How to Remove Fence Posts with a Car Jack

If you have some old fence posts on your property that need to be removed, you have multiple methods at your disposal. Although car jacks obviously aren’t designed for this purpose, they can still be used for it.

Today, we’ll take a detailed look at this method so that you can make a final decision on whether or not to use it. Of course, we will also cover in detail how to actually remove fence posts with a car jack.

Is Using a Car Jack the Best Way to Remove Fence Posts?

Although it’s probably not the first method that we would choose to go with, if you have a car jack, and the post is anchored deep into the ground or into a small piece of concrete, then it is definitely something to consider.

With a car jack, you simply create some kind of secure hold on the fence post that the car jack can then push up on, which should loosen the fence post enough so you can just pull it out of the ground. It is a fairly easy method to choose because it really doesn’t require much effort or power. The lever on the car jack is going to do most of the work here.

That being said, there are other methods at your disposal, such as digging the fence post out, breaking the concrete around it, pulling it out using a cinder block and a rebar lever, or even removing it by pulling on it with your vehicle.

How to Remove Fence Posts With a Car jack

Let’s now go over a quick step by step tutorial on exactly how to remove fence posts with a car jack.

Step 1: Put on Your Safety Gear

Although this is not the most dangerous process in the world, you do still want to wear long pants and long sleeves to avoid any scrapes and scratches, as well as eye protection. You don’t want any pieces of wood or metal flying back up in your face when you go to remove the fence post.

Step 2: Loosen the Base on One Side

Although this is not something that all people do, it is a good idea to loosen the base on one side of the fence post, the side opposite of where the car jack is going to be. Therefore, use a shovel to loosen the soil on one side of the fence post. If the fence post is anchored in a small piece of concrete, loosen the soil on the outside of the concrete.

If by any chance the fence post is anchored down in a slab of concrete, you’re going to need to use a sledgehammer, a jackhammer, or a concrete saw to break the concrete slab around the fence post. Car jacks will not be able to remove a fence post from a solid slab of concrete if the concrete has not been broken first.

Step 3: Drill a Hole and Insert Rebar or Use a C-Clamp

You now need to create a surface for the carjacked to push up on. Therefore, you need to use a drill to create a hole through the fence post. If the fence post is made out of wood, a normal drill will do, but if it is made out of metal, you will need a special type of drill and drill bit that have the ability to drill through metal.

Once the hole has been created, insert a relatively long piece of rebar into that hole. Make sure that there is about a foot of space between the fence post and the outside edge of the rebar. The longer this piece of rebar is, the easier it will be to push the fence post up out of the ground using the car jack.

If you don’t want to drill through the post, another option at your disposal is to simply attach a large C-clamp to the post, about a foot up from the ground.

Step 4: Position the Car Jack and Raise It

You are now going to position the car jack under that piece of rebar, at the very edge of it. You will then use the lever on the car jack to lift up the mechanism and push it into the rebar that you put into the fence post. Simply keep pushing on the lever to raise the piece of rebar, and therefore the fence post, until it is loose enough to pull or push it out of the ground.

Step 5: Fill in the Hole

If you so choose, now is the time to fill in the hole that was created by removing the fence post.

Mistakes to Avoid, Tips & Tricks

Let’s quickly go over some tips and tricks to help make this process easier and faster:

• The longer that piece of rebar is, the more leverage you will create, so try to use one that is at least one foot in length.
• Try not to loosen the ground underneath the car jack itself too much, because the car jack needs a good base to rest on.
• Make sure that the lifting mechanism of the car jack is placed securely under the piece of rebar, and that the rebar rests on the center of the lifting mechanism.

Summary

There you have it folks, you should now know exactly how to remove fence posts from the ground using a car jack.