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

Overloaded OT pu going camping.
Wheel spacers on rear.
I-80E, 60mph, slow lane.
Overloaded.
Wheel studs?
Sparks a go go. Emergency lane.
Innocent New Beetle.
I-80E, 60mph, some lane.
Missing wheel.
Punt.
Totalled New Beetle.
AAA Rollback. Emergency lane.
Overloaded OT pu.
WHEELIE.
McDonalds, new studs, brake line pinch, spare.
Tighten ALL lugs.
Lake.

 

Had a pickup box sandblasted for a customer. I had it tied down a was coming home late at night. Two miles from the house, (I had already traveled over 50) I hit a bump. I was reminded of the ZZ Top song "Master of Sparks". Luckily no obvious damage. Adrenaline must have kicked in, I loaded it myself, and made it home.

 

A few years ago my son and I weent to a hot rod shop in Anaheim too pick up my TBucket. Thought we had it loaded and strapped down on the trailer. Turned out on to Harbor Blvd. to LaPalma. Made a right turn, looked back and the bucket is sitting in the middle of the intersection. Ooops.

 

Friend of mine bought a Willys coupe 1200 miles away.Guy claimed it was nice car and sent pictures that looked good,he sent him $ in full. When he got there it was a butchered worthless car,guy already spent $,no return..He was so pissed but figured he just over paid big bucks for 2 doors and a nice deck lid. Anyway somewhere along the way home the deck lid blew off .He was now double pissed.LOL. I had a empty car trailer come of with a convoy of tractor trailors tailgating me at 80 mph.I was trying to get out of there way going for the right lane and when it came off it was swapping lanes with rigs swerving all over locking up there brakes trying to miss it ,got lucky it went out in a field without hitting anything.ill bet that trucker won't tail gate empty trailers again,LOL.

 

Back in the early 80's when the 48 was a lot faster than it has been in the last 20 years I got into a little street action one night and somehow lost a gas can and the sheet of plywood that I was using for the floor of the bed at something over 100+ I went back and looked for it the next morning and didn't find the plywood or the gas can.

In the fall of 1966 I lost the left rear wheel off my 55 Buick at about 80 one morning on the way to school. the groove the backing plate left in the pavement stayed there until after I got back from Viet Nam in Dec 1968. I never did find the tire and wheel.

I've lost track of the stuff I've found on the highways over the years. The pair of 20 ft log chains I have came from the side of the road along with a 29 Model A cowl and a 35 Ford spare tire band that I found in the middle of the freeway years ago. I've got an aluminum ramp off a convoy truck and a couple of years ago I found a 12 ft long aluminum scaffold deck along the guard rail in front of my house.

 

The nose of a b-17 drop tank out of the back of my truck.

 

Sort of off topic, but not that far off considering the incidents listed here. Back in the 60s, a "friend" was towing his SCCA EP Porsche speedster home after a national New England Region race. His tie downs had been stolen the night before at a local motel. Ropes were purchased and the car was tied down onto the trailer. At 3:00AM, on the Mass Pike, at 65 MPH, the car broke loose. Slid off the trailer. Luckily it landed on it's wheel with minimal damage. Now, not having any means to tie it down, a brainstorm. I should add that this "friend" was super pissed at all this. Anyway, he got the great idea to get the car back on the trailer, let the air out of all four tires. He then got a hammer and a box of nails and.....yes, nailed all four tires to the wood bed. Hey, it got me....er, him home.

 

My wife tells this story better, she got to see it unfold. About 20 years ago we were on our way home from the Hershey flea market & car show. I went down on Tuesday, she came down on Thursday with the kids. Sunday I'm driving the van with the '12 T on the trailer, she has the kids in the wagon and is following me. Some were south of Scranton she pulls along side me blowing the horn, looking real pissed. The spair trailer wheel and tire I'd slid under the T was slowly sliding to the back of the trailer. She said she flashed the lights blue the horn but I never saw or heard her. It hit the road and bounced clear over the wagon, and my be still rolling for all I know.

