Wheel came off during towing, how did that happen?

[Astro14]

I only realized it way too late, when I heard this bump and pulled over and this is what I saw.
The wheel could not be found within 3 miles of it and I gave up.
I was towing a light trailer, empty. The truck, 2003 Dodge was also empty.

I talked to the owner, he said that he personally tightened all the lugs nuts and put 400 miles on them.
Whether that's true or not, I have no way of checking. He has a lift in his garage and buys autos at auctions, fixes them up and sells them, so he does not appear to be mechanically ignorant. I think he got this rust-bucket probably for $200. It has a long list of issues: Loud exhaust, AC not working, battery runs down frequently and has to be charged, the car is not road-worthy but he says he tightened the lug nuts 400 miles ago.

He said the rear axle fell apart because I overloaded the truck and the Uhaul trailer it towed, is that plausible?

I had the truck bed full with firewood. The trailer attached to it was about 1/4 full with firewood (6x12' Uhaul trailer).

So the lug nuts appear to be a dead-end, or so it seems, could it be the axle that's at fault? Due to overloading? I don't think it was overloaded however.

Dictum, you’ve completely changed your story. Your questions, and this thread, are starting to look a lot like trolling.

 

[THORROMIG]

Let me tell you what, you drop a tire while towing something -- its gonna be more than just a bump. I call bull __it!!!!

 

[pacem]

Wait a minute. In the original post the trailer was empty.

This story gets better and better.

When I had the incident, the trailer was EMPTY.
And has been empty for hours. For 2-3 hours I drove empty.

It was not under load when it failed.

What exactly is not clear about this? I loaded it with firewood, the Uhaul was 1/4, or so full, the 6x12' model. Unloaded it at the destination and headed back. Stopped at a gas station, it was fine there. Drove for 2 hours and bang. I am repeating myself here.

On the way back, when I was getting back to return it to Uhaul, that's when it happened. Have I ever contradicted myself anywhere? Do you have a reading comprehension problem?

 

[kschachn]

No.

So odd, the one time I saw this happen it made quite a rut.

 

[Yah-Tah-Hey]

Consult with Russian/former Eastern Bloc) truck drivers. They seem to have wheels come off all the time. Sometimes complete with axle and brake drum. In my seventy something years of driving, I have never seen a wheel come off of a vehicle under way.

 

[pacem]

Let me tell you what, you drop a tire while towing something -- its gonna be more than just a bump. I call bull __it!!!!

It was a loud bang and bump. I had the windows closed and felt / heard it. I assumed the wheel was in the vicinity of the bump but was nowhere to be found. I don't know at what point it separated.

 

[PimTac]

When I had the incident, the trailer was EMPTY.
And has been empty for hours. For 2-3 hours I drove empty.

It was not under load when it failed.

What exactly is not clear about this? I loaded it with firewood, the Uhaul was 1/4, or so full, the 6x12' model. Unloaded it at the destination and headed back. Stopped at a gas station, it was fine there. Drove for 2 hours and bang. I am repeating myself here.

On the way back, when I was getting back to return it to Uhaul, that's when it happened. Have I ever contradicted myself anywhere? Do you have a reading comprehension problem?

No I don’t but I can smell the stockyards on this story. Next thing you will change the story on is the 3 miles distance with no wheel.

 

[kschachn]

The incident I mentioned was back in about 1980 when my (then) girlfriend had her car worked on at Kmart, they forgot to tighten the lug nuts on her 1976-ish Mercury Monarch. I wasn't with her at the time but I went to pick her up at the scene, it made a mess of the pavement and she said it was very hard to control the vehicle. There was no way she could drive that vehicle 3 feet much less 3 miles.

But of course this must have been different.

 

[PimTac]

So odd, the one time I saw this happen it made quite a rut.

Yep and the racket would be obvious not to mention the loss of steering control and the truck being at a angle.

 

[pacem]

Empty - sitting on the side of the road.

the scrape in the asphalt was made when I moved it 20 or so feet to free up the space in front of the trailer. So I could pull another vehicle in front of it. Where it actually stopped, there doesn't appear to be any scrapes on the road.

 

[pacem]

I don't know how long I drove without the wheel, it didn't appear to be unstable, essentially I could control it. If I knew, I would have found it.

I am just reporting the pure facts here.

Can axle failure be time-delayed? e.g. you theoretically overloaded, it fails 2 hours later? I didn't think that was possible.

The lug nuts theory appears to be going nowhere. The owner is a mechanic and does all the maintenance himself. He has his priorities, he has nicely maintained vehicles and junk like this he loans out. He told me I overloaded it and that's what broke the axle. I already told him I was running empty at this point.
It is a mystery.
An expensive one, too. While I am not responsible for fixing it, I had to pay Uber almost 100 and the Uhaul charged me late fees. I spent hours and hours on this, had to get my other ride and tow the Uhaul myself with my Tahoe, which is what I should have done to begin with.

Just a nightmare day, plus it was freaking hot and noisy on the shoulder of I-95.

 

[supton]

Some vehicles can balance themselves on 3 wheels. I can buy that. With any sort of trailer attached, I'm a bit dubious.

What kind of firewood? Dry evergreen or wet hardwood? Crewcab trucks are not known for payload capacity. I don't think overload can be ruled out, but neither can lugs improperly tightened.

