Home > General > Commercial Stupidity

Commercial Stupidity

October 30th, 2008

I have seen this Chevy Truck commercial showing the power of their pick-up towing various trailers.  I have seen them put a ring trailer hitch over a ball hitch on the truck.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?

And the first bump the trailer tongue pops up, then goes down, digs into the ground, and the safety chains jerk and rip on the truck before snapping.  There is a particular truck hitch for a ring trailer hitch, and if you don’t use that on a public road I hope that the local cops charge your dumbass for everything they can find.

And if you do that on your own private land and damage your trailer and/or truck, I hope your insurance company denies your claim.  Some species of stupid are so obvious (to me – yes I worked at a city park/campground and saw a lot of safety stuff over-ridden – luck, youth, and good reflexes then is why I am alive now) that it should be without saying.

There is tough.  Then there is stupid.  The two are not the same.

  • Share/Bookmark
Comments appear entirely at the whim of the guy who pays the bills for this site, and may be deleted, edited, ridiculed, or otherwise pissed over as he in his capricious fancy sees fit. Thank you.
  1. Eri Kinsey
    October 31st, 2008 at 07:11 | #1
    Reply | Quote
    My family has been in the RV business since 1951. Since before I could drive I have been pulling trailers. Yet, despite all that cumulative generational and personal experience sometimes shit can go wrong in a bad way. One day I borrowed my dad's flatbed trailer and dualie truck. I was running behind for a pickup 3 hours away. I took off in a hurry. As I was blazing down a 2 lane country road at 70 per I hit a bump. To my horror I saw the tongue jump above tailgate in the rearview. Reflexively I tapped the brakes. BIG mistake. The brake control caught (it was set for a much heavier load), the wheels locked and the safety chains snapped. The trailer under its own inertia veered to my left, passed me and came to rest in a soy bean field about 100 ft from the road. Luckily it was a Sunday morning and no one was on the road. My heart was jumping out of my chest as I realized what had just happened. I backed into the field and saw that the jack and tongue were mangled and dug into the dirt. Somehow I got it back on the ball making sure to lock it. Then it wouldnt budge. I thought I was screwed. The angel on my shoulder came in the form of the "4wd low" setting provided by the Chevy engineers. I eased out of the field and back on the road without further incident. Scary, scary stuff, there are so many ways things could have gone more wrong. I doubt the director of that Chevy truck commercial has ever pulled anything more than rolling luggage.

    I dig your site the most. Keep up the great work.

    -ejk

  2. Three Legged Bunny
    October 31st, 2008 at 18:03 | #2
    Reply | Quote
    The horizontal ring hook goes into a vertical ring hitch called a pintle. Never the ball and pintle shall meet. Pretty much anyone who's ever towed anything can tell you horror stories--seeing their trailer race past them and like that. I can. I'm surprised there aren't thousands killed every year. God looks out for fools, drunks and guys with trailer hitches.
  3. Mikey NTH
    October 31st, 2008 at 19:00 | #3
    Reply | Quote
    3LB: The F-350 dumps at the camp had the pintles; the F-150's (and a few remaining F-100's) and the Rangers had the ball hitch (as did some tractors). The front end loader had a clamp-on plate for a ball hitch when a trailer was pulled for non-payment of rent. You'd think that forty year old travel trailer/single-wide would never move, that it was rooted, but one could yank by 'Dinky' and along it would go.

    I had my own trailer horror story. I was driving an old camp van with a small old canoe rack. Two canoes on the bottom and the other four bars empty. I heard the chains pop off and slowed to pull over and reattach them. As I was slowing I was looking in my mirrors and saw (and heard) the trailer come off. I hit the accelerator and watched as the trailer, sparks coming from the tongue, crossed the double yellow and went into the ditch. The tongue dug into the sand, the trailer reared up, and the two canoes shot off like two torpedoes. The upper racks collapsed. Another motorist helped me get everything reattached and back to the camp to drop it off at the garage.

    The other truck had the other rack and had to do a shuttle-run.

    Not a good thing at all. And I have been very careful with trailers since.

  4. Mikey NTH
    October 31st, 2008 at 19:06 | #4
    Reply | Quote
    To this day if I see a trailer I will pass, and I am not happy so long as I am behind it, and I have seen many trailers going up north fully loaded with everything, and the wheels splaying out.

    I will pass - at a very high rate of 'foot to the floor' speed.

Comments are closed.
Arizona Landscaping - Bingo - United Specialties - Renegade Motorhomes