 

I bought a 1955 Chevy Bel Aire a few years back. Borrowed a 3/4 ton from my neightbor to pull a tow dolly. Hooked up the front wheels and let the rear wheels follow. This car been pretty much taken all apart. I was moving down the freeway in San Leandro Calif. I had a guy pull up beside me and point back. I pulled over and another car pulled up behind me. Told me that my spare tire had come out of the trunk and hit his car. I looked in the 55'S trunk and sure enough no spare. Cost my friend's ins. $1600.00 to to the Lexus the other guy was driving. I always make sure the doors are shut and the trunklocked. That's my sad story.

 

My old boss told the exact same story about a car showing up at a shop on a Monday morning on Long Island after a SCCA race, nailed to the bed of a trailer. Could it be the same car? Bob

 

My spare on my chevy truck is held up there ,or was, by a cable and a small sadle.One day I was putting a new trailer wire setup on it and noticed the spare was gone and all that was left was a rusty frayed cable.I have no idea when or where it came off.I hope no one was hurt.

 

It didn't fall off, but close..

In the middle of summer I somehow convinced my brother and girlfriend (who is somehow my wife now) to go and help pickup a '62 Mercury Meteor I had found near Waco. I had some spares, a cheap harbor freight winch and wood deck trailer with the tractor style ramps. This place was like a small section of the Amazon in Texas. I think the humidity was 135% but not raining, more of a steam bath. There were giant spider webs that funneled down into the tops of 55 gallon drums, and more mosquitoes than the Congo. First we had to pull the mercury's front end out from under the hill that had slid onto it requiring 4WD low. Then we tried installing the spares that turned out to be flat by the time we got there. We rounded up every ford wheel and tire we could find and headed to a gas station. After about half of the valve stems fell off we returned with 3 tires. Car still wouldn't roll. My bother thinks the parking brake might be on, it kinda looked half way pressed. He presses it further and it bottoms out, so ok, release it right? After looking for the damn release, which turns out to be a knob on the dash, he pulls it and here it comes, cable and all... So after we fix that, and the dead winch, and the bent come-along handle, it finally gets on the trailer. We head out onto 35. The trailer is swaying back and forth when I hit 60mph. I stop check it all out and everything seems ok, but I still can't go over 55. So we drive back at 55 or less to Dallas with some scary events along the way. Finally got around to drilling to lock out of the trunk and find Massive amounts of chain, sledgehammers, axes, hooks, basically a garage full of cast iron stuffed into the trunk. That combined with a 6cyl 18foot car it made it pretty tail heavy.

there were lots of other cars there for a small fee of $200 each, but after that trip I left them all there to rot.

 

In the mid 80's, my good friend Tim and I went waterskiing in his boat at Nelson Lake, NDakota. We were idling up to the single lane boat ramp where a small aluminum fishing boat with three old codgers had gotten there just a minute or two before us. Two of them get out of the boat and go fetch the Mini-Winnebago parked nearby which had a trailer ball on the front bumper. They drive the trailer straight down the ramp into the water (not backing in). The third codger runs the boat up onto the trailer, but as soon as hits the bunks at the back of the trailer, the trailer tongue rushes skyward like an erection, stands there for a brief second until the boat slides off the trailer. Glug glug glug goes trailer down the boat ramp as it is now loose from the mini-Winny, and disappears into the lake. The three codgers just stood and stared at each other. I guess they didn't latch the tongue to the ball when they moved the small trailer from the back of the Mini-Winny to the front bumper. My friend and I watch these three stooges for a moment and quickly figured out they don't know what to do. So we beach his boat, get one of the ski pull ropes, and he dives down a few times into 12-14' of water to tie the rope to the trailer. He and I pulled that bastard (thankfully) little trailer up the ramp and clamped it off to the front bumper of the M-W. Those assholes didn't say three words to us, let alone a thank you before retrailering the boat and leaving. Tim was pissed! We laugh about it now, but it was just a shocker at the time.

