When I was doing vehicle inspections as a course of my work, it was always shocking to see the number of frames that were cracked, broke in two, shock mounts broken and even motor mounts broken. The driver's not knowing what to expect were still driving them. Even school buses. depending where and how catastrophic of a frame break is, it would be easy to be driving down the road with a vehicle in this condition. Crawling up and under a vehicle for a vehicle inspection of your truck, loaded preferred, should be a standard thing to do on at least an annual basis. Especially if you know that your vehicle would draw the attention of the Weight Police. Good thing the OP was doing just that, when this situation was discovered.
I was just under my truck and trailer a week ago. I mostly check for nests and other things that just might catch fire. Another thing to check for, if you are prone to camp out in the middle of no where, even for just one night.
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