Great Dane Trailers is recalling 6,810 van trailers because welds on a brace that supports the trailer's landing gear may fail — and if the brace gives way while a trailer is standing on its own legs, the landing gear can collapse. The recall covers certain 2027 Champion and Everest van trailers, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) documents reported by CDLLife on Thursday, October 29, and the same 6,810 figure for Great Dane's Champion and Everest models appears in NHTSA recall data for the week of October 19-25.
The defective part is the landing gear K-brace. Landing gear is the pair of legs at the front of a semi-trailer that hold the trailer up when it is unhitched from a tractor; the K-brace is part of the bracing that keeps those legs stable under the weight of the trailer and its load. In the words of the recall documents, the “trailer landing gear K-brace welds may fail, resulting in the landing gear collapsing.”
When the failure can happen — and when it cannot
The recall documents are specific about the risk window, and that detail matters for drivers and yard crews. “Failure of the K-brace is limited to situations where the trailer is parked without a tractor attached and without safety stands in place,” the documents say. “The risk may be increased during loading and unloading operations, or if the trailer is bumped by another trailer being backed into an adjoining parking space.” In other words, this is not a defect described as striking a trailer rolling down the highway behind a tractor — it is a danger at the dock, in the drop yard and during loading, precisely where dock workers, yard drivers and drivers themselves walk beside and work around standing trailers.
Great Dane will inspect the landing gear K-brace and replace it as necessary, free of charge. Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed by December 22, 2026. Owners with questions can contact Great Dane customer service at 1-877-369-3493.
A second, much smaller Great Dane recall is already on the road
This landing-gear recall should not be confused with the separate Great Dane recall this site covered earlier this week. That earlier action covered just 69 trailers — certain 2027 Champion dry vans whose upper coupler may have an incorrect bottom plate installed, letting the kingpin protrude and preventing proper coupling — and owners were advised not to use those trailers until repaired, with notification letters expected by December 4. Together with PACCAR and Volvo recalls, that package totalled 384 vehicles. The new landing-gear action is nearly a hundred times larger by unit count and concerns a completely different component at the opposite end of the trailer's coupling system: the legs that hold it up when no tractor is attached at all.
Why this matters for Punjabi and other owner-operators
Champion and Everest are among the most common dry-van and refrigerated trailer nameplates in North American fleets, and 2027-model trailers are exactly what larger fleets have been taking delivery of this year — equipment that then flows into the leased and used markets where many Punjabi owner-operators and small carriers buy or rent their vans and reefers. A trailer that cannot be trusted to stand on its own legs cannot be dropped, swapped or loaded safely, so affected units face inspection downtime on top of the safety risk. The recall also lands in a year when trailer and truck equipment recalls have repeatedly hit working drivers — from bunk restraints to cab bolts — and when a missed notification letter can leave a small carrier running a recalled trailer without knowing it.
What happens next
Great Dane's remedy is inspection first: dealers will inspect the K-brace and replace it where necessary, at no charge to owners. Notification letters are expected by December 22, 2026, but owners of 2027 Champion or Everest van trailers do not need to wait for the letter — Great Dane's customer service line, 1-877-369-3493, can confirm whether a specific trailer is covered. Until an affected trailer has been inspected, the recall documents' own warning defines the safe practice: the failure it describes happens to trailers parked without a tractor attached and without safety stands in place. Awaaz Punjab will update this story if NHTSA publishes a campaign number or if Great Dane expands the affected model range.