 

I had a model A 4 door sedan body ( real rough ) liberate it's self form the bed of my pickup. It was just thrown in there and tied in with 1 rope, ( I was like 17 or so ) And once I got up to speed the rope broke and that model a took off gracfully. It did a flip and basically desigenrated on impact . I gathered it up but it was toast .

 

back in the 80's I had an el camino with a true locker in the rear end. It was great in snow and ice. So I got the bright idea to add a little weight to the rear to make it even better. One of my rental units had those old cast iron radiators in it, and I'd converted to baseboard heat so I had a couple of these monsters laying around. Think 4ft square by 1ft deep. So like an idiot, I get it loaded in the bed, and adjust the air shocks to get the rear end level. Man, what a difference. The camino would go through 6ft drifts now. Early one morning I pick up my buddy to go do some plowing as it had snowed about 2ft the night before. Streets haven't been plowed, and it's a real mess. We're at a stop light, and I decide to show him the great traction I was getting with the camino. I nail it, just a bit, and the radiator decides to vacate the bed. It slams the tailgate down and lands flat on the street RIGHT in front of a police car. The lights go on, my buddy can't stop laughing, and I'm stuck with this 500lb chunk of iron sitting in 2ft of snow, in the middle of an intersection.
Now this is where living right comes in. Buddy of mine, who was a scrapper just happened by, and he told the cop he'd get it out of there pronto. He wraps a chain around it and drags it off down the street.
I can tell the cop wants to write me up for something, but he's having a hard time making sense of it all, and besides, the radiator was about three blocks away and disappearing fast.

 

A sandrail...always check the stitches on your tie downs.....

 

I had an 85 ford f150 on my trailer once. I was in the wrong lane and needed to get over to the left. I was in my hotrod diesel as I call it and I pushed hard on the loud pedal. I did get in front of the few semi trucks but I managed to break the front 2 "keeper" straps on the front axle. I stabbed the brakes on the truck and the trucked passed thru the on coming lane headed straight for a house. The curb turned the weeks and the trucked hammered a tree stopping it in its tracks.

I was only 2 blocksfrom my destination. I was lucky that nothing was damaged and that the little old lady in the house was nice as could be. Lesson learned and I am a foolish kid. Hahahahah

 

I had just worked an 18 hour day in South Sanfrancisco and was driving home to Napa. It was 2:00 or so in the morning and I found it odd that not 1 car had passed me in the last 30 miles. I had noticed that quite a few times during the drive the headlights of cars behind me would swerve in white clouds of mist. When I got out to the truck the next morning I had 8 empty cases of 8' flourescent bulbs in the back of my truck. I figger I lost 100 bulbs in 50 miles.

 

I was hauling a load of scrap to the junk yard. I had a dodge dakota door take off like a kite out of the back of my truck and slide across the road. Good thing nothing was coming.

 

Man some of these stories had me rolling! but that comment made me think of my Grandpa,he was always stopping to pick up sh*t off I-90 mainly bungee cords,my aunt & mom told this story shortly before he passed away..
one day the ole man is cruising down the 90 & see a bungee right off the edge of the roadway, so he pulls to the shoulder open the door with out really slowing down & sticks his hand out to grab it & falls out of the damn car doing around 10-20mph {didn't get hurt other than pride} mean while his gold 65 Pontiac Catalina is still rolling down the 90,it goes maybe 500 yard before it looses momentum & stops,well while they're telling this story i'm trying not to piss my pants! {ya'll know who WALTER is? from Jeff Dunham} the ole man is sitting there with his arms crossed telling us to shut the f*ck up!!looking like Walter!
to this day every time i see a bungee on the road all i can think of is my rolly-polly grandpa rolling down I-90..
R.I.P ole man.

