2019 PETERBILT 389 — Complaint #1800448
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about STEERING:LINKAGES filed March 9, 2022
NHTSA complaint #1800448 (ODI reference 11455852) concerns a 2019 PETERBILT 389 and was filed on March 9, 2022. The owner reports the failure occurred on February 26, 2021. The report was geocoded to Oklahoma based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as steering:linkages, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same PETERBILT 389 cohort independently describe similar steering:linkages failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2019 PETERBILT 389 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
- The steering arm on the driver side of the Dana D-Series axle that was installed from the Peterbilt factory on a new 2019 Peterbilt 389 that was purchased new by Acord Transportation, Inc. is what failed. The steering arm on the D-Series axle bolts to the steering knuckle with two bolts as opposed to being one solid cast piece as in other families of Dana axles - such as the E-Series. When backing into a parking space the two bolts holding the steering arm to the steering knuckle broke, causing the steering arm to come free from the steering knuckle - ultimately causing a catastrophic failure and a complete loss of steering. Peterbilt took the steering arm for inspection following the failure, but did not return it to us. - Had this incident occurred while traveling on a public roadway, the driver would have lost all ability to steer the commercial vehicle (which could potentially be weighing 80,000 lbs and transporting hazardous materials) and would have no control over where the u
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1800448 |
| ODI Number | 11455852 |
| Date Filed | March 9, 2022 |
| Failure Date | February 26, 2021 |
| VIN | 1XPXD49X3KD |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.