We received this letter from Rocky Burrous today and are passing it along as a reminder to other RVers.
Mr. Burrous wrote:
Greetings Chuck,
Once again we had a great adventure this past weekend. Our 5th wheel receiver hitch assembly fell off our 2015 Alpine made by Keystone. On the hitch was our generator and some tie down straps, only 100 pounds of equipment, well within the specs for our rig.
The failure point was the small 1/4 bolts holding the receiver hitch assembly to the RV frame, all four of them sheered off. When it fell off we were on a small two lane road in West Virginia going about 50 mph.
We were very lucky that this thing flying off the 5th wheel did not cause any wrecks or worse. If anyone has a hitch on the back of their rig, it should be checked and if anybody has these tiny 1/4 bolts they should immediately upgrade them to something that won’t break off and cause an accident.
Your insight into how the industry is building rigs cheaper has once again come true, this could really have been a major accident! Our old 2007 Everest by Keystone was built much better than this Alpine.
Rocky Burrous
Glad nobody was hurt! Bear in mind that if you ever replace the bolts on something like this, there are many GRADES of bolts, which determine the overall and shear strength of any size of bolt. The garden-variety hardware store bolt might not be right for certain applications.