Have you seen a big influx of bumper-pulled utility trailers being towed by huge pickups in your area?

That’s certainly the case in my part of the world. My theory is that by the time the manufacturers put two rows of seating with good leg room on the chassis of their trucks, there is hardly enough room left for a decent bed. And I don’t see too many longbeds because they end up being longer than a coal train. So, truck owners are buying trailers to haul the stuff they used to haul in their pickups.

I have pulled all kinds of trailers with all kinds of trucks in my life. Because my old man was a truck driver, I learned to drive a semi by the time I was 18. I’ve pulled everything from horse trailers to house trailers and I gotta tell you, I hate bumper-pull trailers and it’s not just because I went over a hundred-foot cliff in a pickup when I was 17 with a horse trailer on back. At least it was when we started going over the cliff but by the time we hit bottom, the truck and trailer had become uncoupled... divorced... unattached.

The real reason I hate bumper-pull trailers was because of the hatred I felt toward my wife’s stepdad who was the most pompous diabolical arse God ever put on this planet. And that’s no exaggeration. He wanted to take my wife’s mother, who I really liked, far away from her children, which was all right by me. In fact, I offered to drive a pickup with a 20-foot U-Haul trailer filled with all their belongings just to make sure he was gone for good.

They rented the U-Haul and borrowed a pickup so I didn’t have to use mine. I didn’t even have to pack all their stuff up; all I had to do was drive six hours away right through the middle of Los Angeles traffic. My wife and I got to the in-law’s new abode just fine and we stayed the night so we didn’t have to drive another six hours back home in the same day. Early the next morning we were on our way home with the trailer when right in the middle of LA traffic I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the trailer was swinging to and fro and was carrying the truck with it. As carefully as I could I slowed down to work my way over to the shoulder of the road and eventually got everything shut down. Somehow the trailer had come off the ball and was only held on by the safety chains. I immediately suspected the evil stepdad of trying to get us killed. Please note that it didn’t happen on the trip the previous day because he wanted to get his belongings to their new home but after that I suspected him of getting up at 2 in the morning and monkey-wrenching with the ball on the bumper or the coupling of the trailer. I couldn’t file attempted murder charges because the people at U-Haul called it a “no fault” failure.

Seated at a table at a video sale in Reno, I was telling this story to a couple who were friends of ours when all of a sudden the wife, who is usually very quiet, said, “That’s nothing,” she said as she stared at her husband derisively, “wait till you hear about our little trailering incident.”

The husband shrunk down in his seat trying to disappear under the table when his wife started telling the story. “We were going to pick up two horses that we’d bought in Colorado. We were having a good trip and even did a little sightseeing along the way. We found ourselves on a lightly traveled road near Cedar City, Utah, when the ball came off the bumper. We were going downhill at a pretty good rate and the next thing we heard was a big commotion behind us.”

“My gosh,” I asked, “Weren’t you frightened?”

“Of course I was,” said the wife. “Next thing you know we both looked out the driver’s side window and saw a trailer passing us doing about 80 mph. Then pea brain here scratches his head and says, ‘Look honey. There’s a trailer just like ours.’”