Minor Accident

Learned a very important lesson this weekend when I backed into my Tucson winter residence spot. You can jack-knife an Airstream trailer; until this accident, I didn’t worry too much about this. No injury to me but here's what happened.

It was a fairly tight spot but nothing I hadn’t dealt with previously; the difference was that the Voyager Resort requires one of their employees “help” you back in (they won’t let you do it yourself due to liability concerns). While backing in on the blind side (passenger side), I had the wheels turned pretty tight and was going very slow (1 mph) until I heard a slight crunch! I assumed the helper was watching things but he only wanted to ensure my trailer didn't hit the adjacent houses; he didn't worry about my trailer:) After the crunch, I ended up pulling forward and turning around in the parking lot so I could back into my spot from the other side (driver side); worked like a charm.

I didn’t think any more about it until yesterday when my truck tailgate would not lower all the way so I went to the GMC body shop where they told me that when I turned too tight, something on the trailer hit my bumper which in turn hit the truck bed which in turn caused the tail gate to jam. Turns out “what” hit my bumper was the case for one of my two extra batteries which are mounted on the “A Frame” on the front of my trailer; these extra batteries were installed for my solar system. Without these extra batteries, the accident wouldn’t have happened; oh well, I’ll be more careful in the future:). Thankfully, the accident didn't hurt the Airstream.

While the accident was clearly my fault, unless you know and trust the other person, and they are experienced backing trailers, don’t rely on them to watch where your trailer is going as well as the connection between your trailer and tow vehicle. One of the benefits of solo towing my Airstream over 20,000 miles over the past 7+ months and backing into hundreds of places is that I’ve learned to do it myself and not rely on anyone else; however, obviously I’ve got more to learn:)

Overall, the damage is minor; everything can be repaired; no replacement necessary and nobody (i.e.,me!) was hurt; however, the bill is about $2k! Thankfully my deductible is $500.

As I backed up, the bumper of my truck hit the corner of this metal battery case mounted on my Airstream's A Frame; no damage to Airstream.

You can see the slight vertical crease in my bumper which shifted the bed and caused my tailgate to jam. Not knowing the tailgate was jammed, it bent when I tried to open it.

You can see here how the bumper shifted slightly forward.