Wheel assembly comes of truck and kills 2

Axle breakaway? Loose lugnuts? Here's a video of another wheeloff incident. This driver was showing signs before it came off. I keep wondering how you could drive and not feel the wheel rattle before coming off. It looks like a steer broke away. You ought to feel that working it's way loose through the whole cab.

 

I've seen this probably more times then I can count on two hands in my many decades of driving. How can it happen? I don't know, but it does.

I've seen 2 tires/rims rolling down the road by themselves as a dual, and I've seen complete rims/tires/axle separated from the truck. And, I've seen tires come off of rims and proceed on their own little trip. I've even seen a large truck tire literally wedged into the passenger windshield of a Swift truck. Crap happens.

No. Never had any of the things happen to me. Knock on wood.

 

Once years ago I was West of Pennwell, TX, following a bull wagon. At that time we had to run the service roads. They were in the process of building the interstate, and they had a two lane service road for both those going west and east.

The outside back left tire on the bull wagon came off, it hit the ditch between the service road we were on and the east bound interstate lane they were building, them went air borne.

As I watched it go up, up, and away I saw a car coming down the west bound service road, I feared that tire would hit that car head on. But it didn’t. That tire went way over the two intestate lanes that were being built and over the west bound service road the car that was going west on and hit out in a pasture and went rolling out of sight.

I got hold of the bull wagon on my CB telling him he lost the left rear tire on his trailer, he did not believe me. I asked him to pull over and take a look, the other tire and rim might just come off too. Finally he stopped and I stopped with him.

He could not believe that tire and rim came off, even seeing it not there. That’s something that can happen. All of the lug nuts were still on the axel, and they were tight. Seems the rim gave up and it went flying.

Had a friend who drove for the same company I did. Going west east of Quartzsite, AZ, he lost 2 tires, rims, brake drum on the right rear back axel and all somewhere east of Quartzsite one night. The axel was about 8 inches to a foot about the ground, and did not drag. He found it gone when he was fueling up at Quartzsite.

Strange things can happen, and you never know when it will happen.

 

If a wheel bearing goes bad, even if you checked and the hubs were full of oil, anything can happen. I've seen the ends of axels snap off.

 

You can check it and everything will look A-OK, and it can come off at any moment. You never know.

 

I had a wheel bearing go on a van trailer once. Noticed the smoke, pulled over and the wheels were in the process of separating as a unit. The brake shoes were on fire and I put the fire out with my extinguisher. That could have been a really bad situation. A service truck came out from the WES-T-GO truck stop in Tye Texas. He removed the wheels from the front tandem axle and he followed me the ten miles to the truck stop at 30 mph. I was loaded heavy with bottled water. Dropped the trailer and bobtailed back to Dallas.