Universal joint broke

U joints break all the time. Not for me though becuase I’m an owner operator. Wanna know why they break on the job? 2 reasons
Lack of grease
And lack of checking u joints weakly for play.

 

Lesson learned. If you were to crawl under truck and check each you joint by pushing and pulling on each one, you would have caught the issue before it happened. I do it weekly but once every couple weeks is fine. Grease them regulakry

 

Pretrip does not involve u joints. It’s up to you to check the whole truck out for preventative maintenance. U joints is a big thing. You could get a way with checking them once a month depending on mileage but they need to be checked for play or you could be sitting on side of road when unexpected. I’ll bet your ujoint that failed had a ton of play and you could have seen that 2 months ago.

 

You'll see the occasional half shaft (the drive shaft between the axles) laying on the side of the road. They break, especially the new "lubed for life" units without grease zerks. Not sure how many miles on your truck, or if it had been towed to a shop lately, but sometimes a cheap shop won't replace the mounts that hold it to the yoke like they're suppose to, they just reuse the old ones and over tighten them...then they sometimes fail

 

From what you're saying, it doesn't sound like anything you did. #### just happens sometimes, although I can tell you that the warning signs were probably there. If your company hires FNG types for their shop, they may not necessarily be the most diligent, and such companies often put an emphasis for how quickly a PM gets done, rather than how thoroughly.