Two RV makers are recalling travel trailers whose fresh-water tanks can fall off

Starcraft RV and Highland Ridge RV filed matching recalls with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Sept. 30, 2026, covering 552 and 489 travel trailers whose fresh-water tanks can work loose and drop onto the pavement. Both campaigns trace to the same cause: a change of trailer frame, after which the screws holding the tank fatigued under the stress of filling and emptying it.

Together the two campaigns cover 1,041 trailers from model years 2022 through 2024, each with its own NHTSA number, its own manufacturer and its own count of owner claims reaching back to December 2022.

Starcraft Super Lite Maxx and Highland Ridge Range Lite Air

The Starcraft campaign is NHTSA 26V626. It covers 552 Starcraft Super Lite Maxx trailers, model years 2022 through 2024, built between July 30, 2021 and Jan. 11, 2024. The company is based in Middlebury, Indiana, according to its filing, and the filing does not name a parent company.

The Highland Ridge campaign is NHTSA 26V627. It covers 489 Range Lite Air trailers, also model years 2022 through 2024, built between Oct. 6, 2021 and Jan. 9, 2024. Highland Ridge is based in Shipshewana, Indiana, and its Part 573 safety report lists Jayco Inc. as its parent company.

These are separate recalls from separate brands, so an owner of one trailer line cannot assume the other’s notice applies to a camper in the driveway. Each filing also estimates that about 5 percent of the trailers it covers actually carry the defect, so the unit counts above are the population in scope rather than a forecast of how many tanks will drop. The 489 Highland Ridge and 552 Starcraft figures are listed in NHTSA’s records as potential units affected, meaning every trailer built in the production windows above with the suspect frame, whether or not its fasteners have yet loosened.

Fatigued fasteners and the Norco-to-LCI frame switch

NHTSA’s records say the fasteners holding the fresh-water tank may fail, causing the tank to detach. The manufacturer’s Part 573 report for Starcraft is more specific: the tank “may dislodge from the vehicle and fall to the ground when full or overfilled.” The stated root cause is that the stress of loading and unloading the fresh tank, meaning the repeated cycle of filling it and draining it, fatigues the fasteners until they let go.

The trigger was a design change: the trailers moved from Norco-supplied frames to LCI-supplied frames, the cause both companies name. Highland Ridge says it found the flaw on Sept. 2; Starcraft confirmed it on Sept. 16.

A tank that lets go at highway speed becomes debris in the lane behind the trailer. NHTSA’s wording for 26V626 is that a detached tank can become a road hazard for other vehicles and make a collision more likely, and the 26V627 record describes the same hazard to other motorists on the road. The Starcraft report ties the failure to a tank that is full or overfilled, and to the loading and unloading cycle that its root-cause analysis blames for the fatigue, which means the hazard builds with use rather than appearing all at once.

Claims, committees and the Sept. 30 filing

Each company began from a single compliance complaint. Starcraft’s report says a vehicle owner questionnaire, VOQ 11752731, arrived on July 28, 2026 and started an investigation into similar failures; Highland Ridge logged its own initial concern the same day. Both escalated to a corrective and preventive action committee on Aug. 3, and each company’s Safety Steering Committee approved a recall on Sept. 24. The filings reached NHTSA six days later.

The claims counts are the other half of the record. Starcraft documented 29 claims between December 2022 and August 2024, and Highland Ridge documented 42 over the same period. Starcraft’s report states that none of its 29 claims involved a crash or an injury, which is the only injury statement in either filing and a notable one given that the company logged the claims over nearly two years. Highland Ridge’s 42 claims run across the same 21-month span, and its report puts the same 5 percent defect rate on its 489 trailers.

Replacement bolts, owner letters and the VIN lookup

Dealers will redrill the mounting holes and replace the tek screws with 1-inch grade 5 bolts, washers and 3/8-inch nuts on the fresh tank’s support fasteners, according to both manufacturers’ reports. The repair is a hardware swap rather than a new tank or a new frame, and NHTSA’s acknowledgement letter for the Starcraft campaign is dated Oct. 1, 2026.

Owner letters are scheduled for Oct. 30, 2026 in both campaigns, and the Starcraft filing describes the recall as phased. A specific trailer can be checked by entering its 17-character VIN in NHTSA’s recall lookup, which adds new VINs continuously and may not show a very recent campaign right away.

The records leave one gap open, and it matters to anyone trying to judge the danger from the outside. Neither the NHTSA summaries nor the Part 573 reports give the tank capacity, so how much a full tank weighs when it drops is not stated in either filing, and the 5 percent defect estimate is the only measure of how often it happens.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.