 

I've had a few close calls and never lost anything Loaded . However it seems that for some reason I've had the pleasure to connect with a few dropped loads. Years ago we moved to Sandy Oregon. My daughter was 3 years old and as kids do at that age had to always be in the middle of things. So for her safety and our sanity I asked my sister if she could spend the night and promised my daughter she would be spending our first night in our new home. So we moved and after all our help left wife and I set up her bedroom and then headed to retrieve her. The move was in October and we were blessed with heavy fog. Al of a sudden I saw something white right in front of me and since there was someone driving right beside me had no choice but plow right into the unknown white object. The white was the muslin cover on the bottom of a big overstuffed couch. Not much left after I plowed into. Of course I puled over and was checking my truck for damage and a state trooper pulled in right behind me. He had been coming in the other direction had seen something dark in the road and then his words were "I saw feathers". He asked if we were ok and if we had seen who had dropped the couch. I had remembered a Dodge truck with a load of household goods that had passed me and my wife had commented that nothing was tied down. He took off and caught up with the truck 4-5 miles down the road. I cleared the debris off the road and we all got back in the truck to continue our ride home. Truck was running ike shit. We pulled in behind the trooper that was citing the driver. Real piece of work. Suspended driver license, multiple tickets for same, no insurance, truck was borrowed had expired plates. She was moving that day (end of the month) to skip out on rent. Her boyfriend who lent her his truck couldn't be bothered to help her move. Trooper provided me with all her information and I gave him mine for his report.As I thanked him and started to leave he looks toward my truck notices no plate on my mangled bumper and says you know you need to run a plate on the front. I told him there was one on there before the accident and guessed it now was somewhere down the road. Once again we all hopped back into the truck and headed towards home. Truck still running like shit and a good 40 miles ahead of us. Remember we were on that road because I was concerned that my daughter might get hurt in the move. About a mile down the road my daughter starts bawling it finally hit her that we could have been hurt. Next morning in the daylight I looked over my truck. Bent bumper, busted grill,passenger side fender shoved back about 3 inches, front of hood bent back enough that latch was jammed. Being Sunday I decided to let it sit and drive it to a buddies shop on Monday.So just in case I tied the hood down to make sure it wouldn't pop open. Drove to the shop another 12 miles still running like shit. Took us 15-20 minutes to pop the hood open. The performance problem was instantly obvious. My truck at the time was a 73 Datsun 620. Battery clamps broke on impact and the battery swung around and broke #1 and #2 plugs and cradled itself on top of the engine. Why the battery didn't break was a miracle. I had now driven that little truck on 2 cylinders for at least 50 miles. Never collected a penny from her and I repaired the truck all on my dime.

It could have been a lot worse, no one got hurt. The truck got rebuilt and to a much nicer level than before the accident.

So for guys like me that seem to blessed with running over your bad loads please take a few minutes to double check everything better before you pull out. And as I was taught years ago pull over a mile or so down the road and recheck everything.

Anyone else remember those tv commercials in the 60s that said "Remember most accidents happen within 25 miles from home." True then and still true today. So if you think its ok because you're only going a mile down the road think twice. It might be true for you as the old saying God protects drunks and fools might have you covered. It hasn't worked for me.

I've rambled on enough time to pass the Rambler keys to the next story teller.....

 

Well I have to admit the only thing I ever lost off a trailer was a can of soda. The sad part is what followed me home and didn't fall off the trailer.

 

perhaps this story will save someone's bacon that tow on a flatbed trailer and use rachet style tie downs. -- In '72 I volunteered to tow an old Jr. fueler from Reno to Vegas to sell for a buddy that had bought the car for the engine. It was tied down on the open 2 wheeled trailer with web straps and ratchets that looped over the rear slicks and in front by another strap around the front axle to the bed. It looked pretty secure, my bad. I turned south off I-80 down a 2 lane alternate just as the sun went down. I was pulling this with a work van that had tow mirrors but no back windows. I could see the trailer in the mirrors and took a long gander at it when I crossed a RR crossing but something just didn't feel right . I pulled over and realized the car was gone ! While flipping a U my mind was seeing a pile of tubing off in the ditch or worse being hit by another car. About a mile back there she was , parked like on purpose in my lane. No damage done , pushed the car off the hiway and flipped another U and proceeded to pull the roller back on the ramps. Both those old web straps had loosened while the front had just broken . Luckily I had a come a long in the van and tied it back down and hauled tail into Fallon where I bought a piece of chain from a gas station and really bound it down. I figure those old straps had stretched and dropped off the slicks when I hit that RR crossing allowing the chassis to roll off the back then the slicks caught the road and the caster built into the front axle kept it straight until it rolled to a stop.

