Yesterday we travelled from Chehalis WA to Depoe Bay OR. It should have been about 3.5 hours and we left at 9am, expecting to get to our destination and set up in time to have lunch before 1pm.
Well! about 9:30am as we were driving along, a car pulled alongside Jeff and the passenger pointed repeatedly to the trailer. Hm…? Her actions were rather frantic, so we pulled to the shoulder on I-5 and Jeff got out to take a look. One of the trailer tires was flat!…not only flat, it was shredded to the point where there was a little rubber and some cording and we were driving on the rim!
Luckily our trailer has 2 axels and four tires but that was a large load on that remaining tire on that side. Our trailer weighs about 10,000 pounds!!
Luckily the bad tire was on the outside, cause we couldn’t drive any longer on that rim, even to the next exit about a mile further.
So, Jeff pulled out the spare tire and the jack that came with the trailer, and started working to change the tire. That jack was useless!! It was way underpowered to left a fully loaded trailer! So, our next idea was to call AAA – we pay for it after all and our trailer is included in the services. They said it would be an hour till a towtruck arrived with tools to change the tire.
Just as I hung up the phone a towtruck pulled up! Wow – that was fast! Not really, it was the WSDOT (Washington State Dept of Transportation) that has trucks driving around looking for road hazards and people in trouble. He said he knew we were up ahead as he had stopped to pick up the remains of our tire about a mile back.
His jack couldn’t even lift the trailer! I told him we had already called AAA, so he left and we waited. A state trooper stopped to see if we were okay and we chatted for a few minutes.
While we were waiting I gingerly stepped up into the trailer and fixed a couple of sandwiches and some fruit for lunch – no way we were going to make it to our destination by lunchtime!
Ok, the tow truck arrived about 11:15 and got the tire changed out in about 15 minutes. Their jack made it look easy! There were two guys, one was being trained and both were very nice! Once the spare tire was on, both tires on that side looked a bit low and when he checked the pressure, yep, both were under-pressure about 20 pounds each. They offered to drive with us following to a Les Schwab dealer about 14 miles down the road, and we took them up on that offer!
So, at Les Schwab they looked at all our tires and all were cracking and in pretty bad shape! So, we decided to buy 4 new tires and avoid more problems. We were there about 1.5 hours and by the time we left it was 2pm.
The guy at Les Schwab suggested an alternative route to our destination so we could avoid Portland, although he said we’d be through there by about 3pm and should miss most of rush hour.
So, we get on the road again and within just a few miles see a LED sign indicating “Wreck ahead – prepare to stop”. Traffic inched along for about an hour and we only got a few miles. Ok, it’s now 3pm and we’re not even close to Portland yet.
We hit the major rush hour through Portland! Then we had 2 more hours to go to get to our destination so we ended up stopped at a Subway for a quick dinner.
We finally arrived at our destination RV park at 8pm, right on the Oregon coast although we couldn’t tell because it was very foggy! Got set up and finally in the comfort of our home as it was getting dark.
Whew! We don’t like to travel with the trailer for more than 6 hours, but this one ended up being an 11 hour day, which much of it sitting in slow traffic or on the side of the road or in a waiting room at Les Schwab. Hopefully we don’t repeat this experience anytime soon!
