Well we had an awesome weekend camping, at least until we packed up to leave. I managed to pull out from the concrete pad, and make it about 50' down the road. All of the sudden my Pro Series 20K hitch decided it was tired and let go of my Cyclone. Well after feeling a huge jerk, a loud boom, and then a large crushing lurch I slammed on my brakes. The brakes were immediately followed by another boom, although not so loud, jarring, or crushing. I was able to use the front hydraulics to lift the trailer off the bed so I could pull forward and free the king pin from under the hitch. Then using auto level (in the middle of the campground road) I was able to lift the camper enough to re-hitch it and idle over to the next site and clear the roadway.
I of course immediately assumed I had screwed up, but after walking a park ranger through what happened, and showing him the damage he reassured me it was a hitch failure, not my failure. I don't think it was a manufacturing issue, but an installation issue. I noticed a large amount of "chucking" on the way home from the dealer and in route to the park. However, being my first 5th wheel I wasn't sure if this was normal. Since doing some research after the fact, I realize it was a warning sign. So the issue is that the arm that locks the sliding mechanism in place sheared off and allowed the hitch to slide and dislodged the camper. Luckily I had my tailgate up, and with quick cat like reflexes applying the brakes, the king pin stayed inside the bed. Unfortunately dropping 5,000 pounds on my truck bed flattened out my bed, and destroyed my tailgate. The camper is no worse for the wear, just some scratches, and two spots where the gel coat is gouged out. My (unopened) bottle of Rum didn't even fall over, and amazingly enough after getting home last night it is still unopened....
Unfortunately, with the slider arm sheared off I had to leave the camper. Now I am dealing with insurance, truck with one company, trailer with another.
I ordered a new hitch today and it'll be installed tomorrow afternoon. After doing some quick but intense research I selected a Demco Hijacker 21K Autoslide. There are a couple of features that really sold me on it, after what had just happened. First, the jaws wrap completely around the pin, second the hitch has guides that align the pin with the locking jaws, but most importantly, once locked there is a very large steel rod that sits behind the jaws to secure them and act as a catch if something horrible were to happen again. Additionally, once the jaws lock there is a cotter pin that locks the control arm into place helping keep the jaws locked.
Hopefully, I will be able to retrieve my camper Wednesday and get an insurance adjuster to take a look at it, and my truck into the shop to be repaired. I am amazed that I am not more ****** about this, but no one was hurt, and the damage is repairable. I feel very lucky that I was only going 2-3 mph when this happened and not 60mph on a busy freeway...