Be careful who you let hook your trailer up

[Robert_in_NY]

We have a construction business and run dump trailers to haul material away. Yesterday one of our workers hooked up the trailer to the F-250 and we looked and all the wires and cables were hooked up right as well as the lock being down and pinned to hold on the ball. My father took the truck and in the middle of town the trailer came off. Luckily the breakaway popped and stopped the trailer so it didn't hit the truck but it destroyed the jackstand and now we have quite a bit of welding to do to fix it for a new jack. Our worker when he lowered the trailer on to the ball never opened the lock to begin with and just set the hitch on the ball. It is amazing it made it 6 miles before it came off and luckily only the jackstand was hurt. There was over a ton of material in the trailer which could have been a mess had the safety cables broke or the breakaway didn't work but the safety devices worked like they were suppose to. Another thing that helped was that we were in town where the speed limit was 30mph instead of being on the road at 60mph. We learned to always double check the connections now and hopefully it will never happen again. Take care.

[fishman]

No good.

I've seen this happen quite a lot with boat trailers too. One time a new guy hooked up a boat (no safety chains!) and we had to go pull it out of the woods. It came loose while he was going around a corner and Whoopiee!! 100 yards through the brush. Turns out the new guy wasn't so smart, because that was just a hint of things to come. [img]/w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif[/img]

And no, the new guy wasn't me.[img]/w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[JohnMiller3]

A few years back… on my way to the dump… going around the bend (old narrow country road)… a guy was off to the shoulder of the road with an “empty” boat trailer… and down in the ravine… was his boat… sitting in the woods… he seemed to do all the right things with the boat trailer and safety chains… they were still hooked up… he just forgot to “strap the boat down”… [img]/w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif[/img][img]/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[Mrwurm]

I always pull up on my tongue when I'm done hitching-up to make sure it's really hooked on there. Of course, this is possible because I only have one to two hundred pounds of tongue weight. I'm not sure how you could do this check on a heavy trailer.

John MIller, it would make your story better if you said the ravine was full of water. A bit or irony to contemplate. Please consider adding this element to the story the next time you tell it. [img]/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[cowboydoc]

I've seen this happen so often with horse and cattle trailers. Just last week I was over helping a friend bale hay and a guy was driving by and his trailer came off and went right along side of him. A guy coming the other way had to dive into the side of the road. The trailer came to a stop and no harm was done.

Back home there were a couple catastrophes. One time one of our hired hands didn't latch the coupler on the gooseneck and went around the corner and the trailer came off taking the whole side of the truck bed with it! Another time the trailer came off going down the interstate with a load of cattle and flipped several times. Needless to say there were alot of dead cows.

[BKColeman]

I live near one of the biggest lakes in Va and you wouldn't believe how many times I've seen boats come off of trailers in the last year alone. Seems always on their way home too. I guess they're tired after a long day on the water and just not thinking straight. [img]/w3tcompact/icons/hmm.gif[/img]

[RobS]

Before we bought our fifth wheel we rented a tow behind camper to test the RV lifestyle. All was fine on the whole trip until we got about 75 miles from home. Wife was pregnant at the time so we were making plenty of stops. One such stop we pulled through a mall parking lot to a fast food joint on the other side. As we drove through the lot a car came up beside us waving frantically. Turns out we lost a trailer wheel. I pulled over in the lot and examined the situation. Classic case of poor maintenance (no grease) and the bearing overheated/disintegrated. It's Sunday afternoon and we're tired. I call the rental place and we agree to leave the camper and head home. I indicated I'd drop off the keys the following morning.

I head over to their place Monday morning to drop off the keys and there's the trailer! The guy was actually mad at me for locking the tongue! He went down Sunday night to get it, had to buy a smaller ball to slip into the locked tongue and drug it back on three wheels (a brainiac this guy wasn't). He said he had to stop several times as the trailer bounced off the ball and the bottom of the tongue jack was all ground down from dragging on the road.

I gathered the few things we left in the trailer and got out of there fast [img]/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Tom_Trees]

Yeah. I've only seen this once. The local police department were hauling their recue pontoon to a local park for launching and recovery drill when it came loose. No safety chains, and no brakes on the trailer. Took out a large plate glass window on a retail establishment.[img]/w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif[/img]

They were just lucky there was no-one on the sidewalk at the time.

Tom

[Ozarker]

Dragging it back on 3 wheels isn't a big problem. You just chain up the axle where it is missing the wheel and go. I've chained up entire differentials to recover tractor trailer rigs and tow them off the highway. It is a standard recovery procedure.

[rocky2]

This guy checked he was connected.