What have you had fall off of your trailer/truck that wasn't supposed to?

I just thought this would be a fun thread to start. If any of you have ever towed anything, then you have probably forgoten to strap something down at some point. What is the worst thing that you have lost off of your trailer or out of the bed of your truck?


Here are my blunders-- I had a trailer jack-knife on me in the 1990's with a 1946 Chevy truck on it on I-45 in Richland Texas one time because I had it tail heavy. The trailer swerved so bad, it broke the hitch off of the trailer and made my truck face the wrong way on the interstate at night. The trailer actually balanced itself out pretty good and continued to travel down the highway about a half mile before jumping the guard rail and going into the deep water creek. The 46 Chevy was a total loss. I got the trailer fished out and still use it today.




I had a trailer load of antique gas pumps once that I was transporting from Dallas to Houston. Somewhere near Fairfield on I-45, a guy began to tailgate me in his new Mercedes while on his cell phone. He then began to run right beside me for miles no matter how much I slowed down or sped up. He ended up behind me again. I thought- I hope one of those pumps falls off. About that time blammo, a 500lb 1952 Bennett model 766 gas pump jumped off of my trailer and decided to catch a ride in his passenger seat. I figured since he must have really liked gas pumps because he was tailgated so closely, that I would let him keep that one to restore for himself. I just kept driving. After all, its nice to share.

 

Remind me to keep clear of you pulling a trailer. I lost a floor jack outta my truck once.

 

long ago i bought a ModelAA ford dump truck. hired a wrecker to bring it home (no one had ever seen a rollback at that time). he picked it up by the rear axle and off we went. got home and had no headlights, grille shell or radiator. they were there when we left.

 

Lost an upright compressor rounding a corner last fall while moving shops...whoops

 

I once got passed by a tire.....from my boat trailer.

 

I had a riding lawn mower on a trailer once, in my defense, it did not run and had 4 flat tires. My boss also only had motorcycle straps for tie downs, not ratchet straps or chains. Anyhow, I had it strapped as tight as I could get it. As I was taking off from a stop sign, it shifted and came off the trailer, and came off with sufficient speed to keep rolling forward. An inattentive driver hit it and destroyed it. I was cited for unsecure load, she was cited for expired DL, she claimed she was waiting to lose a few pounds before having he license renewed...it was expired by more than 4 years, her kid was 8 and she still tipped the scales at a pretty decent amount... Boss fixed her van, and I paid my ticket... We replaced the mower with a far better unit for the customer, and as far as I know, she is still complaining the headlights don't work on the replacement...her original unit did not have headlights.

 

Brought home a rotty '49 Ford convertible, that had sat on the left side for ages, I thought the frame would be okay; of course it was shit, but -

Somewhere on the way home what was left of the left quarter panel fell off - no idea where. This on a rollback, too. Big piece of tin like 2x4 with ragged edges.


Tried using magnetic lights once on a trailer, too. Bad idea that was, ended up having to tie them down with bungee cords after one fell off and broke. Thank goodness HF sells sets for $10 with a coupon.


Probably the stupidest one - couple years ago driving home all of 5 miles from the Nats, had my vendor pass tucked over the visor, it's hot, window is down, somehow the wind catches it and sucks it right out the window - on the interstate, where one lane was closed off by those concrete barriers for construction. Every time a car went by it went another 20 feet down the road. I had to go back and get the spare my buddy had so I could get in in the morning.

 

On the 21st of December I was coming home with my Christmas present to myself. A freshly powder coated red overhead four door shop cabinet that I made out of the crew box on the side of a 1974 Navy Segrave fire truck. I slipped loose just north of Newport, Arkansas. Weighed a bunch. By the time I got back it was gone. I'm still bummed.

 

This past summer when i was hauling a pretty rotten 47 coupe home, i lost the gas tank and rear bumper somewhere on 80 in pa. Had it all tied up with straps but it still came loose.

 

(note to self: avoid I-45 in Texas!)

 

2 real chev 302 cranks.

 

My illustrious brother hooked his '41 teardrop trailer to my F100, and we left the Goodguise swap in Pleasanton. Running a cool 70 MPH down 680 toward San Jose, I looked over to see a teardrop just like his passing us on that long downgrade above Mission San Jose...He starts yelling, "Mike! Do something!"
There was a Mexican dude right behind the trailer, he honks and waves at us, then slows down, keeping traffic back...the trailer got to the level bottom of the grade, was staying in the #1 lane! For like, 1/2 mile! Seemed like forever...then it veered, just slightly...it changed slowly into our lane, then picked out a bridge side (heavy California metal deflector) and just scraped it a little, then its front jackwheel turned, and wham!
It stopped.
The Mexican dude pulled off too, and asked if he could help. We got the teardrop hooked back up, and I locked it down securely, attaching the safety chains this time.
Brother said, "I didn't hook 'em up, we were only goin' to San Jose..."
We made the guardian angel take $20, he refused but we insisted. There are 'angels' out there...

