£50, £233 or £900? Why caravan removal quotes vary so wildly
An owner on Mumsnet was quoted £900 to take away a wrecked twin-axle tourer sitting in a field. Her first reaction was that she'd been overcharged. Read the detail she gave, though: no wheels worth trusting, a broken axle, a low-loader needed just to get near it. On those facts, that figure was probably about right. A winch, a flatbed and a skip full of mixed waste isn't a £150 afternoon. The quote wasn't the problem. What she'd been expecting was.
That's the pattern behind almost every complaint about caravan removal quotes. Not that the number is wrong, but that nobody explained why it's that number. Somewhere else, a Newport council resident paid £80 to be rid of an old tourer with no bother at all. Two very different figures, two very different caravans, and the headline price alone doesn't tell you which one you're getting.
The real figures people have actually been quoted
People rarely publish what they paid to get rid of a caravan, so the honest numbers that do exist are scattered across old forum threads and council pages. Here's what's actually on record, with the source it came from.
| Figure | What it was |
|---|---|
| £50 | A scrap merchant's quoted charge. He then failed to turn up (UK caravan forum, 2010) |
| £80 | Newport council's standard disposal fee, no discount available (MoneySavingExpert, 2005) |
| £80 to £150 | One owner's estimate for having a tourer removed (UK caravan forum, 2008) |
| £150 | What one owner offered to pay a breaker to take theirs. Still turned away |
| £233.60 | Central Bedfordshire Council's published fee for disposing of an end-of-life caravan |
| £900 | Quote to remove a wrecked twin-axle tourer from a field (Mumsnet, 2022) |
Read across that table and the range looks chaotic until you notice what it's actually tracking. It's the amount of work the caravan is, not how big the number sounds.
Why "caravan removal" can mean two completely different jobs
The single biggest swing in any quote is whether the caravan can still be towed. A caravan that rolls, steers straight and won't shed a panel on the way to us is a tow job: hook up, drive off, done in an hour. A caravan that can't be trusted to move under its own wheels, in other words one that's not towable, is a different job entirely. Someone has to winch it, load it, or break it apart where it stands. A static caravan never enters this equation at all: it's never towable, so the price always starts from the breaking-and-clearing end of the scale. Council figures like the £80 Newport fee and the £233.60 Central Bedfordshire charge sit at the towable end. The £900 field job sits at the other.
Almost nobody researching this for the first time knows that distinction exists before they start ringing round. It's why a quote twice the size of your neighbour's isn't necessarily a worse deal. It might just be a worse caravan.
The other things that move the price
Once towability is settled, the rest of the gap comes down to access, contents, distance and axles.
A caravan on a hardstanding by the road is a five-minute job to reach. One down a farm track, behind a locked gate, or across soft ground needs extra kit and extra time, and that shows up in the number. A caravan stripped bare costs less to clear than one still holding furniture, bedding, gas bottles and whatever's accumulated in the cupboards over a decade. Distance matters too: if the low-loader has to stop fifty yards short of where the caravan actually sits, someone's carrying or winching the difference by hand. And a twin-axle caravan means more weight than a single, which usually means a harder tow, a harder break-up, or a different vehicle to do either.
None of that is guesswork on our side. It's exactly what we ask about before we give you a number.
Why the cheapest quote is often the one that never happens
Look again at that £50 line in the table above. That wasn't a bargain, it was a no-show. The forum post that recorded it describes the merchant making "an excuse about needing a different lorry" and never coming back. A separate thread describes a near-identical pattern: an owner rings, says clearly it's a touring caravan, drives it over, and is then told they only take motor caravans, before being offered £50 to leave it anyway. The owner's own words: "good scam or what?"
A quote that's far below everyone else's usually isn't a sign you've found a better operator. It's usually a sign nobody has actually looked at the job, and the real price is waiting for you on the day. Sometimes it never arrives at all.
What a fair quote should actually be based on
The only honest way to price a caravan nobody has stood in front of is from clear photos, not a description down the phone. We ask for images of the outside, the tow hitch and wheels, and anything damaged: dents, damp staining, a sagging floor. A caravan described as "fine" on a call has turned out, more than once, to have a collapsing base or missing wheels once someone actually looks. Photos catch that before a collection day gets wasted, not after. See why it's worth being exact when you first ask for a quote for more on what to send us and why.
What we charge, and why
We don't quote a single flat figure for "a caravan", because as the table above shows, that number means nothing without knowing which caravan you've got. Here's how ours breaks down, and it's priced to be the cheapest structure you'll find for genuinely comparable work.
| Situation | What's involved | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Touring caravan, towable | It has its wheels, tows safely, and will survive the journey without breaking up | £350–£450 |
| Touring caravan, not towable | We break it up on site, or move it on a tow bed. Either way it's the same caravan-breaking job. You'll need to arrange your own skip, 6–8 yards | £500–£850 |
| Static caravan | We break it up on site and take the waste away. If we can burn the timber on site, the price drops by a few hundred pounds | £1,800–£3,980 |
That £350 to £850 spread on tourers is exactly the towable-versus-not-towable split described above. Static removal costs more because it's a bigger structure with more to break down and clear, not because the pricing works differently for the sake of it. Every figure we give is confirmed against photos and the actual condition of your caravan, never against a guess.
Book quickly once you've got a quote
We're heavily booked most of the year, so once you've got a figure you're happy with, book within 24 hours if you can. Leave it much longer and the next available collection slot can end up weeks out rather than days. Some quotes ask for a small deposit to hold that slot; here's why if that's new to you.
Ready to find out what your caravan actually costs to remove? Start your quote with Scrap My Caravan and send us clear photos to get an accurate figure first time, or read more about caravan disposal more broadly.
Frequently asked questions
Why did my quote change once someone actually saw the caravan?
Because the first figure was based on what we were told, and the final one is based on what's actually there. If the photos show more damage than described, a floor that's softer than expected, or a chassis rustier than it looked, that changes which job it is, towable or not, and the price follows. Sending clear photos upfront is what stops that gap opening in the first place.
Is it worth chasing the cheapest quote I can find?
Not on its own. As the £50 example above shows, an unusually low number is often a sign nobody's actually assessed the job yet, and that gap tends to surface on collection day, if the operator turns up at all. A quote built on real photos and a clear towable or not-towable answer is worth more than a lower one built on guesswork.
Do council disposal fees cover the same thing as a removal quote?
Not quite. Figures like the £233.60 Central Bedfordshire charge or the £80 Newport fee are what a council charges to take a caravan off your hands once it's already at a collection point. They don't include getting it there. A removal quote covers reaching wherever your caravan actually is, which is why the two numbers aren't directly comparable.