The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration lists defect petition DP26012, opened October 23, 2026, with the subject “Evaluate landing gear collapse on 2017 Great Dane refrigerated trailers with Jost landing gear.” The manufacturer is Great Dane Trailers, the component is structure, and the status is open, the only status field the record carries. The subject names Jost landing gear, which identifies the landing gear brand fitted to the trailers the petition concerns.
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A petition is a request that NHTSA look into a problem, and it is not a recall or a finding that any trailer is defective.
What a defect petition obliges NHTSA to do
Under 49 CFR Part 552, as published in the Code of Federal Regulations, any interested person may file a petition asking the NHTSA Administrator to start a proceeding on whether a vehicle or equipment has a safety-related defect. The agency reviews it technically, then grants or denies it, and the regulation says NHTSA will notify the petitioner of that decision within 120 days of receipt. A granted petition leads to a proceeding, in the form of an investigation, that is promptly commenced to determine whether the defect exists. A denial must be explained in a Federal Register notice within 45 days.
The investigations dataset entry and the NHTSA page for DP26012 mark the petition as open. The dataset gives no petitioner, no description of the allegation, no count of trailers and no reports of injuries or crashes. It also does not say the trailers were loaded when the landing gear gave way, so that condition cannot be attributed to the petition.
Section 552.4 sets what a petition must contain: it must be in English, carry a heading with the word petition, set out facts showing an order is necessary, briefly describe the order sought, and give the petitioner’s name and address. A document that does not meet those requirements is not treated as a petition under section 552.5(b). The technical staff may gather more information or hold a public meeting, and the Administrator weighs agency resources, priorities and litigation risk in deciding. Because NHTSA has assigned the number DP26012 and listed the status as open, the filing appears on the record as a petition under review, but the dataset shows no decision.
The query behind the record lists investigations opened after October 1, 2026, ordered by open date, and DP26012 appears among those opened the week of October 23. Its fields are the action number, link, manufacturer, investigation type, subject, component, open date and status. Nothing in them summarizes the allegation, which is why the reason for the petition is not published there.
A separate Great Dane recall with the same failure mode
The same week, Great Dane filed its own recall for landing gear. NHTSA’s recall dataset lists campaign 26V708000, received October 23, 2026, covering 6,810 vehicles, with the subject “Trailer Landing Gear Assembly Welds May Fail.” The defect text says certain 2027 Champion and Everest van trailers have landing gear k-brace welds that may fail, which can cause the landing gear to collapse. The record states that a collapse increases the risk of injury.
Great Dane will inspect the trailers and replace the k-brace as needed, free of charge, and owner letters are expected on December 22, 2026, 60 days after NHTSA received the report on October 23. The NHTSA recall page for 26V708000 is the lookup point for owners of those 2027 van trailers. The record lists the recall type as vehicle and shows no manufacturer campaign number. Neither of the two urgency flags is set: the trailers are not described as a fire risk when parked, and no do-not-drive instruction accompanies the campaign. Great Dane customer service is listed at 1-877-369-3493.
Different trailers are involved. The recall concerns 2027 van trailers and a weld failure in the k-brace, while the petition names 2017 refrigerated trailers with Jost landing gear and does not describe a mechanism. The failures match in kind, since both end with a collapsing landing gear, but NHTSA’s records do not link the two, and the 6,810 figure belongs only to the 2027 trailers.
The two actions also differ in who starts them. A recall filing is the manufacturer’s own report that a safety defect exists, as Great Dane made for the 2027 trailers. A petition leaves the question open until NHTSA decides whether to start a proceeding on the 2017 trailers, and the regulation puts no deadline on the investigation that would follow a grant.
What stays unsettled
Owners of 2017 Great Dane refrigerated trailers have no recall remedy listed in the data reviewed, which covers recall reports received since October 22, 2026. The next step belongs to NHTSA: under section 552.8 the agency must tell the petitioner whether the petition is granted or denied within 120 days of receipt, and the dataset does not publish the receipt date. A grant would open an investigation, and a denial would appear in the Federal Register.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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