Jayco Hybrid Frame Failure
We purchased a 2014 23' Jayco Hybrid trailer back in July and had a major frame failure where the tongue attaches to the longitudinal frames. The unit narrowly escaped scraping the freeway while trave...
Forum Discussion
I am glad to hear so far that no one else has experienced anything similar to this. This would be a tragic and potentially fatal flaw if it was repeated. I just can't imagine what would have happened if the tongue and frame had separated or even failed just enough more to have the unit make contact with the ground. Moving that fast would have caused an explosion of the unit and the level of traffic would for sure have resulted in some level of collisions. Like I mentioned earlier, we feel very fortunate.
I certainly do hope that this was an isolated case. My background is boat and ship construction and mechanical engineering which has helped me to become quite familiar with metal fatigue, quality vs. sub-standard welding etc. Looking closely at this particular failure leads me to the feeling that the thickness of material was not sufficient. The welds did not fail but the material near the welds tore. It could be an incorrect piece of material was used or something caused an initial fracture that led to further damage from the Louisiana section of I-10. I am hesitant to post pictures at this point as there are still open issues with Jayco. This leads me to my next comment.
Jayco has been very disappointing in their response. Both the selling dealer and the dealer we dropped the damaged unit at have been great and as helpful as they can be. Jayco on the other hand has not made a single attempt to make contact by email, phone or mail. We have made several attempts to contact the right person within Jayco but have yet to succeed. It has now been a over six weeks. We have not even been offered use of a loaner unit in the interim so we resorted to hotel rooms and a vacation rental. We are at the point now where we are exploring the hiring of an attorney to get some results.
If anyone has any contacts inside Jayco or other tips to get results, we would love to hear. At this point, we are about ready to call it quits on the brand altogether. So far, nothing has led us to feel good about the company.
I certainly do hope that this was an isolated case. My background is boat and ship construction and mechanical engineering which has helped me to become quite familiar with metal fatigue, quality vs. sub-standard welding etc. Looking closely at this particular failure leads me to the feeling that the thickness of material was not sufficient. The welds did not fail but the material near the welds tore. It could be an incorrect piece of material was used or something caused an initial fracture that led to further damage from the Louisiana section of I-10. I am hesitant to post pictures at this point as there are still open issues with Jayco. This leads me to my next comment.
Jayco has been very disappointing in their response. Both the selling dealer and the dealer we dropped the damaged unit at have been great and as helpful as they can be. Jayco on the other hand has not made a single attempt to make contact by email, phone or mail. We have made several attempts to contact the right person within Jayco but have yet to succeed. It has now been a over six weeks. We have not even been offered use of a loaner unit in the interim so we resorted to hotel rooms and a vacation rental. We are at the point now where we are exploring the hiring of an attorney to get some results.
If anyone has any contacts inside Jayco or other tips to get results, we would love to hear. At this point, we are about ready to call it quits on the brand altogether. So far, nothing has led us to feel good about the company.
