[SEL] O.T. Trailer Safety

Alan Bowen rustaholic777 at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 5 17:59:08 PDT 2005


Hello Folks,

I just had to tell y'all 'bout what happened to me last Friday at work.
Thursday evening I hooked up my big trailer to my 1991 Dodge D250 with the Cummins turbo diesel.
I drove it to work on Friday to pick up a stack of 5' X 12' pallets that I am grabbing lumber from
to build a shed.  When I left and drove home all seemed fine until I got to my yard and hit an
uneven spot and the trailer felt wrong.

I got out and saw the insert was gone from my hitch and I had pulled the trailer home on the
safely crossed safety chains.  Being a heavy, two axle trailer with a hitch that is the same
height as the bumper it had pulled great on level road. The trucks loud diesel engine & stiff
suspension seemed to cover up any little bumps from the trailer at starts & stops.

We jumped into our mini-van and traced my path back to work and didn't find the insert so I went
and bought another one plus a locking pin for a total of just over $87.

I came home and put it on the truck and used a pipewrench to attach the new ball.  I went to toss
the pipewrench into the truck and it landed on the very same insert that some jerk had removed
from my hitch!!!!  It still had the pin and it's clip with it too!!!!

What I am having trouple with is WHY!!!!
Why go to all the trouble of removing it then just throw it on the floor in my truck,,,,

I can see where they lifted the tounge off the hitch with a forklift.  That would have made it
easy to pop the hitch out.  They buggered the release lever on the tounge a bit too.  The new
hitch will stay put with it's locking pin plus I will straighten out the bent release lever and
start locking it too.

I have nailed down the most likely suspect and have a good plan of attack for tomorrow to confront
him.  He was the best suspect and today he was the only one that I talked to about it that was
always looking away when he said anything about it or I made point that hit home.

This seems to be just an attempt to cause me major trouble.  A very stupid attempt.  The trailer
and it's load weighed close to 4000 pounds.  If that monster had come loose into traffic it would
have been deadly.  Then it would have been the police asked questions at work.

Alan Bowen
Williamsburg, Michigan

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