Close call, Mich trailer accident

I just spent the last week (Saturday to Saturday) up in Boyne City, Northern Michigan. On the travel home about 2:00 pm today, I had a very close call.
I had the cruise control of my wife's Mazda 5 set at 77 mph. I was on US23 at or near the 51 mile marker. I was in the fast lane. In the slower lane was a F150 pulling a BBQ trailer. As I was approaching the trailer, I was paying extra attention to it since recent discussion here at GRM peaked my interest. It was a double barrel type. Two barrels side by side. Looks like a classy build. Rather typical of what you might see roasting a whole hog.
I was studying the trailer pretty well as I neared in on it and as I was just about to be next to it, I witnessed the trailer tongue lift off the ball !!!!!!!
The trailer touched the ground. The truck slowed. The trailer rearended the truck. I floored it and got ahead of the pickup safely!!! I knew to expect that the trailer would travel side to side violently and it did once we were past it. I watched it all in my rearview mirror. As the trailer flopped side to side, I was amazed at the F150's ability to keep itself stable. The trailer, not so stable. The doors of the barrel had opened and food was flying out on the road. I did not see a whole hog but it looked like pork flying to the left and pork flying to the right. I did see the whole trailer go onto it's side. Miraculously, the F150 remained upright and shortly after, the truck came to rest on the left hand median, the trailer, on it's side blocking the left hand lane.

Cars behind the F150 had slowed but I could not help but think of trying to emergency brake while your tires were in contact with pork and pork fat. I hope there were not additional accidents - rearendings. To the best of what I could see, the truck/trailer hit no other cars. The most likely car it would have hit was us!

When it all settled, I dialed 911 to report the accident.
I suspect there were significant traffic delays for others coming south. For me, I was suddenly on the road by myself as everyone else stopped behind the accident.

Just a slight more way down the road, we passed a box truck that said something about wedding catering. My wife and I theorized they were together. Somewhere near Ann Arbor there may be a wedding reception without a main course. That main course is all over US23 southbound, just north of M-14.

In additional news:
On the trip up, the Mazda 5 returned 25.9 mpg. So,so.
On the return trip, I used cruise control as much as reasonably possible and had a target speed of 77mph. The result was 29.1 mpg. Much better.
2010 Mazda 5 automatic.

I

I had a welder break loose once on I90 in Chicago; the guy who switched the ball over forgot to mention that he didn't get the ball tight enough. I've never left without cranking on the ball myself since. It's a sphincter puckering moment for sure!

Wow, that sounds like a mess, I'm glad you didn't get tangled up in that.

that's only about 10 miles from my house, and i was hungry as berkeley at 5PM. i'da been calling five second rule on that E36 M3!

Damn, I'd stop and grab a sample lol.

Wow, about 2 hours ago a Yukon was pulling a double axle trailer (empty) and was going an estimated 65 in a 25, residential zone. He lost control and ended up jumping a HUGE boulder pile (put there for this specific reason) and ended up on the front porch. This was a few hundred feet from my house, by the public park and our neighborhood beech. He's lucky that he's the only one hurt.

And here I think I'm maybe a little paranoid when I check the trailer connection every hour or so when towing.

OTOH, given that I can usually get the trailer a little tighter on the first or second check, maybe not.

Knurled wrote: OTOH, given that I can usually get the trailer a little tighter on the first or second check, maybe not.

You mean get the ball tighter?

I only know one person who's had a trailer jump off the ball, and it was because he was using the wrong size.

Carolina or Memphis style? Sounds more like Memphis.

The Uhaul hitch can use a 1-7/8" or 2". There is a knob you tighten and a ratchet that keeps it tight. The first time I rented all went well but the second one had a broken ratchet tst didn't seem to lock tight. Fortunately all went well.

In reply to codrus:

He meant the nut on the bottom vibrated lose......I have hadthe latching mechanism fail in the trailers tongue before.....it was an eye opener.

Bulldog hitch, in proper working order, with safety pin.

In this situation, my belief was that "b" in the picture failed. Or, the ball was smaller than the trailer called for. Add some rough pavement or stress from driving over concrete expansion joints in the pavement and voila, the two are separate.

Failure to have even the simplest cotter pin where this lock is shown could have also been the issue. I could not tell from my vantage point if there was a pin but I certainly would never drive without one.

What are you supposed to do in that situation? Apply the trailer brakes if you have them? What if you dont? Floor it and gradually slow down?

In reply to Kenny_McCormic:
Depends a lot on how long your safety chains are and where they attach to the truck and the trailer tongue. My chains were attached immediately behind the ball receiver on the trailer and right below the ball on the truck.I could still turn the rig until the tongue would contact the bumper, but the tongue could hang by the chains and barely touch the ground if it popped off. If the chains are short enough and equal length you can brake in a fairly straight line but I've seen people running chains that are almost hanging to the pavement and attached too far back along the tongue. Those ones will try turning the truck if they break free.
My trailer had surge brakes, so I had no trailer braking the one time the trailer came off. I was able to slow with the van brakes without a lot of drama and I believe that was because the short chains just allowed the trailer to go forward 18" . My only experience, others may have more.

"Its sill good, its still good. Its just a little airborne!"

If you cross the safety chains to make an X under the tongue, there should be no sparks and very little weaving.

Wrong.

Right.

Might be a good exercise to hitch your trailer by its chains to ensure they are short enough that when crossed they will keep the tongue off the ground should the ball fail somehow, especially all the homebuilts and heavily altered stuff many of the people on here have.

I'd rather end up with an artificially low articulation angle and have to unhook the chains when parking, than have them be long enough the tongue will eat asphalt if something fails on the road.

Neither of the two pictures shown above have even the simplest cotter pin in place.

JohnRW1621 wrote: Neither of the two pictures shown above have even the simplest cotter pin in place.

I learned that lesson the kind-of easy way the first time I loaded a car onto a trailer. When the weight of the car was fully on the back of the trailer, the back went down and the front came flying off the ball and slammed into dad's truck. After that, the pin has gone in every single time.

That picture also doesn't seem to demonstrate a break-away system connection, either.

It does continue to amaze me the number of un-crossed chains I see. When I took a boating safety course a ways back, they drilled the chain crossing in to us repeatedly.

JohnRW1621 wrote: Neither of the two pictures shown above have even the simplest cotter pin in place.

You did notice the chains, right?

Appleseed wrote:

JohnRW1621 wrote: Neither of the two pictures shown above have even the simplest cotter pin in place.

You did notice the chains, right?

i noticed that the chains in the "right" picture are probably not strong enough to really be of any use unless that trailer is one of those 4X6 utility trailers..

I toss a chain around the ball and tongue limiting the gap it may attain during a disconnect.

Then again when I drive a car onto the trailer, Id expect if the tongue doesn't disconnect, I'm probably fine.

In reply to novaderrik:

Christ! The crossing of the chains, people. The two different pictures were used to illustrate that. Not the size of the chains, the lack of a hitch pin, the size of the trailer, the lack of a break away device, etc...

(Bangs head on desk.)

Can we agree that this is the most beautiful thing we will see today?

JohnRW1621 wrote: In additional news: On the trip up, the Mazda 5 returned 25.9 mpg. So,so. On the return trip, I used cruise control as much as reasonably possible and had a target speed of 77mph. The result was 29.1 mpg. Much better. 2010 Mazda 5 automatic.

I took the Rondo to DC and back on Thursday, 550 miles total, about the same average speed. Averaged 22.5 mph. For one person on board with no luggage at all, that's not great.