Lastly, on the axle bend….believe me, I am no engineer. Regarding your brakes/bearings, I would recommend to check your wiring to make sure you didn’t have a small charge actuating the brakes while driving, or either the brakes were set too tight causing undo heat in the bearing resulting in failure of the bearing, and brake system. Obviously being overweight would cause more heat, but if an axle is rated by the axle builder to haul 7,000 lbs, in reality it will haul a bit more than the stated capacity. Heat is what causes a bearing to fail, typically not weight.
If the brake control was turned up on your tow vehicle so that the brakes were doing a lot of extra work, it could have easily heated the bearing and boiled the grease to the point to cause a premature failure. I believe you mentioned your brakes were fried, which is probably what “cooked” the bearing. Bearings are no different than tires, they go through heat cycles but as long as they are repacked and greased/serviced properly, it is uncommon to see failures. I would be interested in knowing the year of this trailer and age of the axles as it looked from the photo to be much older than two years old. In regards to your question about bearings, bearings do fail. Generally, if tires are aired properly before each use, AND changed every 3-5 years, we see relatively low failure rates. You can always look at the Date code on the tire to see the true age based on the information of the image of the tire above. Generally, it is recommended to replace tires every 3 to 5 years which means….absolutely, that tires will fail on horse trailers in as little as 3 years if not replaced. The life of a tire is dependent upon use, heat cycles (it gets hold/cold during use), and exposure to the elements. Sunlight, Air, Rain, Heat, Cold all affect rubber in a negative way so the day a tire is made it begins aging (sort of like us humans). Customers “think” as long as the tread looks good, the tire is good. The other issues we see with tires are the age of the tires.
Of course you could have hit road debris as well, that happens too. Even if the tire didn’t blow out the first time and you add air at a later date, the damage has already been done to the tire so it’s a matter of tire before “CABOOM” and it fails.
Particularly when you are running a tire at close to loaded capacity it compounds the issue. When that happens and the tire Is operated, heat will build up and it breaks down the rubber compound, weakening the side walls. Most of the time what happens Is as the trailer sits for a period of time (weeks/etc.), the tires will lose some air pressure. Unfortunately, we see tire failures pretty common in the industry.
I agree that a heavier tire would be nice, perhaps a “D” rated rather than the “C” rated. I am not sure that you aren’t overloaded, but my guess is more than likely you aren’t but are very close to capacity.
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