Mobile Office & Modular Space: The 2026 Stat Sheet

The mobile office industry rarely writes its own numbers down in one place. This is our running stat sheet for 2026: industry-scale figures where solid public estimates exist, and our own network data where nobody else publishes at all.

The market in four lines

• Industry scale: US commercial modular construction is a multibillion-dollar industry; trade-association reporting (Modular Building Institute) has put permanent and relocatable buildings combined in the low tens of billions annually, with relocatable space (the fleet world this site lives in) a multi-billion-dollar slice of it.
• Fleet model: most units live as rental fleet, cycling between projects for a decade or more before refurbishment and resale, which is why used stock is both plentiful and good.
• Demand mix: construction leads, education follows (see the portable classroom report), then government, healthcare, retail, and events in the long tail.
• Direction: every structural trend (mega-projects, disaster recovery, school capacity, housing-adjacent services) points the same way: more temporary space, not less.

The stat that explains the industry

Price per square foot falls fast as units grow, which is why double-wides dominate anywhere people meet. Derived directly from our 2026 price index midpoints:

An 8×20 rents around $2.34 per square foot per month at the midpoint; a 24×60 double-wide runs about $0.66. Same fleet, same depots: the haul and the setup cost roughly the same whether the box is small or large, so footage gets cheaper the more of it you tow in. The practical corollaries: upsizing one notch is usually the best value decision in the industry, and “two small trailers” is almost never cheaper than one bigger one.

Three more numbers worth keeping

• 3 to 10 business days: typical metro delivery for in-stock singles, the industry’s real speed limit (set by trucking and site readiness, not manufacturing).
• 10 to 25%: the usual discount for committing to a 12+ month term versus month-to-month, the quietest saving in the price list.
• 40 to 60% of new: where the used market clears for serviceable units, which is why the rent-or-buy math flips around year two.

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