty truck to pull the mobile home, but have to keep it from flipping over
09:00 Moving the mobile home, moving truck 7-10′ at a time up the hill
09:30 Stopping for the night just to dangerous to continue
10:10 Three and half days to move the house and set it up

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This was about 18 years ago. I got a call that a mobile home mover was hung up and needed my rollers to pull out of there and, and get out of the situation he’s in. I was like I don’t, you know, I don’t normally they wanted just to borrow my rollers. And I said, No, that’s 1500 dollars. I’m not doing that, but I’ll go with it and charge 100 bucks to pull up to 100 bucks an hour, if I have 2 guys. If it’s just me it’s going to be 60 bucks an hour.

Whatever. He needs help. He’s hung up. He’s blocking the road. And so this place is way out in a place called Japtain, which I don’t think it’s much of a town. It’s past Japtain. So I go out, all the way to Elkins and then 15, 20 miles and then another three or four miles back into the, down this dirt road, and I pull up around the corner like a right hand turn, and then there’s a hard left.

And then that hard left of the hard left is a 70 foot single wide mobile. And it was hung up on the bank on the far side of the circle, switch back, and going around a ravine, was hung up on the other side, and then the tail of it was digging into the ground. It was so hung up. Now the wheels on the ravine side were hanging off of the ravine and he had… So I walk up.

I couldn’t see all that. I walk up looking down one side. The trailer was sprinkling all up and I could hear the truck grabbing and trying to move. It wasn’t moving, still trying to move. So I go around the other side and I could see the truck turned trailer almost wrinkled up on that side. But underneath it, he had three guys in the ravine trying to shove stuff underneath the wheels so that the trailer could roll over stuff inside this ravine.

And it was above their head, almost seven foot high. And they couldn’t stacks of up and get falling is so steep in that ravine. They couldn’t he says, Hey, he was yelling at the driver, which I knew him. It’s like hey, they need help down in there. I said they ain’t getting it from me. I’m not going down in that ravine underneath that mobile home. You guys need to get out of there. They’re look at him looking at me.

I said, I’m not, I am not getting down in the ravine. Y’all need to get out of there. Come up here and help me jack this house up. So we jacked the house up. It took a little bit because I didn’t have enough. I had to go back, get more stuff. We jacked it up, put it on rollers, took the four wheel drive van, it was all jacked up. It was my uncles.

Went, put a winch on it, pulled it over three feet. Wasn’t anywhere near done, built it way up again, pulled it over another three feet. Wasn’t anywhere near enough. We ended up doing it like seven times, pull it over three foot at a time. With these Perfectaline rollers. Finally, got the wheels on the, on the dirt road, but it was still dragging in the back.

So, I had to jack it up again, build up underneath the wheels. All this stuff, they had blocks, wood and everything down in that ravine. And put it underneath the wheels so that the back end wouldn’t drag. So we did that and then he took off and it dropped off into the ravine again. We had to go back out there, jack it up, and roll it over two more times and get it straightened out.

So he pulls up probably 20 feet after you get down that ravine. And he couldn’t go anywhere because the trailer was bigger than the trees on the side of the road. It’s a 16 wide, so the trees literally had to be cut down. So they started cutting them both sides of the road. Cut trees, cut trees, and cut trees, we got another 40’, I was talkin… I walked up to him and I said: Didn’t you drive this route before you come out here?

Because the the routine is for the drivers they drive out there, check out the route, see if you know what needs to be done and what they have to deal with. He says Yeah, I came out here, but I was drunk, so I didn’t me and the guy I was with, both of us were drunk. I don’t remember all this. Well, we got up to some guy’s house cutting trees on both sides, dragging them off. We get up to some guy’s house.

We haven’t been an 1/8th of a mile yet. He said, No, you are not going to cut my favorite tree in my yard. So they had to pay him for that tree. And it was nighttime before that all happened. By that time I called all the rest of the guys out help me. And we got nighttime, so we got to come back. By that time

The road was blocked. They had to go around. Nobody could get through. Okay. The next day it was snowing hard core. We got two or three chainsaws, three or four guys. In addition to the three or four guys with the driver. And we cut trees all the way down that road. Whenever we got to where they we had to go off the road, it was uphill to the right.

There was no way to get there. We had to go straight up through a ditch. And he goes, I think I could just drive through that ditch, I could just, you know, go run over with the wheels. I said no you can’t use this night because you might still be allowed. You can’t not it will not happen. It’s snowing, wet, nasty.

He didn’t get anywhere. And he sunk the truck and the trailer on the side of the hill. So these people were pretty impatient. Now, this second day and we’re running out of daylight again, I had a friend, a long time family friend, that had a 1940s two ton truck with a big winch. I mean a big one, old truck. I mean like round fenders and round hood, come up and he says, Who’s in charge here?

I almost said his name. He pointed to me. It didn’t matter that there was a bunch of other people that had their own business and everything that were there now. We’re almost nine people trying to build up this mobile home. I said jack it here, not there that kind of stuff. They were jacking the wrong place. Build up underneath these wheels. He goes, pointed to me, he goes like. He goes, Where do you want to put this mobile home?

And it was way up the top side of this field, up a steep hill. I mean steep. He said, Come with me. So I’ll walk up a steep hill. Slogging with muddy shoes wet from being in the ditch. He says, I want you to tell me when I’m getting too far up. I’m going to set my truck right here. I’m going to put blocks behind it.

Got to pull the winch up on a pull the truck and stand it on it’s end, but I can’t hardly tell. When I’m going to flip over. So, I need you to stand up here. Tell me what I can get up to about this point where you think you might start rolling over fall over backwards. Well, all right. So, they got hooked on hooked on to the.

The big old winch, that big old PTO drive winch. He’d stand that truck. That truck up. And then he’d let off on it. Just the weight of the truck being up the air pull the mobile home mover truck and the trailer probably seven, eight feet, ten feet at a time. We did that over and over. We got it dark. We got the mobile home up on the side of the hill.

We done rolled two tires off. He goes What are we going to do now? He goes We want it this way. The owners. So now, we’re… He says We’ve going to do this tomorrow. Man, I can’t. I can’t do this in the dark anymore. It’s too dangerous. So we get back the next day and set the house up on the, on the hillside. And they said, We will level up the house.

You guys don’t got to do that. But the house was leaning like this on the side of the hill. I said, Ma’am, you do you know that this is going to be a real dangerous job? Yeah, we can do this. I said ok. No, they had to call us back snow on the ground. Jack the thing up. Lots and lots and lots of blocks. Way back in there effectively was three and a half days to get that house moved and setup.

That is what happens when you, the people that are not very professional that are supposed to be professional. I got lots of stories. I’ll tell you some more another time.

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