The U-Haul that almost killed us

I (Julie) have a lot of stuff. I admit it. Somehow we had to get all my stuff, furniture that my parents graciously gave us, wedding presents and a car to Minnesota. My family came up with the idea of having us drive it out with a small U-Haul trailor attached. Fine, no worries. They loaded it up while we were on our honeymoon (stories to come, or maybe not on second thought..) and we started driving it to Utah the day after we got back from our week of bliss. Everything was fine, no problems with the trailor, everything fit, life was good. We got to my grandparents where most of my stuff from college was stored and proceeded to load up the trailor. Most everything fit, with Kurtis' expertise packing. How is it that men are so good at these sorts of things?! But there was no room to spare.

We got on the freeway the next day and proceeded to speed up to catch traffic. But as we did, only one exit past the Lombardo's the trailor started swaying side to side. Kurtis was driving and he tried to counter this swaying action by turning the car a little. This seemed to only worsen the swaying and soon the trailor was pulling our car into other lanes. Luckily, we were still in the right lane and I calmly told Kurtis to pull the car off to the side but it was too late. As we were pulling to the side the trailor swayed heavily to the left, pulling the car around to face traffic and landing us in the median of an onramp. As I looked in the rear mirror I could see the trailor up in the air on one wheel before it slammed back down to the ground. We were truly watched over. We didn't hit anyone else, our car was safe and there was a state patrol officer on the on ramp who saw the whole thing. We got out to look at the trailor to find it missing a wheel. We couldn't move the trailor one inch. The men got it unhooked and we drove the car to the side of the freeway. The trailor sat there inches into the right lane in the median. The officer parked his car with the lights on so no one would clip it. He told us to get U-Haul NOW to come get it or else he would impound it. We did everything possible but still waited a couple hours for them to come. I couldn't watch as the guy attempted to put this crippled trailor up on a giant truck with only a hook and pulley system. It almost fell off the side of the truck as it was being pulled up.

The officer was extremely helpful and considerate and did not impound us, despite his threats. He was just doing his job. The U-Haul people were less considerate. Kurtis did not accept their offer to give us a new trailor when this one almost killed us. Clearly, they did not give correct information when they said our little Corolla would have no problem pulling a filled trailor. Finally, Kurtis got them to give us a discount, small miracle, but we ended up with a very large truck and car dolly. We unloaded the trailor and loaded the truck that afternoon and headed back to the Lombardo's. There was no way we could leave for Wyoming that day. We did make it to Gillette and stayed with mom's wonderful cousins and left for Minnesota the day after that. I just have to say, regardless of what Kurtis says, I am not cut out to be a trucker.