PA turnpike near Breezewood lost set of tandem wheels hits car

If I'm not mistaken this would be right around Exit 116 on 70/76. If you were heading east and had already passed through Breezewood, then you would not be on the Pike anymore. You would be on I-70. However, if you were heading east and had NOT passed through Breezewood, you WOULD be on the Pike (I-76). Don't know if that is going to help you in your investigation any but I just thought I'd throw that one out there.
Anyway, it is very possible that the driver never knew he even lost a set, and if he was WB he could have made it all the way into Ohio before even noticing! Depending on the time of night, DOT presents is extremely light!!! I speak from experiance on that one as I travel 70/76 quite regularly, most of the time at night. And yes, I will admit, I travel that route by night simply to avoid DOT. Not that I have major violations to worry about, I just dont need the headache, especially when they are looking for ANYTHING to stick ya with due to the CSA 2010 regs they are about to roll out. Anyway, I'm getting WAY off track here. I suspect that 1 of 3 things happened here. 1. He simply didn't notice and rolled through the night only to wonder WTF happened when he noticed the problem at his next stop. (maybe in OH) 2. He was hauling tandums or another trailer and didn't notice anything until his stop on down the road. Having NO CLUE where or when he may have lost em. OR 3. He was a "local runner", knew exactly when and where this happened, and ran like the devil back to his terminal to drop that trailer for another or to get the fellows on the ball with the major repair needed...before anyone found out. No matter what senerio you look at here, the driver and his company, even if he's an OO, would KNOW that his tandums were found by a PA trooper and that they were looking for the owner. So, and this is just my opinion, he and/or the company that he works for, is doing EVERYTHING they can to cover up the fact that something so major was "lost" going down a heavily traveled interstate! If he or his company were honest and responsible ppl, they would be trying to locate the lost freight/trailer "part". Even report it as best they could. The way I see this, if no one steps up and says "that was mine...I didnt know" or whatever, then they are guilty of leaving the scean of an accident! Period! In my opinion, "they" should be the ones to find YOU! I hope that you have a speedy recovery, and recover 100%, without complication. I don't know you but I'm sincerely glad that you lived to tell about it!!! Many before you have not! I hope you find them and em a new one!!!

 

For them to fall off the bearings have to come apart. It's easily seen in it's annual inpection or through unusual tire wear. If the seal was leaking there would be oil all over the wheel. It takes alot of miles for the dry bearings to fail. Heads were turned or the driver didn't do his pretrip insp. There was plenty of time to catch this before it happened.

How can you miss tandems bouncing over a wall and brake lights coming on? Maybe if you are on the cell phone.

It's more like these yoyo's that hit you in a parking lot, panic and run.

 

The annual inspection maybe 11.5 months ago. Unusual tire wear? A lot of trailer tires have unusual tire wear because a lot of companies put used steer or other used tires on them that already had uneven tread wear.....how do you know that this wasn't the first time this driver picked up the trailer.

Let's say your a driver for a big company like Yellow. What, do you call the maintenance dept and say....."hey as anybody noticed that trailer #54230855 is showing unusual tire wear?". This is probably the reply you would get, "ya know what, your right, I was wondering if trailer #54230855 was showing unusual tire wear....or maybe that was trailer #54230858....hmmm, ya know what I'm sorry I just can't remember what every single f####### tire looks like on our fleet of 60,000 trailers....dip####".


The bearing doesn't have to be dry to completely fail. I've taken apart a handful of bearing that are completely pitted and on the verge of coming apart, yet were never dry. Also grease pack hubs don't leak as obvious as oil filled hubs, plus there is no sight level glass to check it.

Do you get behind each drum and shine a light up in there on every pre-trip and if you have dust covers do you take them off on each pretrip since there is no way you can see up in the little .5" brake shoe window? Do you magnaflux your axles before each trip?


I'm pretty skeptical that he didn't know BUT, if it was around a turn, he may of not seen it. I know I can't see my wheels around every turn. If he had his stereo cranked up, he may of not heard it ( Which I hate writing that because now somebody will make a law saying how loud our stereos can be, or maybe we shouldn't have stereo's on trucks to begin with). He may of been on the phone with dispatch and had his earpiece on to loud.


One of many things could of happened so you can't assume.

