OP, I am glad everyone is okay.
I'm not convinced myself that gooseneck adapters are the root cause. Lots of fivers have frame failures with regular Fifth wheel hitches based on forum reports.
What about TT A-Frame failures? Those failures can't be tied to a gooseneck adaptor...yet they still fail from time to time.
IMHO... Most RV'ers will never see the kind of mileage you put on your rig... Most RV'ers travel a few hundred to a few thousand miles per year. 30,000 miles on a single rig is a lot of miles and a lot of pounding on the frame. It should not have failed... No excuse for that... But given the circumstances, I am not sure that a fifth wheel hitch would have made any difference.
I sure would like to see insurance data on frame failures... But that's just the analyst in me. If gooseneck adapters were a serious driver of insurance claims there would be action on the part of insurance companies.
Speaking in hyperbole is mostly what we do when we take a stand against something without real data... It's really difficult to take a claim about something seriously without substantial data. A few failures are likely within the margin for error built into the RV manufactures calculations.
A quick example I can think of in the RV industry is the Andersen Ultimate Fifth Wheel hitch. Despite non users claiming it's terrible and can't work there are THOUSANDS of users out there without a single reported failure. Proving with data the viability of their hitch.
Another example that I can think of concerns B&W hitches. I once read a forum post from a user who destroyed two B&W gooseneck hitches... I can only imagine what this guy was putting those hitches through.. Yet his claim was that B&W is terrible based on his experience. Yet there will probably be tens of thousands of B&W users with data showing that it's a fine hitch and the other users experience was based on outlier conditions...
What I would like to see is data comparing the fifth wheel trailer frame failure rate comparing gooseneck a vs fifth wheel hitches. That data exists somewhere...but we the public may never see it... Probably because this issue with gooseneck adaptors is just a small blip on the insurance radar.
Thanks!