 

[pacem]

The firewood was dry.
If you picture the inside of the 6x12' Uhaul trailer, it was 1/4 full. That plus the bed.

No failure while driving but things came apart long after I left the drop-off point ( 100 miles later).

 

[pacem]

This is me unloading it at the drop off location, several hours before the failure:

 

[Astro14]

No one here has a reading comprehension problem.

Your first question been answered.

Dictum, please restate the whole sequence of events, from the beginning.

 

[Danno]

Having run a large commercial fleet of light/med trucks, I've seen quite a few pictures of wheel offs and the wheel hubs.
Looks to me like the 4 studs with threads never had a nut on them with any kind of torque. If there was a nut with any holding power, you would see wear on the stud, some wallowing out. Its almost as if the wheel had one nut that was tight and the stud eventually failed. You can see the wheel wobbled for a while with the shiny marks on the axle hub.
I can say that a wheel torqued 400 miles prior, would never fail like this if the fasters (studs and nuts) were in good shape. I doubt they were, just looking at the condition of the parking brake shows. You were setup for failure from the get go.

 

[supton]

Ok, dry firewood is around 2,000lb per cord; a cord is 128 cubic feet. Call it 16lb per cubic foot. 6x12 at quarter full would be what, 2' tall? 18"? I'm guessing around 2k in the trailer. Truck bed is around 2 cubic yards, or 54 cubic feet, or 864 pounds. Not sure how much tongue weight you would have had, but must have been at least 1k extra on the truck's rear axle. Probably more like 1,200 at least, trailer tongue weight plus firewood.

Your photo looks like you went off road a bit, that can be abusive. Albeit at low speeds. Think about hitting a rut or going up a hill, the weight shifts around.

And that looks like an alloy rim, which are known for needing to be retorqued.

[I typed this before the thread and came back. I like this "remember what I typed but didn't post" feature. Just my SWAG as to what was being moved for weight.]

Looks like quad cab was about 1400lb payload, but GCWR is hard to pin down. Link I'm thinking the truck was not overloaded, not unless if it was loaded tongue heavy, or if the U-Haul trailer was really heavy. But that's all shots in the dark.

 

[Jetronic]

Consult with Russian/former Eastern Bloc) truck drivers. They seem to have wheels come off all the time. Sometimes complete with axle and brake drum. In my seventy something years of driving, I have never seen a wheel come off of a vehicle under way.

Why did the wheel cross the road? Because the toyota hilux lost it.

Seen that happen a 100 yards in front of me. They were stopped before I covered the 100 yards though, but i also slowed to a crawl to avoid a collision with them or their load if they were to lose control.

 

[pacem]

video

(Trying to figure out why the link is not working, one sec)

P.S. I was able to recover my original account that I forgot the password to due to all this stress. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[pacem]

While it's uploading to imgur:

I left DC area going south about 10PM on Saturday, loaded, the bed was full and the trailer was about 1/4 full, all seasoned firewood, I was cognizant about overloading. So didn't pack the entire 6x12', I wish I had taken a pic of exactly how much I had in there. The firewood was dry.
The thoght did cross my mind but then I thought, oh why would I ever need that documented. Plus it was 11PM when I got done loading.

Made to it to central VA about 3AM, yeah it was late but on the upside the roads were empty 95 including.

Spent the night there, departed about noon after unloading both Uhaul and the truck. So running empty, made it all the way to Richmond and then about an hour north of Richmond kind of Stafford area off I-95, I-95 north, between exit 140 and 143. Combined I would say that at least 100 miles, maybe more that I cruised fine without issues until this. I rented the Uhaul in DC area and that's where I had to return it, it was a round-trip thing, not a one way. And that is where I first noticed it was fishtailing a bit, I dismissed it to wind, or such. I haven't towed in years. It should have been a clue something is up. Fishtailing only occurred at speeds around 70, I slowed down to 60 and it went away. I drove like that for what seems like 20 minutes and then it went bang and stuff, I pulled over immediately and saw the wheel was completely gone, I was in total shock and disbelief. It was probably within several hundred feet but who the h3ll knows. I am not mechanically inclined to say the least. I mean I can change the oil filter or spark plugs as the extent of my mechanical abilities but as far as diagnosing something, that's above me.

The owner of the vehicle says I overloaded it and broke the axle. This is a 1500 RAM, 2003, with over 200K on it.
and while I am not financially liable, I think the root of the problem it's poorly maintained through and through, example - exhaust has a hole in it, very loud, AC doesn't work, the battery self-discharges. He buys junk vehicles at auto auctions, fixes them and resells them, this looks like a $200 special right there. That's just what I know is broken on it, I presented my lug nuts theory to him, he said he tightened them 400 miles ago. So that doesn't get any traction. I mean I've never seen lug nuts just loosen by themselves but then I don't know.

I need to understand what happens when an axle breaks due to overload, can this be something like this?
I don't know if 1500 RAM is a semifloater, I had a 2500HD Ford and that was a fully floating axle capable of towing very heavy trailers of Fifths, and this one, I can't believe a 1500 RAM would snap because of essentially 2-2.5 beds of firewood. (One full bed in the truck and the equivalent of another bed or 1.5 beds in the trailer). If you could see inside the trailer it was mostly empty.