I had a very startling lesson yesterday about trailer safety.

I rented a trencher to do a project at my home. The place I got it has been around for about 50 years and rents mostly to professionals and tradesmen and the guy hooking me up appeared to be very competent and well experienced. Despite that, I watched him do the connection.

To make a long story short, after unloading the trencher I set out to pick up some bagged concrete. About a mile down the road, I felt a tug and then in my rearview mirror, saw the trailer careening across the oncoming lane, over a ditch and into a stand of pine trees.

The trailer was equipped with two 3/8" safety chains with hooks and a 1/4" chain to actuate the breakaway safety on the surge brakes. The hook on the end of the breakaway was pulled off yet the lever was still in the down position, not engaged. Apparently as the trailer bounced around the slip hooks came loose of the safety chains. After retrieving the trailer and reconnecting, I hooked the chains. Then I gave one a quick whip up and down and the hook popped right off. So much for safety chains.

Apparently the coupler's locking pawl had worn and it simply popped loose, releasing the coupler.

Here's what I learned-

I'll never connect safety chains with hooks. And in thinking about it, most of the places these chains hook onto aren't capable of holding a runaway trailer, so a chain is going around a main tube. I'm going to replace my hooks with screw-closure rings.

I will never, ever tow a trailer with surge brakes. After watching the actuator lever fail to move tells me it's a very flawed system. It seems that the pull was just at the wrong angle. Electric brakes wouldn't have allowed that to happen.

Standing on the side of the road, surveying the trailer stuck into the stand of pines across from a corn field made me wonder what would have happened had it popped loose less than a minute earlier when I turned off of a busy state route. It would have most certainly gone head-first into oncoming traffic. Thinking about a ten thousand pound boat in place of a small flatbed trailer makes me very hesitant to hook it up again.

If you trust your trailer's safety features, you should think again.