Safety chain placement

Turtle n Peeps wrote:
All of you can set you brake cable anyway you want because it makes no difference to me at all. Pretty much all talk anyway because I would venture to guess about only about .001% of you that read this will ever have a hitch come off of the ball.

I can tell you what is going to happen if you set your cable to only come on when the trailer comes completely detached from the TV.

About 1981 I was a passenger in a truck with a very light car trailer (guessing around 1000 LBS)in tow that came off the ball.

Here is a play by play of what happen:

We were cruising down a straight freeway about 60 MPH when all hell broke lose.

#1. Big bang and the truck REALLY jerked!

#2. The driver hit his brakes instinctively. (Just like you are going to do if you ever have this happen. I don't care if you tell me you are not going to do this..........you ARE going to hit the brakes.)

#3. The trailer ran up under the truck and knocked the truck sideways. (It only takes a few inches off of center for 1000 to 9000 lb trailer acting as a battering ram to get your truck sideways.

#4. The trailer acted like a 1000 lb battering ram and either tried to lift the back end of the truck off of the pavement or DID lift the back end of the truck off of the pavement. (I couldn't be sure?)

#5. The driver was going lock the lock to keep the truck on the road.

#6. The driver would steer one way and the trailer would run up under the truck and ram the truck in the opposite direction. (this happened for what seemed like hours) :E

#7. The chain acted like a crack the whip. The trailer would run away from the truck, get to the end of the chain and would then snap the trailer under the truck again.........over and over and over.

#8. The trailer in question did not have brakes but I'm telling you there was no way in hell the driver would have be able the hit the manual control. And this guy could drive! He had his hands full just keeping the truck on the road.



Lessons learned for "me?"

#1. Make sure the trailer will not come off of the ball.

#2. Make sure the trailer in tow has brakes.

#3. Make very sure the trailers Ebrake comes on if the trailer ever comes off of the ball.

#4. A trailer set up with the ebrake coming on won't try to act as a battering ram and try and "PIT" your truck off of the road.

#5. Trailers have a lot of energy, even lite ones.

For those of you that are worried about trailer brakes coming on when the hitch comes off of the ball you have nothing to worry about. It happens every day on roads all over the world. Ever see long dually skid marks on the road? Most of the time it's caused by semi trailers losing air and locking up the brakes. Nothing happens except a smoke show and some flat sided tires and a red faced driver!

In any event, hook your trailer up how you want no matter how wrong it is. :B

You FIRST HAND experience that safety chains won't automatically "break" as some even in this thread contend is a fact along with this "ramming" of the trailer into the TV are important considerations IMO. You scenario with a trailer w/o brakes is for sure the worst case I can think of and as you confirmed makes for "ONE WILD RIDE":E I agree with your feeling that it will take "LUCK" for one to stay off the TV brakes in an emergency disconnect scenario, and my only suggestion is to periodically like several times an hour to say to your self, NO BRAKING, NO BRAKING, NO BRAKING and them just hope for the best which is all we can do in the end and at least with full trailer braking happening automatically this mistake of applying the TV brakes will at least be somewhat minimized.

Larry