A weld in the landing gear of 6,810 new Great Dane van trailers may fail, and when the k-brace lets go the gear collapses and the front of the trailer drops. Great Dane reported the problem to NHTSA on October 23, 2026. The trailers are 2027 Champion and Everest vans, and the remedy is an inspection and, where needed, a replacement k-brace at no cost.
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A trailer’s landing gear works only while the tractor is gone. That is the moment of exposure: a loaded van parked at a dock with people working around and under its nose.
What a k-brace holds and what happens when a weld lets go
NHTSA’s record for campaign 26V708000 lists 6,810 trailers under the heading “Trailer Landing Gear Assembly Welds May Fail.” The k-brace is the cross-bracing that ties the two landing-gear legs into one frame. The welds that hold it keep the gear from folding sideways. Great Dane’s customer service line, 1-877-369-3493, is the contact the record gives, and owner letters are expected on December 22, 2026. The record’s stated consequence is an increased risk of injury; it lists no federal standard, which makes this a safety-defect campaign and not a noncompliance one.
The loads on landing gear are rarely straight down. Loading and unloading, and another trailer bumping the unit while backing into the adjacent space, both push sideways, and a brace is what resists that push. Great Dane’s own earlier filing named exactly those situations as the moments of greatest risk, and the sideways loads are why a weld that looks adequate from the outside can still be the weak point. In that filing the company said insufficient welds could let bracing mounts break free of the gear “under certain lateral loads.”
That earlier filing also offered the one field warning on record: operators may notice landing-gear legs that are no longer perpendicular to the trailer floor before a collapse. Transport Canada’s notice on the same earlier campaign told owners to inspect the welds for cracks and, if any were found, not to use the trailer without a tractor attached or safety stands in place until it was repaired.
The 2024 Everest SS campaign and a changed welding process
The prior campaign is NHTSA 24V637, covering 2025 Everest SS refrigerated trailers built at Great Dane’s Wayne, Nebraska, plant. Its chronology is unusually plain. On July 9, 2024, the warranty group learned of a support gear collapse at a loading dock. A second collapse, on a trailer from a different order, was reported on August 1. Great Dane’s yard inspection turned up five more units being reworked on August 6, and on August 19 the company confirmed the suspect population as a safety issue in the field. It filed the initial notice on August 23, 2024.
The filing grew. An earlier version of the report described production dates of May 6 to July 18, 2024. The later submission, dated December 6, 2024, covered 1,757 trailers built from January 2 to October 2, 2024, after, on October 24, manufacturing found a welding process change made during the end-of-2023 shutdown. The fix in both was the same: authorized repair agents inspect the bracing-mount welds for penetration, grind out insufficient welds and reweld them to the design print. Trailers built after July 18, 2024 were described as conforming. The 2026 campaign is almost four times that size.
Weld problems did not stop there that autumn. Campaign 24V689, filed October 31, 2024, covered galvanized rear impact guards fabricated at a facility in Huntsville, Tennessee, that were missing two welds between the angled attachments and the top plate. Great Dane’s report said the defect “may increase the likelihood of severe injury or death” in a rear underride collision. It counted 10 vehicles and noted that 45 trailers had shipped before the problem was found.
A replaced k-brace, and a cause the filing never names
One difference from 2024 is visible in the remedy wording. The 2024 repair was a regrind and reweld of the bracing-mount welds in place. The 2026 record says the k-brace itself will be replaced as necessary, which treats the part, not only the joint, as the thing to swap when an inspection finds a problem. The 2026 record also spans two product lines: the Everest, the brand of the 2024 refrigerated trailers, and the Champion dry van, the line that appeared in the 2024 rear-guard campaign.
The 2026 record does not name a supplier, a cause or a build window, and it does not link the campaign to 24V637. The overlap is in the component family, welded landing-gear bracing on Great Dane trailers, and it should not be read as a stated common cause. Great Dane will inspect and replace the k-brace as necessary, free of charge, and under 49 CFR 577.5 the letter on December 22, exactly 60 days after the report, has to describe the malfunction, evaluate the risk and say how owners can complain to NHTSA.
What the public record cannot yet say is whether the 2027 k-brace failure traces back to the 2023 shutdown welding change or to something new. Great Dane’s Part 573 report for 26V708, the document that would give the cause, the number of trailers expected to be defective and the build dates, did not open for this article.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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