2014 WESTERN STAR 4900 — Complaint #2050121
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about TRAILER HITCHES filed December 22, 2024
NHTSA complaint #2050121 (ODI reference 11632009) concerns a 2014 WESTERN STAR 4900 and was filed on December 22, 2024. The owner reports the failure occurred on December 21, 2024. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as trailer hitches, 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 WESTERN STAR 4900 cohort independently describe similar trailer hitches 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 2014 WESTERN STAR 4900 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
Hi I had a trailer hitch failure yesterday causing the trailer to disconnect from the tow vehicle. The failure occurred at a faulty weld on the receiver hitch. The receiver hitch is a Angcosy one position hook mount 20,000 lb. 9" length model. Where the receiver tube is welded to the hitch mounting plate the weld failed causing the trailer to seperate from the tow vehicle. Upon examining the failed weld you could see there was no weld penetrating the hitch plate itself. Luckily I was moving the trailer on my property at a speed of 3 MPH, so no real damage done. I use this hitch for towing woodchippers and other car type trailers down the highway. If this would have occurred at highway speeds with the trailer becoming disconnected from the tow vehicle the results could have been life threatening. The hitch in question was in like new condition and only used 4-5 times. I bought the hitch thru Amazon and have notified them of the problem the faulty receiver hitch posses.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2050121 |
| ODI Number | 11632009 |
| Date Filed | December 22, 2024 |
| Failure Date | December 21, 2024 |
| VIN | 5KJJAED18EP |
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.