 

Mark, I hope they find the guy and I hope you are taken care of and if the guy intentially left knowing what happened then I hope he gets burned. I broke my tibia, tore up my shoulder and took a good hit to the head in a tree accident a few years ago and while that pales in comparison to a femur break, I understand the hardships and pain you'll have to go thru over the next year. The difference between my mishap and yours, is that I knew the dangers of the job and accepted it. Except for the medical bills, I forfieted any other form of workers compensation. You on the otherhand were just minding your own business and got messed up, therefore the company responsible should be paying all your expenses and maybe giving a nice little "I'm sorry present". I'm not for sueing people for millions, but a nice new car of your choice and a trip to Vegas with some hot chicks giving you massages every night for a week would be a nice "I'm sorry present". Take care.

P.S. Drink plenty of water so the pain killers don't dehydrate you. Drink plenty of milk and fruits and stay off of soda's.

 

Have the police check with breezewood TA I have had a tire replaced by them on the turnpike right there. Remember the police aren't going to do any investigating they don't have to. They are short on time and more short on man power. Squeaky wheel gets the oil.

 

Mark,
This is one of the bearings we are talking about. I posted a picture of a pitted wheel bearing. This bearing was only a couple months old and was never run dry. I just happened to notice it while changing out a tire. It had water contamination which is not easily recognized thru those already dark and cloudy hub oil level caps. Sometimes pitting can go on for years with slow progression, but then sometimes the pitting will have a snowball affect, in that every piece that falls off takes another little chunk out, and so on, and so on. Spinning about 500rpms with about 8000lbs pressing down on those bearings, not including when going over bumps which can momentarily double the force, and not to mention lateral forces from taking turns, it sometimes doesn't take long for a pitted bearing to desinigrate. Again, good luck.

 

It would most likely take a decent insurance investigator 1 day or less to solve this problem !!!!

 

I vote this as post of the year.

Schidt happens. Putting myself in that truck driver's shoes...

OMG, the freakin tandems just came off and killed that guy! Oh schidt! What do I do now? I don't wanna go to prison!

Screw it, I'm dead now...

Where's that list of people I wanted to kill before I die?

Dang it, where did I put the extra magazines for my 30-06?


Three hours later...

Hey Billy, remember me from high school? Remember when you used to flush my head in the toilet?

BAM... BAM...

This is Don Lemon, reporting to you live from the CNN newsroom in Philadelphia where a truck driver has gone on a shooting rampage. Sources say the driver was under investigation for hit and run when a wheel became detached from his trailer and struck an oncoming vehicle...

 

Lego, thanks for the picture! I love it when something like this happens and those with little knowledge of trucks says the words"bad PTI!" There are some things you will NOT find in a PTI and bad bearings is one of them! I've heard it on the CB when we see a truck on the side of the road with an axle sitting on the ground and a set of tandems in the trees! You hear "didn't do a PTI" and I have to laugh at that one! There is no where in the FNCSA or at any driving mill that teaches or tells you how to check a bearing! The only way you can tell without demounding the rim is to jack the tires off the ground and grab the top or side of the tire and try with your measly 150 to 300 pounds to get the tire to "wiggle or shake" on the spindle!

Does anyone know how to tell if water is in the lube through that "cloudy" little and dirty window? Heres a hint. Pull the plug and smell. If you know what the lube smells like add water and it gets a "nasty" odor to it.

And it does NOT take long for the lube to drain out if the seal fails. I've seen a seal fail and the lube come out in several miles if it failed drastically.

And the "bad wear" on a tire! Yeppers, when the cheap arsed companies squeezing every dime they can, puts a tire from a drive or steer that is wearing bad to save a dime and the driver doesn't understand that that tire will contiune to keep wearing bad even if on a good axle. OR after a rebalance. Once started it keeps on wearing bad!

Anyway I hope the OP has better luck than whats happened so far. I posted when this first hit but the internet went down just as I hit post and it's out there in lala land looking for a home! BUT I see that they are pulling videos from the toll plazas but they also need to pull them from the service plazas. He didn't say if he was on the PA Pike or I76 east or west of Breezewood. Where were you exactly when this happened. If it happened on the east side of Breezewood then if he went through town some store camera might have caught it but it's been a while so the tape is probably history by now.

I know that the highway patrol knows if the tires had a brand on it and would have been one of the first things they looked for. Did the rim have an ID# or anti theft # on it?

My advice is have your lawyer have his investigator do the video route and to also check EVERY truck repair shop within 200 miles. Some driver would have gotten his attention by then and let him know about the missing set! I did ask in the missing post was it a set or a single tire that hit you. Some people even newbs call a "tire" a set of tandems IDK but they do.
Good luck and watch that blood clot! I had one in Jan and that was a week in the hospital for me plus a nice "umbrella" filter places in my vein from the leg! That thing looks like a high dollar bass lure!