For nearly the entire month of July, 2017, Lezlie, Jax, and I had been going between home and a campground 2 hours away, moving in all of our gear and learning how to operate everything on our new-to-us 5th wheel travel trailer in preparation for full time travel.
On the morning of July 27, we were all packed up and ready to head out. After 18 months of research and planning, all systems had been tested, loose items were stowed, propane was off, stairs were up, tire pressure was checked, and electric cord was tucked away. We were ready.
Since we were on metered electric for the month-long stay, Lezlie volunteered to go to the front office to have them come check our meter, so we could pay the bill before leaving.
In the meantime, I got the trailer hitched and then waited for her to return. This was my second time hitching the trailer, and the first time hitching it by myself.
I lined up the pin and slowly rolled the truck back until it slammed into the hitch. So far so good.
When Lezlie came back, we proceeded to lift the front jacks and watched, our mouths hanging slightly open, as the weight of the trailer forced our rather tall truck down to a much shorter stature.
The jacks move VERY slowly, so this does take some time, and the creaking and cracking only increase the anxiety of the whole experience.
Despite being very worried about pulling a 10,000lb trailer with all of our belongings, everything looked good. The trailer was level, the brake was attached, break a-way cable secured, and all jacks were up. We looked at each other with half smiles, nervously trying to remember 18 months of research, before shifting into “D”.
“I think we’re ready; here we go.”
We started to pull forward and in the next moment, I couldn’t believe what I saw in the mirror. I heard a click that made my eyes dart to the side-view mirror just in time to see the trailer slide off of the hitch and slam down onto the truck bed.
I jammed on the brake and then froze for a moment, unable to think or speak – or breath.
As my brain started to come out of shock, I turned to Lezlie and said in a panic, “The trailer just came off the hitch! Why did that happen?!?”
The corners of the truck bed had smashed through the fiberglass cap which was cracking, further every second, under the immense weight of the trailer. I was in full panic mode as I mashed on the jack extend button, turning my fingers purple, hoping the jacks would move faster. They didn’t.
I thought for sure I had ruined our new home and crumbled our plans of full time travel, before we had even moved from our first site.
This was not a fun moment, but we did learn a lot from it. Like, for instance, that our battery was a pile of garbage and couldn’t even bring the jacks all the way out before completely dying!
In a new haze of panic, heightened by the deafening sound of cracking fiberglass (If you’ve ever seen a movie where a large piece of glass is cracking under immense pressure, a la Jurassic Park 2, this was the sound our trailer was making, and it was scary. I was just waiting for the whole trailer to come crashing down at any moment.), I hear Lezlie calmly suggest that we plug the rig back in to finish the job. Brilliant.
We scrambled to get the electric cord plugged back in and the jacks fully extended. With the jacks down, we had a minute to catch our breath and inspect the damage.
Luckily, the damage appeared to be only cosmetic. Though the corners of the truck bed definitely broke through the fiberglass, it turns out only the cap was breeched, and no part of the trailer’s interior. (Whew!)
It was time to shake it off and move on. Or so we thought.
Maybe if I hadn’t been in such a state of panic, and maybe if I had been a more experienced RV’er, I might have thought to lower the jack feet before extending the jacks all the way out. But, I didn’t.
So, this presented yet another big challenge: the jacks were fully extended, but the trailer was still not high enough to be hitched back on to the truck. Face-palm.
We realized that in order to raise the jacks and reposition them to be able to lift the trailer up to the height of the hitch, we needed to get the trailer weight back onto the truck.
Sh*t.
After vigorous pacing and lots of mumbled curse words, I had an idea.
We used our jack pads, and laid them double stacked on the truck bed to, hopefully, hold the pin weight as I retracted the jacks, so we could then extend the jack feet.
Our collective anxiety meter shot back into overdrive as we lowered the 5-ton trailer onto these two small plastic squares in the bed of the truck.
Again, these jacks move with the speed of an elderly tortoise on tranquilizers, so this took a long time…and seemed to take even longer.
To spare you any more drama, I’ll let you know that everything worked out okay in the end; probably as okay as it possibly could have.
Since the damage to the cap was only cosmetic, it was easily covered with fiber-fix tape as a semi-permanent solution.
After that incident, we replaced our dead, crappy group 27 marine battery with a shiny new Trojan true deep cycle 31-AGM and we’re much happier now.
In the end, we learned that our Curt hitch has a known issue for not locking even though the trailer pin is coupled. We’ve had this happen a few more times since, and what I do is pull the truck forward, jiggle the hitch lock handle and then try to couple again – that seems to work (so far).
We also learned that the hitch has a color coding system on the back; red for ‘not ready to hitch,’ yellow for ‘hitch-ready,’ and green for ‘good to go.’ So now, before we move the trailer anywhere, we triple check the hitch and say out loud, “Green means go!”
Thanks for reading! To follow our adventures, be sure to subscribe to our blog!