This Wildly Unsafe Ram Pickup Towing a Mobile Home Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen
The load wasn’t strapped and the trailer didn’t have brakes—but wait until you see the hitch.
Sometimes, all you really need to get from point a to point b is a little scrap metal and some ingenuity. Other times, it's best you leave the hauling of people or things to the professionals, especially when it comes to really big stuff. Try to haul something as big as a freaking house with your Dodge Ram and a trailer borrowed from a friend, and you might find yourself with a monster of a ticket, an impounded vehicle, and no place to live—as one Canadian recently learned while trying to relocate their mobile home.
Last week, a member of Canada's Sheriff Highway Patrol pulled over the truck-and-trailer combination you see below near the small town of Grimshaw, located in the western region of the Alberta province, where they use cardboard cutouts of cops to deter speeding. According to a post by the Alberta Sheriff's official Facebook page, an official inspection of the visibly inadequate towing setup revealed it to be in violation of 21 different road statures, some of which would've made fellow motorists' cringe if they knew how lazily the building had been secured (or not secured, for that matter) to the trailer.
For starters, Sheriffs say the load exceeded the tires' weight rating by over 3,000 kilograms (over 6,600 pounds), posing the risk of a blowout. Had the trailer's tires popped, its completely unsecured load could have come loose, possibly dragging along or falling off onto the road. Stopping the vehicle before the mobile home sustained serious damage would've been difficult, as the trailer had no working brakes, and was barely attached to the truck in the first place.
"During the inspection, the officer also noted that the trailer hitch had no locking mechanism—meaning the only thing keeping it attached to the vehicle was the sheer weight of the load on the trailer," stated Alberta Sheriff on Facebook.
Sheriffs also dinged the driver for having an expired registration, bringing their total fine to just over 3,800 Canadian dollars, or $2,800 American. Authorities stated that "the vehicle was placed out of service," which sounds like legalese for impounded.
"The COVID-19 pandemic has shown just how important commercial carriers are to keeping the supply chain moving," stated the department on social media. "Commercial vehicle enforcement helps ensure that people, in addition to the goods we rely upon, can safely reach their destination by taking unsafe vehicles and drivers off the road."
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