 

Not a trailer but still....1994 I was loading up a Econoline work van with a few thousand feet of unistrut for a construction site out of town. I had all of it stacked in the interior of the van (against the headache rack) with the intent of strapping the doors shut (12' sticks) My brilliant boss walked out of the shop and ordered me to unload the van and re-load it all on the roof rack of the van....I protested citing the slipperyness of the interlocked u shaped metal and the inability to properly secure the interior of the load. He insisted it would be fine and made me change it.

I was on I40 headed to Santa Fe approaching Lavahada Hill when traffic came to a very quick standstill. I braked and saw the contants of my roof rack tumbling and sliding off the top of the truck and going right for the back of the car in front of me. I pealed the van off the road and used the hood of the van to spread gobs of steel over a quarter mile of highway....trashed out a whole load of steel and the front of the van....I was thoroughly pissed and me and the boss had it out a few hours later after I go the road all cleaned up.

The second was also in a refrigeration work van. We had just done a compressor change out in Los Alamos NM....25 ton Dunn and Bush direct drive compressor....a cast iron heavy assed bastard...took 4 of us to get it in the back of the van...

Stopped off in Espanola for gas and got into the throttle a little too much on the on ramp before I remembered the heavy ass compressor in the back of the van (same one I launched the steel off the top of....luckly it was an epic turd of a truck) all the sudden I heard all hell break loose when the compressor decided to break the cheesy rope I had tieing the compressor to the the headache rack and go thundering through the middle of the van taking various shelves prior to exiting forcefully out the back doors of the van.....it landed with a thump on the on ramp...

Seeing as I was by myself and it was a DOA compressor with no core charge I did what any sane guy would do....pushed the compressor into a ditch with the front of the van and left the son of a bitch....thing was so darn heavy I would bet it's still there...

 

lost my fishing tackle once
should have painted the elcamino gate at the same time as the rest of the car
lost a 2 wheel dolly on the way to iola a few years back
last minuite addition...first item gone
tk

 

Was flat towing a 63 Galaxie to a demolition derby when one side of the bumper bar came loose and sent the car veering toward parked cars downtown. There was no one coming the other way and I was able to take up both lanes to keep the towed car off the parked rides.

Had to work fast and pulled the tow rig off the car and threw it in the truck and told the wife to drive it on over to the fairgrounds. I jumped in the derby car with no glass, lights or exhaust and whipped on across town. The officials at the gate weren't sure what to do when I rolled up off the street ready to compete. But it was fun to see their expressions.........

As for the 63 Galaxie? That was over 20 years ago when you could buy them $50. The car had been sitting in a field for 14 years and was rusted pretty bad. Engine still free and took very little to get it running smooth. Kicked butt that night and gave that car a much more grand exit than just being hauled to the shredder.

 

I was towing my Cafe Racer on a Kendon Trailer with the dually when I looked in the mirror and the bike seemed to be swaying side to side. I slowly put on the brakes the chains brought it back under control. I was in the slow lane of the 91 Fwy and there was no emergency lane as they were doing construction. As I was coming to a stop, the trailer rode up the K Rail a bit and I thought this is it, over she goes. But it straightened back out and I stopped. I jumped out and ran back and the entire Draw bar to the hitch was missing. It wasn't in the trailer tongue either. Traffic was backing up a bit anyway (This is LA Traffic) so I walked back about 100 yards and there was my draw bar with the ball still on it. I ran back, slid it back in, and used a Giant Craftsman Phillips Screwdriver as a pin. Put the trailer back on the ball and drove it back to the shop that way.
I'm telling the story and one of the Mexican dudes in the shop gets real red in the face. Turns out he had pulled the pin out to use it to align something and forgot to put it back in. I was ready to kill him!

As for a "fell off the Truck" story. We're sitting at a red light in a friends Econoline Van. Light turns green and he revs the shit out of it and dumps the clutch. (thought he'd impress the girls next to us with a little burn out). Well, we go about a foot and bounce real hard and then stop to the crashing sound of the 170" six falling out of the truck and laying in the street, I'm laughing my ass off and all he can say is "Holy Shit"

 

In 1976 I had a Ramp truck that I hauled my circle track car on. A lot of folks would stand on in during the races as it was one of the high points to watch. A not very close friend had his girl friend with him . All of a sudden I see him laying on the ground it was about a 4 ft fall. The reason why was his wife who worked night shift slipped up on him and pulled his legs out from under him and caused him to fall. He broke a collar bone. I thought it was funny. That is the only thing I have ever had to fall of a trailer or truck in the last 50 plus years..... Bobby..

