Fence removal gets quoted like an afterthought, and that’s exactly how it loses money. The calculator above prices it the clean way, by the linear foot, with an example rate of $5. What that rate has to cover is the part people underestimate.
The footings are the job
Pulling pickets and rails off a dead fence is minutes per section. The work is below grade: every post sits in a concrete footing, and a fence has a lot of posts. You either pull each post with its concrete, which is heavy, slow work with a jack or a machine, or you cut posts flush and abandon the footings. Cutting flush only works when nothing replaces the fence on that line, because old footings sit exactly where the new post holes need to go. If a rebuild is coming, the concrete comes out, and your removal rate needs to know that before you shake hands.
Haul-off is not free
Old fence is heavy, splintered, and full of nails, and the concrete footings add weight fast. Somebody pays dump fees on all of it, and that somebody should not be you by accident. The example add-on above uses $150 flat for haul-away; whether that covers your trailer, your time, and your dump’s gate fee is a question to answer with your own numbers before you set the rate.
Quoting tear-out with a rebuild
Most removal happens attached to a new fence, and the example rates give you two clean ways to show it: a standalone removal line at $5 per linear foot, or the tear-out add-on at $4 per linear foot riding on the rebuild quote. Either way, 150 feet of tear-out at the example $5 rate is $750, and that money quietly disappears if you wave it into the fence price to make the total look friendlier. Itemize it: removal line, new fence line, gates. The customer sees where the money goes, and you stop donating demo work. The full method is in how to price a fence job, and the rebuild side of the quote lives on the wood privacy fence calculator.
Tear-out plus rebuild is two calculations, and the customer wants one number on the phone. PriceDesk runs both with your own rates and texts the itemized total, free for 14 days.