While driving, it’s comforting to keep a distance from vehicles with items in tow—after all, something could come loose and barrel toward the cars behind it. But that’s even more true for more than 410,000 trucks, which are being recalled for the potential for their tailgates to pop open.Godspeed, everyone.
Of course, that number is a little inflated, given real-world use. Everyone knows the primary job of many new, luxury trucks is to act as a status symbol, while carrying out the important task of towing their owners back and forth to their office jobs in the city all week and maybe making a few trips to the local home-improvement store in the spring—you know, to get the mulch. It’s heavy.
At any rate, the number of trucks involved in the recall is 410,351, according to filed with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration earlier in May. The recall includes Ram 1500, 2500 and 3500 trucks from the 2015 through 2018 model years, and Fiat Chrysler describes it as that a problem with the tailgate assembly could lead to its latches being released, “potentially resulting in the tailgate inadvertently falling open at any time.”
Recall documents say that as of April 29, FCA had gotten 127 warranty claims and repair orders “potentially” related to the problem, but that the company wasn’t aware of any crashes or injuries related to it. Details on which specific trucks might be included in the recall are , and FCA said in the NHTSA documents that the planned owner-notification date is June 28.
The freerecall will include for the problem causing the latches to release, and FCA said in the recall documents that it’ll reimburse owners for any repairs they’ve made in relation to the issue.
As for everyone else on the road, well, be careful out there. You just never know when 10 bags of mulch spilling from the broken tailgate of the truck in front of you are going to rain on your little parade.