 

Didn't lose it, but a truck I was hauling to the scrap yard rolled forward and took out a brand new tailgate. The cross member wasn't strong enough to take the strain and the straps loosed. Next stop, it did the fly forward over the tongue and to the gate. It sucks to be me, but at least no one else was involved.

Doug.

 

I used to own a one ton Ford Rollback.. It had a nasty habit of breaking rear wheel studs and one time I was passed by both my rear tires from one side.. Never did find the second tire..Somehow nobody got in the way, and when I replaced the rear axle I never broke another stud. Truck weighed 9300 lbs WITHOUT a car on it, glad I don't run it anymore as the tickets would kill me.

Same truck, was scrapping a Pinto Wagon that had very little body integrity left, standard cable to the front and chains to the back axle. Even a single safety chain to the front end.....Pulled up to a stoplight and the car rolled into the headache rack. Light tuned green, figured I would pull over after the light and resecure. Ended up having to reload the Pinto instead. Never tied down a rotted car after that without a chain thru the roof. Also never would secure a car to a rollback without at least 4 chains and the winch anymore either. Started to run the cable over the top of the car to secure the really rotted ones after that.

 

If you're a Minnesota Vikings fan, you will understand. The Vikings were stinking up another fall Sunday. If they were playing well, I'd have been on the couch with a cool one. Frustrated, I went out to pull my pontoon down to the storage building for the winter, just five blocks away. It was a tight turn to back it into the building and the safety chains were short. Did I hook them up? No. Two blocks from home I cross an intersection with a hump, and the pontoon with trailer, and my truck part company. I look to my left, and it is right beside me. Now I live in a small town, I'm on a wide street, and there is only one car parked for as far as I can see. Naturally, it heads straight for it. The tongue of the trailer hits the curb, guides the whole disaster for the car, and it parks itself right on top. Like I said, it's a small town, and everyone WAS watching the game. I called my wife first and said "you need to come down here." Then I called the local cop, and then damn near the whole town turned out in about five minutes to drive around the block and point and laugh. I own the local weekly newspaper, and several wondered if there would be a picture in the paper. "Not a chance, I replied." It's been a number of years and people still bring it up from time to time. HA! HA! Sure is funny when it doesn't happen to you.

 

I hate to admit this but a few years ago my truck started to act up whenever I came to a stop. The front end felt like it wanted to move over. I got home and jacked the front end up and checked it over and couldn't find anything wrong. It was late and I had to go to work the next morning. I drive to work the next day, same thing. I raised the front end up again and checked it all out again, nothing. The next morning I'm driving to work all of a sudden I feel the back of the truck drop and I slam on my brakes. The local UPS driver stops next to my truck and asks if I'm OK. I said, "Sure but something happened to my truck." She says, "Yeah, your rear wheel fell off." I climb out of the truck and the driver's side rear hub is sitting inside the bottom of the rim and all of the lug nuts are spread across the road. I did a brake job on the truck the week before and must have forgot to tighten the nuts. One thing, it taught me to double, triple check the lug nuts every time I pull the wheels off.

My biggest fear when hauling something on my trailer is having something falling off, no matter how small, and hitting either a car behind me or an oncoming car. I strap the hell out of the cars I do trailer and walk around the trailer looking for anything hanging loose from the car. I also crawl around the deck looking for any nuts or bolts that might be laying around. I figure a bolt falling off the trailer when I'm going 60 mph hitting an oncoming car also doing 60 mph is going to make that object hit at 120 mph.

The best trailer load story I do have is about a friend of mine who moves heavy machinery for a living. He some times doesn't hire the brightest bulbs to work for him. On one of his jobs he loaded up his big forklift on the his flatbed semi trailer. He has some big forklifts that could almost move a house and these have massive forks. He loaded the forklift on the trailer and used another forklift to lift the forks for this bad boy onto the rear of the trailer. He went off to do something else and told his guys to strap everything down. My friend got into the truck and took off. They got about a mile or so from his shop and he asks his guy if he was sure he strapped everything down nice and secure just as he glanced at the load through his mirror and saw one of the forks come of his trailer, hit the ground and bounce about ten feet in the air. This fork probably weighs a ton. Just then he sees another semi coming toward him and pulls his truck at an angle across the two lane road to stop the oncoming truck. The other truck drivers slammed on his brakes, jumped out of his truck and started cussing at my friend but cooled down a little once he realized what happened. It was just a good thing there wasn't anyone closer.

