Went to pick up my 5th wheel yesterday after it being at the service sine November 4th. They brought it out and dropped it on it's knees. They didn't extend the front legs before setting it down, they had it nose down to work under the belly to repair the floor. Well it sat too low for me to back under it, and the battery was dead. They came out and lifted it up so the legs could be extended, then set it back down, but it still wasn't quite high enough. The guy who brought out the jumper box grabbed the pigtail from off the pinbox, and knocked the breakaway cable off in the process. Get to that in a bit.

I back under and it is just enough to get my plate under the pinbox. Then the guy plugged the pigtail in. It gave just enough power to raise the front up a 1/4" and stopped due to low voltage. Anyway, I finally got the truck under and latched, Checked the lights, hooked up the break away, pulled the chocks, give it all another walk around, and go to pull out, started to turn and POP and a jolt! I look in the rearview and notice the pinbox is still aligned with the trailer. Schiznit!!!! I have a Reese Sidewinder, the kind that pivots at the trailer frame and not the 5th wheel. There is a wedge that locks the pinbox to the 5th wheel. I get it straightened out, but the damage is done. Tore the plate apart and twisted the pivot arms. Thankfully the pinbox is undamaged same with the frame.

Here's what happened. I have a set routine, I back under, and get the trailer latched to the 5th wheel. Then I reach up into the pinbox and take out the pigtail, and plug it in, then get the break away cable. This is where it went wrong for me. IF I have the locking bolt in place, normally I do not, but if I do, I have the cable threaded through it so that I see it and remove it. Well, because the cable was left dangling, I didn't remove the bolt because, loose cable = no bolt in my routine.

Moral of the story, Do Not try to help when hooking up!! Stay away and let me do what I do to avoid mistakes. This was a $500 mistake that I am not happy about. I can't blame the dealer since I was the one who put the bolt in so they could move the trailer around. I can't blame the guy who knocked it loose, how would he know. What I am going to do is plaster Check for Lock Bolt on both sides of the pinbox and the front in reverse letters so it doesn't happen again.

 

I don't know what a pinbox is, but feel for you.

 

Ouch...damn.
Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I have a set routine for towing my boat(s), a mental checklist that just last year I put on paper and laminated and put into the storage units. I have caught myself a few times getting distracted and would have missed something was it not for my checklist.

 

I lost a WDH spring bar from failing to give it a pull test when I pinned it into the trunnion head. Easily replaced but a stupid mistake. A disrupted or out of order hookup routine is all it takes.

 

That sucks. I'm with ya, leave me alone when I'm in my zone. When backing the trailer there is one rule, yell only if I am less than a foot from hitting something. Good luck getting it fixed, happy you're getting it back prior to the camping season.

 

I have a routine or checklist as well, a mental list for the boat, but a written checklist for the TT /WDH since I don't hook it up "on the spur of the moment" thing like the boat. Wife has learned to leave me alone while hooking up the TT, then I ask her to find the list and check it, Hopefully we don't get distracted during hook up process. Sorry it happened, it sucks for sure.

 

I leave people alone when they are hooking up and hope people do the same to me when I’m hooking up. I’ll stand by at the ready in case you ask for something but until then I ain’t doing jack for that exact reason.

Last camping trip of the season my wife jumped in to help unhook the travel trailer normally I do it all. Well the safety chains never got unhooked because I didn’t do my normal routine. Luckily I pulled away really slow and nothing happen besides me being a bit startled when the truck came to a halt and made a horrible noise.

 

Same here. When I’m connecting or disconnecting any of my trailers, don’t interfere, unless asked. And same applies when I’m with someone doing the same with their trailers.

It’s kinda like that scene where there’s several guys standing around while someone’s backing their trailer into a tight spot. All seven guys are giving ****ty hand signals and yelling. I want ONE designated spotter, and everyone else shut up and stay out of the way.

 

I guess it would be interesting to figure out how to recover when someone interrupts, or is interrupting, etc.

I must say, silly as it may sound, I like the little checklist that you can run through in the trailer towing menus. It would be cool if you could customize the checklist.

 

Always take your time and never get complacent. Having mild OCD can help also, since it's better to check twice than not at all!

Reminds me of a large and very busy distribution warehouse I'd regularly get sent to back when I did the long haul trucking thing for a bit... Almost every time I was there, image below would happen after a driver went to pin up to a trailer and drive away from the dock. It's not very difficult at all to hook these things up properly, but omitting a couple of visual checks and a mechanical check either due to laziness, complacency, or forgetfulness can lead to BOOM! Another trailer dropped onto the concrete! If the trailer was loaded, the landing gear would usually get completely destroyed. How fast the driver could stop his tractor would also determine if he tore off and ruined his air lines as well. Luckily this would typically happen before the trucks left that yard, so the general public was not at risk. It was comical how fast the Doc's Crash Landing heavy wrecker usually arrived to lift the trailers off the ground, so I'm convinced he was hiding somewhere nearby in the area, and this was probably pretty much his full time job!