Kaufman Trailers An axel fell off a brand new trailer, nearly causing a fatality. Kaufman refused to honor warranty, saying that the axel falling off was a result of an accident not nearly the cause. They came to this conclusion by looking at a cell phone picture. Lexington North Carolina

This trailer in question was purchased from us in May of 2013.  In January of 2014 we received a call about a problem with the axle hanger. We want to note that the trailer had as much as 6 or 7 months of use before the hanger problem occurred.

The Ripoff Report states that we drew our conclusion by looking at a cell phone picture. Actually, the customer sent us 10 very clear pictures of the trailer and damage. We drew our conclusions from three of these pictures. The first picture shows a broken spring hanger. The picture also shows the weld very clearly. The weld did not break. The hanger broke below the weld. The second picture shows a crack in the front and rear of the other spring hanger on the other side of the trailer. These cracks are below the weld. In both of these pictures, the weld is good. There is no crack in the weld. The third picture shows what appeared to us to be a bent front axle. After reviewing the photos presented in January, we drew the conclusion that the wheel had struck something during use that had caused the one hanger to break and the other hanger to crack. Again, the welds did not fail. Given that the trailer had been used for a number of months before the incident, we believed that this was not normal wear and tear, but rather some kind of an accident that would not be covered under warranty. 

In the email conversations back and forth with the customer during that time, we were told something very different from what is portrayed in the Ripoff Report. The following is a quote from the customer’s email that he sent to us:

“We had several witnesses watching the trailer being backed up as the shackle snapped and forced the axle to rotate and damage the fender and cut the tire.”  The fender that was damaged was in front of the passenger side tire, suggesting that there is some truth to this version and the Ripoff Report claim is a fabrication. This email from the purchaser of the trailer is very different from the claim in the report which states that the trailer was going down the road 40 miles an hour, that the front axle broke free, and that the tire slammed into the rear axle causing the two wheels to lock up.

Everything that we were told by email, and the pictures that were sent to us, caused us to believe that the broken hanger was the result of an accident of some kind, and not a manufacturing defect. We drew our conclusions from very clear pictures that the customer sent us. We were requested by the customer to reimburse $852.71 for the repairs done to the trailer. We reimbursed $500.00. We felt this was fair in light of the evidence presented to us. We did not believe there was a manufacturing defect, but rather some kind of incident outside of normal wear and tear, perhaps even incurred by an employee without the owners knowledge. We have sold several hundred of these dump trailers each year, for many years now, and have never had the hanger itself break. This factored into our conclusion.