 

had a dumfuck helper that decided to put a 3/16" thick x 3" piece of angle iron 6' long across the back of the deck for some stupid reason and screwed it down with sheetrock screws. It came loose at 60 mph sliding right under a brand new volvo wagon that was being moved to another dealership to be delivered!

 

Quote:
<table border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td class="alt2" style="border: 1px inset;"> Originally Posted by carlisle1926
...I had a trailer jack-knife on me in the 1990's with a 1946 Chevy truck on it on I-45 in Richland Texas one time...

...Somewhere near Fairfield on I-45, a guy began to tailgate me in his new Mercedes while on his cell phone...
</td> </tr> </tbody></table>
(note to self: avoid I-45 in Texas!)
__________________Those aren't the only two disasters along I45 that I have had. A few years ago at about 6am on a Friday, on the way to the Conroe swap meet, I was rounding the corner of I-610 north onto I-45 when suddenly I see an 18 wheeler plowing over something large and white behind me on the road. I'm thinking the guy has just wiped out some guy in a Yugo or something. I then look in my rear view mirror and notice in the dim glow of my taillights that the fiberglass Bugatti replica car on my trailer isn't glowing in my tail lights any more. Seeing as how there was no need to drive to the swap meet at that point, I just went home and watched TV. On the news that morning they had a pretty good sized pile up at that intersection due to "debris in the road"

I still don't know how in the world that came off. I had it chained down and had huge ratchet straps over it. I-45 just hates me.

 

Nothing.

I tie my load properly if not over done and check it at ea. stop and sometimes in between. Lucky or good, either way I like it.

 

G'day, Lent the car trailer to a former friend. He thought that he could leave the ramps unsecured on the back of the trailer and they would magically stay there. Somebody got some really nice ramps for free because they were gone when he got back. That started our rule of never lending the trailer out.

ms

 

When I worked for Six Flags amusement parks in the 1990's, we bought a junk 1934 Chrysler Airflow in Midlothian Tx to put in as a gangster display in the old time photo studio in Six Flags Over Georgia. We only needed the rear half of the suicide door car. I cut it off with a torch. My boss was in a hurry to get down US Hwy 287, so he loaded the thing on the trailer as if it still had the front of the car. That was the makings of disaster. He refused to take the time to tie it down because "it was heavy and we were only going 3 miles down the highway". He shot out on the highway in 5pm traffic and moments later I hear the guy in the backseat yelling FIRE!!! The car had burst into flames as the 70mph winds kicked up the embers from being cut in half only a few minutes before. Just then an 18 wheeler past and the rear door swung open, and the car was instantly airborn. It was an awesome sight to see the giant tumbling ball of flame running cars off the highway. Luckily for us the bouncing around shook all the flammable parts off of the car, so all we had to do was pick up the carcass and haul ass. My boss was a real idiot.

 

I'm way to paranoid when I'm hauling stuff, people pick on me I use so many tie downs & straps.

Guy I used to work for lost a small dozer. He figured it was heavy enough that he didn't need to tie is down. It slid off on and landed upside down in the oncoming lane. Thankfully there was no other traffic.

Another friend was bringing home a new project, A-100 camper van with the fiberglass pop top. Somewhere in PA the top came off the van, wasn't noticed until they got home.

 

back in the 90's at Altamont Spedeway near Livermore, CA - My Niece, in her 20's, was at the track with some friends who had been racing their stock car on roundy round dirt track. In the dark of night with race car loaded on the trailer and the guys were in the truck heading out of the Pit area. Her car was way out in the regular spectator parking lot. So, she was going to jump into bed of truck for a ride. Guys did not know this. She lost her footing on the truck bumper and fell face first into the dirt. The loaded trailer went directly over her - toe to head. Others started yelling to get them to stop but, the trailer had cleared past her. The emergency crew went to her rescue. Off to Emergency Hospital. She ended up not have any major injuries, the dirt gave way enough to cushion her. If it was a hard surface she would have been a goner. Some bruising, scrapes, etc. Heart failure for everyone else being so scared and worried about her.

 

My dad worked for TXDOT for over 30 years and he came home with ANYTHING you could think of off the road. To this day he has an impresive collection of knives, military awards, rodeo belt buckles, guns, tools, signs, and almost anything in between that was found on the road. The man has a bungee cord/strap collection that would blow your mind. Always makes me think twice when I tie down a load.

 

went to minn to get a 53 olds, had borrowed a friends new open trailer. he had told me he wanted to close in the bottem so the dust and dirt wouldnt blow up into the cars. i bought some presswood and fastened it on with self tapping screws. we stopped for the night and got an early start in heavy traffic. looked in the mirror just in time to see a whole sheet of presswood standing straight up, behind us was a brand new ford pu. he hit the brakes and it went right under him just like it was timed,i shook my pant leg over that one.