PSA - Watch your Swingout!!

[RISK]

Most of on here are seasoned and confident in our towing abilities but a little reminder of our fallibility every so often is wise to embrace.

Case in point: my neighbor, who is a long time boat trailer puller, neglected to account for the additional swing out when pulling his mother in law’s airstream out of his driveway for a camping trip resulting in the damage below. It seems that he assumed boat trailering would translate over to travel trailers. While some aspects do, one that really doesn’t is swing out. Boat trailers have their axles much further back than TT’s do and therefore have far less swing out. That assumption coupled with the general anxiety of preparing for a trip led him to get lazy and not GOAL (get out and look).

This incident was a good reminder for me, for even though I have ten’s of thousands of towing miles under my belt, I should never get complacent. GOAL, plan. GOAL, decide. GOAL, execute.

Fortunately no one was hurt, but I cringe when I see this. There are replacement panels available (I think about $3,500 in parts and shipping) and I’ll help him with the repairs so it’ll be done right. It’s a mid bath, so we’ll remove the bedroom and buck the new panels back in instead of Olympic riveting new panels on.

Relax, take your time, GOAL and think things through...

Ian

[Razorback]

Ouch!

Good advice for us all to remember.

Apparently he’s on good terms with his MIL? Otherwise, I wouldn’t think she would even consider loaning out her trailer.

An expensive lesson, but hopefully all will be well soon.
Good luck with the repairs.

[Bobbyz]

Thankfully it wasn't an Avion.

[DJ18]

what a big OUCH

on the trailer before the Avion, dragged the rear of our trailer, along with the steps along side of a car in a parking lot. A very hard lesson to learn! I felt terrible. but I bet I don't make that mistake with the Avion.

[KYAvion]

That’s painful to look at. Can you explain the details about what occurred? I was expecting the damage to be along the front passenger side, and not the rear driver’s side. How did he not catch that in his mirror?

[RISK]

He neglected to account for a large cedar elm (kid screaming, wife jabbering. His words...) as he was turning right out of his driveway and forgot about the significant swing out of a 31’ trailer.
He said he didn’t feel it until the tree “released” him and that’s when he knew.

I priced out the replacement panels and parts including shipping and he’s looking at around $3,800. That’s if we do the work.

Luckily (?) the damage is confined to the quarter panel and it’s a mid bath making removal of the interior much easier.
We would buck rivet back everything as opposed to Olympic rivets (you know my stance on those) which is what one repair quote would do for a rough estimate of $11,000-$15,000.

A repair that big needs to be done right...

Ian

[KYAvion]

Just curious so I can visualize this better—about how many feet is the elm from the side of his driveway? About 15 feet or less?

Just trying to imprint this in my brain so I never do this!

[RISK]

Just curious so I can visualize this better—about how many feet is the elm from the side of his driveway? About 15 feet or less?

Just trying to imprint this in my brain so I never do this!

Hey there,

Thought I posted a reply to this...

The tree in question is just a couple feet off the driveway close to the street. The rub (bad choice of words maybe) is that it leans into the driveway at about 8' up. It is a 65' + tall tree, so the trunk is fairly big.

This was the second time that he pulled the trailer out of his driveway, the first I insisted on guiding him out and it was just the two of us. This time however, he had the distractions of his family and just didn't do that final walk around. In his words, he got cocky. To be fair, the tree is close.

He just didn't go forward far enough before turning right.

I definitely got me to review everything I do when I tow...

Ian

[KYAvion]

Thanks. I figured the tree was pretty close to the driveway, but I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something.

I came close to hitting a tree on the INSIDE of a one-way campground loop once. There was a tree just on the other side of the road inside the loop, and although I was keeping pretty well centered to avoid swing out into trees on the outer side, I came close to not having enough swing out and almost clipped a tree on the inside of the loop.