It was barely 6:30 on a Monday morning when my phone rang showing an unlisted number.
“Is this a scam?” I thought to myself. But I answered the phone.
“Do you know where your Grand Design Imagine trailer is right now?” someone identifying himself as a police officer asked me.
“Well, as far as I know, it’s in the parking lot outside our apartment complex,” I replied, still wondering if this was some sort of scam. “Are you suggesting that it is elsewhere?”
That was indeed what he was suggesting. The policeman told me our trailer was blocking an intersection about a mile away from our home. “Could you come and get it?”
I began to realize this was less scam and more nightmare.
I woke my wife and told her what had happened. And we quickly got dressed and headed to pick up our brand new trailer, less than 6 weeks since we had first purchased her, now abandoned in a snowy intersection.
As we turned down onto the road in question, we could see the trailer parked diagonally in the middle of the intersection, awash in red and blue light from the cop car. I pulled up in front of the trailer, and we got out to see what had happened.
I could see immediately that the trailer hitch coupler had been damaged. We had installed a hitch lock to prevent theft, but someone had clearly pried or sawed it off. I backed up the truck and connected the hitch, but before we could pull away, the police suggested they should check to see if anybody was inside.
They knocked on the door, identifying themselves, and then unlocked the trailer with my keys. It was empty, and nothing inside appeared to be damaged or missing. We hadn’t brought anything into the trailer since we brought it home from Texas in late February.
I was concerned about towing the trailer home, because the coupler was damaged, and I wasn’t sure how well it would hold. And to make matters worse, the safety chains were missing. That meant if the coupler came off the hitch, the trailer would nose dive into the pavement.
Luckily, the adjacent street was a cul-de-sac with a large area to turn around in. We inched our way back toward our home. We had to cross a major road that was already filling with rush-hour traffic, but we got the trailer home. I left it parked connected to the truck, just in case the thieves came back to try to take her again.
The next day, I went back out to the trailer to take some photos for our insurance claim. As I examined the coupler, I could see a crack in the cup that fits onto the ball hitch. Looking underneath, I could see how torn up the bottom of the hitch was.
It was then that I started to piece together what might have happened. I believe the thieves hitched up the trailer to their truck, but when they came over a speed bump in the road, the trailer must have come loose. Perhaps with the snow, in the dark, they didn’t even notice the bump.
My guess is the trailer fell forward and damaged not only the coupler but broke off the connections to the safety chains. The thieves then probably extended the jack to try to rehitch the trailer to their vehicle. Maybe they noticed the coupler was broken. Maybe they just decided to give up. They left the trailer there, and someone passing by reported it to the cops.
I talked with our local Grand Design dealer’s service manager and he told me they can replace a damaged hitch without any problem. They’ll need to order the part and once they get it, it’s a one-day job. I’m not sure if the jack was damaged in the process, we’ll have to get that checked out.
The damaged coupler and lack of safety chains means I can’t safely tow it the 10 miles or so to the dealer. We’ll have to get a flat bed truck to take it away. In the meantime, we’ve got to secure the trailer so nothing like this happens again. We’ll get a new hitch lock, and per the suggestion of some good folks from an RV owners Facebook group, we’ll run a chain through the wheels to make sure no one can tow it away again.
This is certainly not the way we hoped our RV life would start, but all things considered it could have been worse. The damage should be easily fixed and all we lost was our chocks, hitch lock and jack pad, on top of our $500 deductible. We’ve got another 9 months before we start full-timing, and hopefully, we’ll have our trailer ready to go in time for summer camping. We’ll just have to find a more secure storage lot for the remainder of the year.
Just a few days later I came across a local story about an RV that was stolen and recovered in our neighborhood. Apparently, the thieves had been using it as a mobile meth lab. Perhaps that’s what they intended for our trailer as well.
