After a wheel fell off his trailer, this is how a man got it home with zip ties and a T-shirt
- This man had to think of an ingenious way to fix his broken trailer
- It was stuck at the bottom of a dirt road in the USA, loaded up with heavy canoes
- He managed to craft a makeshift bearing using just a T-shirt and zip ties
Published on Jul 15, 2024 at 7:36 PM (UTC+4)
by Andie Reeves
Last updated on Jul 16, 2024 at 7:06 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
When a wheel fell off his trailer, this man had to come up with an ingenious hack to get his canoes home.
Carrying them eight miles back wasn’t an option – he was out in the wilderness of the United States – so he needed to mend the wheel himself.
Incredibly, he was able to do so using just a T-shirt and some regular zip ties.
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How the canoe trailer lost its wheel
Caleb Jacobs was on a camping trip with family and friends when disaster struck.
His canoes had been waiting at the pickup point eight miles away from his campsite to be loaded onto his trailer.
But on the journey down the dirt road, one of the wheels of his trailer fell off.
Some trailers are impressive, like the one made out of a Rolls-Royce or the 27-foot all-electric vehicle designed by ex-Tesla employees.
But while this one wasn’t particularly fancy, it served an important job – carrying ten heavy canoes.
First, he and a friend tried lifting it onto his other 16-foot utility trailer.
After about an hour of trying, they gave up and decided to regroup in the morning.
He called another friend, an ex-Army mechanic, to help concoct a better plan for the next day.
The rescue mission
Upon closer inspection, the group noted that the wheel’s bearing had disintegrated due to not being greased for years.
They figured what they needed to do was pack some kind of material into it as well as attach something to the end of the axle shaft to keep the wheel on.
All they had on hand, however, was an old T-shirt and a pack of zip ties.
After cutting the shirt into strips, they stuffed the pieces inside the wheel center and around the axle shaft.
Lastly, the zip ties were tied through one another to keep the DIY bearing in place.
Jacobs eased back at speeds of just four miles per hour, and – incredibly – the wheel remained in place the whole ride home.
Definitely not one to try yourself, but you have to commend his quick thinking and ingenuity.
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Andie is a content writer from South Africa with a background in broadcasting and journalism. Starting her career in the glossy pages of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, Andie has a broad portfolio, covering everything from sustainability solutions to celebrity car collections. When not at her laptop Andie can be found sewing, recording her podcast, taking board games too seriously or road-tripping in her bright green Kia.
