Couple wrecks trailer 20 minutes after buying it

The shoddy repair with boards aside, For the size of the trailer the Grand Cherokee was well suited. I’m betting on improperly loaded and poorly setup hitch coupled with a new to towing driver.

TCollins wrote:
I think it was fixable

Heck yeah, that'll buff right out.

I think it was fixable

Chris Bryant wrote:
I can't believe nobody has said it's because it was a woman driving ;) "the driver said she..."

Thanks for going there. It was the absolute first thing I thought when I read the article.

CA Traveler wrote:
My 2014 Grand Cherokee GVWR is 6500 lbs and I just weighed it with full fuel, 2 people and NO cargo at 5450 lbs. Not much headroom for towing but a great toad.

That is your payload. Your towing is GCWR.

I can't believe nobody has said it's because it was a woman driving ;) "the driver said she..."

My opinion is an inexperienced driver towing a trailer for the first time, the trailer starts to sway, the driver hits the brakes.

I don't know why people are still talking about a "dealer." There is zero evidence that a dealer was involved in this at all. It is a more logical deduction that she bought a trailer off Craigslist from Hillbilly Bob and drove out of his back yard.

That podcast does say they bought the trailer from a dealer, but they also call it a "new" trailer, more than once. I think we can discount their depiction of "a new trailer from a dealer."

They were talking about it on the local station KISS FM yesterday on their "9:30 knucklehead nominee" segment. Podcast here. (Starts at about 0.50.) They claim it was bought from an RV dealer in Poulsbo but it doesn't say that elsewhere on the internet. If a dealer did sell the TT to them, I'd be suing them for letting it off their lot. Couple more photos below. Hi-res photos here.

Trailer is an older Mallard. Maybe someone here knows how they were originally built.

It may have been that the WDH was improperly set up or no WDH at all, maybe the trailer was too long for the Jeep or the 2x6 made it much heavier. I drove through Poulsbo last year with our TT. The speed limit on hwy 3 is 50 mph so it's not like they would have been going at interstate speed.

I'm going with the hack repair job theory. What RV of any kind has 2x6 for a floor? Look at the straps that attach the 2x6 to the frame and each other. Looks like the entire subfloor was replaced. Not normal and very amateurish looking. If you look closely at the frame photos, you can see rotten flooring and joists above (below in the photo) the 2x6. Maybe the old rotten floor was even left in place and put back on top of the 2x6 somehow. You can even see sheet plastic between the 2x6 and old floor. The work was clearly visible by looking under the trailer as no underbelly material to hide it so buyer didn't inspect it or if they did, didn't know about TT construction.

If it was a hack repair job, the superstructure "box" may not have been properly reattached and it could have suddenly shifted and caused a huge catastrophic lateral weight shift that initiated unrecoverable severe sway. Luckily nobody was severely injured or worse.

My 2014 Grand Cherokee GVWR is 6500 lbs and I just weighed it with full fuel, 2 people and NO cargo at 5450 lbs. Not much headroom for towing but a great toad.

I have said it for years. To a salesman the only thing that is a problem is a blank signature line on the contract. If you ask "Can my vehicle tow this" the answer is NO PROBLEM.

A jeep Cherokee is not big enough to tow that trailer.