 

I was giving a car trailer by a mate but it was rough, it took two weeks to get it road ready. I bolted eyes where the tie down go but when i went to put my ratchet straps to them the eyes where just a bit to small.

We were going racing that day and i was taking the trailer empty just incase of a breakage at the track, u shackles were bolted to the eyes and off we set. about 30 miles down the road my mate in his ford pop 1955 started to flash his lights, thinking he was in trouble we both pulled over to which he pionted out two of the shackles had come off the trailer nearly hitting his car . Needless to say the have a weld on them now.

 

A few years ago I went to look at a 1931 Model A roadster for sale. It had fallen off the guy's trailer and rolled multiple times down the highway. There was hardly a salvageable part left.

 

I helped a friend move an antique oak dresser through Atlanta one afternoon. The dresser was so heavy we had to take the drawers out to load into a Mazda pick up. My friend let rest at the back, tailgate up but tied it down with some twine.

On I-75 north we were passed on both sides by 18 wheelers and the dresser went airborne. We pulled over as fast as we could. We were just in time to see another 18 wheeler reduce the dresser to tooth picks.

 

my dad and his brother were moving us to a new house in the next town.my uncle had a mattress box spring on its side in the back of his pu.jammed in there with a bunch of boxes.with the cab full of my dad and uncle and little cousin,me being 18 at the time i was told to sit on the boxes and hold that box spring down. right dad. truck got up to about 50 and the box spring stood right straight up. me being young and dumb i grab a hold of it with my arms stretched from side to side.twin size by the way. well it goes air born with all of my 120 lbs holding on for dear life.it flips out of the truck and i still have a hold of it. it lands in the highway and i land on top of it.and this thing must have slid a few hundred ft.im not sure.i didnt measure it but it seemed like a mile.when it came to a stop i still had a hold of iti was on top of it while it made its way down the highway.there wasnt much left of it.the bottom had worn off it from the slide down the road.after my dad and uncle seen i wasnt back there anymore they stopped and backed up to see if i was dead. well to their suprise i was still alive, and in good shape. after they stopped laughing.i quess they decided i was in need of a drink because that was the first time my dad ever offered me a shot of whiskey.i bet i drank about half of that half pint right there beside the road. now i know why they lost my ass,they both were drinking alittle.when my mom found out what happened she made my dad sleep on the couch for a month.and i was the one who told on him.

 

Our close call was in the 80s. We had a glass bodied Fiat altered with a flathead in it. We had been at Englishtown, NJ for the nostalgia drags. That was the year we fielded seven flatmotor cars down there from our group. Anyway we were towing on a single axle unsprung trailer on roads, especially around White Plains, that were like the HoChiMinh trail. We stopped in Danbury for lunch and idly walked past the car and were shocked to see there was nothing holding the car on the trailer other than the fact it was in gear. The manual winch cable was lying on trailer bed and the hold downs weren't on anymore. Man the cold sweat just poured thinking of that car sliding off into traffic. We joked that maybe the ensuing crash and fire would have obliverated the "DJ's Louver Service" logo that was on the body. We got rid of that trailer and went to a sprung double axle one!

 

Lost a girlfriend when she got tired of my shit and bailed out of my truck at a stoplight.

 

My brother lost a t-modified body (welded to the frame) out of the back of his El Camino on the Belle Isle overpass in Okc. It skidded to a stop, They backed up loaded it and continued. No apparent damage. good thing it was early on a Sunday morning.