Im a fool, plain and simple. 
 

The last month has been mayhem in our household. Between selling our house and finding a new house, moving vehicles and stuff from FNQ to Darwin via road it's bonkers to say the least. The final part of the puzzle was to do our second road trip in three weeks to deliver the big boat and truck along with the Landcruiser. 
 

Simple eh?. 
 

Being a little anal in the trip planning department I like to have everything serviced and ready so there's no surprises whilst on the road.

Service the truck, tick.

Service the boat trailer, tick.

Service the boat trailer bearings, tick.

Strap the boat down with all the right gear, extra turnbuckles, tick.

Hitch everything up, ringfeder and airlines all good, tick. 
 

Everything is ready and we hit the road at six on Thursday morning life is sweet, the truck is humming along on Queenslands shitty, shitty Bruce highway. 

About two kilometers north of Cardwell my life turned to shit in a heartbeat. A thud from the rear had me looking in my drivers side mirrors to see what looked like the space shuttle re-entering the atmosphere with a wheel bouncing down the road at 80kph. Being in the middle of bum fuck Idaho I was even more surprised to see two poor souls walking down the road who narrowly missed being skittled by a runaway wheel. Thank fuck they didn't get hit and there was no oncoming traffic to be taken out by the wheel. The 5.3 ton loaded trailer behaved like a champion and behaved itself as I pulled off to the side of the road ( which now had some large u bolt spaced grooves that were about 300m long freshly gouged into it ). At this point I knew my day was going to be interesting.

I jumped out the cab to find out the rear wheel had sheared off all six studs and the extra long u bolts with double nuts had been sacrificial metal which provided the spark show. They were worn down to 10mm of the bottom fish plate, fuck knows what would have happened if they'd been fully ground off. This I don't even want to contemplate. My wife was traveling a few minutes behind me and pulled over to check out what was happening, she was a godsend at this point in time.

No one had been hurt and everything was still the right way up. What had just happened?. When I'd serviced the wheel bearings I'd only put the nuts back on finger tight.

You stupid dumb fuck..... God knows how I didn't lose all four wheels. A trip around with a wheel brace had the remainder tightened

A stroke of luck was we ended up stopped 200m from the first auto repair shop for the last 50k. This I'm grateful for. Having a truck full of lots and lots of jacks, bits of solid wood and tools I had the trailer up off the ground and the hub off in about ten minutes. There are two spare wheels on the front of the trailer and I dropped them and pulled out the studs that hold the wheels on. I then punched out the old studs only to find the ones on the hubs are 16mm and the spares were smaller. No biggie, a walk across the highway saw me with six new studs and a ray of sunshine appearing in my day. Small problem, one stud hole was Munted. The guy at the auto shop pointed me to a guy in Townsville who had a trailer repair shop, he will be able to help you out. He even called the guy and gave him a heads up I was on my way. I ducked back across the road and got the hub back on and put on a new spare as the old wheel stud holes were looking not how they were supposed to. A quick visual inspection and we were right to limp into Cardwell which was two ks down the road. 
 

Everything parked up safely I got underneath and pulled off one of the axle bolts as a reference and off to Townsville in the Cruiser we went ( 300k round trip). By this time I was really, really rattled. What if I had killed those poor people taking a morning walk, or had some poor unsuspecting person get hit traveling in the opposite direction and had killed them?. I felt like I need to pull over and puke on more than one occasion on that trip.I no longer wanting the responsibility of towing such a load on the road. We got to Townsville and collected new ubolts, 24 new studs and was in need of a new hub. Hub was a special order and it would be at least a week. This sealed the deal for me. We drove back down to Cardwell and pulled into the Marina / boat storage place. A quick conversation and we'd sorted boat and truck storage for the next six months. 
 

We went back to the boat and fitted new ubolts to the axle and the trailer was back in action once more. However I had zero faith in the hub studs that had not failed. How was I to know if they'd been fatigued and if they would too let go?. A slow trip out to the Marina saw us parked up and we spent the next hour unloading stuff from the boat into the ( already full ) Cruiser. The boat and the truck were mothballed and we headed back to Townsville. 

We're now in Katherine and we'll be in Darwin tomorrow. 

Upon reflection if I'd only checked the wheel nuts on the trailer ( which is normally a standard process ) I wouldn't be posting this now. 
Check, double check and re check shit that's supposed to be right.
  

The boat, trailer and truck will spend the wet season in Cardwell. The trailer place will be doing all the repairs for me. Next April when I've got my confidence back I'll go back and finish what I've started.

Travel safe people, travel safe.