My first trip with this hitch was to be from my home in Gulf Breeze, FL to some land to boondock on in Cusseta, GA for a long weekend. About 4 hours one way. My RV is 8,000 lbs, well within the limit of the 13,000 lbs hitch. About 3 hours into the trip in Eufala, AL I made a u-turn to get into a gas station and heard loud crunching noises coming from the hitch that shook the truck violently. I got to the pump and looked to find that the hitch had internally self-destructed. Virtually everything inside the sliding mechanism was twisted, bent, and destroyed. I finished filling up and pulled into the neighboring WalMart parking lot where my wife, daughter, dog, and I spent the night. I took the hitch apart there to get these pictures knowing that we weren't going to make it to the site. I had been speaking to a very nice Demco employee named Brian (last name omitted) about my initial 13K purchase so I emailed him asking him to call me ASAP. I doubted he would since it was a holiday weekend but stranded in a parking lot with no way to hook your RV to your truck you'll grasp at any straw you can. The next day I scoured the internet for another slider within driving distance of Eufala knowing that the 13k was beyond repair. After wasting the entire day I was able to come up with a pre-owned but never-used Demco 21k Autoslide. We made it to our site about 24 hours later than planned but had a great weekend otherwise and the 21K performed flawlessly. On Mon. as I was packing up Brian called me after having seen my email. He stated that some early-model 13K hitches had some "known issues," asked me for the serial number on my hitch, confirmed that it was one of the earlier models, and that he would get back to me. 2 days later Demco offered to sell me a new hitch at their cost, which was useless to me since I already had a new hitch. Strangely, their cost was higher than buying a full-priced new one from eTrailer but that is beyond the point of this post. I wasn't expecting much from them since I bought used anyway.
The purpose of this post is to reinforce the idea that Demco does have known issues out there, in use today, and they have not issued any recalls, warnings, or anything. Who knows how many failure-prone hitches are on the road right now? If they've allowed them on the road in the past, will they continue doing so in the future? Is any hitch you buy now any better than in the past? Is my new 21K safe?
Brian was so helpful, polite, and nice prior to my initial purchase that I hate even mentioning him or my experience. He didn't design or sell the hitch. From our conversations it sounded like he only found out about the defective early-model hitches from his management after mine self-destructed. But when I saw this thread I did feel compelled to warn about potential safety risks to others. I was lucky in that it was only my hitch that was destroyed. My new truck, its occupants, and the RV were all unharmed.
The purpose of this post is to reinforce the idea that Demco does have known issues out there, in use today, and they have not issued any recalls, warnings, or anything. Who knows how many failure-prone hitches are on the road right now? If they've allowed them on the road in the past, will they continue doing so in the future? Is any hitch you buy now any better than in the past? Is my new 21K safe?
Brian was so helpful, polite, and nice prior to my initial purchase that I hate even mentioning him or my experience. He didn't design or sell the hitch. From our conversations it sounded like he only found out about the defective early-model hitches from his management after mine self-destructed. But when I saw this thread I did feel compelled to warn about potential safety risks to others. I was lucky in that it was only my hitch that was destroyed. My new truck, its occupants, and the RV were all unharmed.
Moderator edit to fix pictures URLs to show.
