Great Dane recalls 6,810 Champion and Everest trailers: landing-gear brace welds may fail and drop a parked trailer

Great Dane Trailers is recalling 6,810 van trailers because the welds on their landing-gear K-braces may fail and let the support gear collapse, according to CDLLife on Oct. 29, reporting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration documents. The recall, NHTSA number 26V708, covers certain 2026 and 2027 model year Champion dry van and Everest reefer trailers equipped with K-brace assemblies from a specific supplier: 5,623 Champion trailers built from Dec. 9, 2025 through Oct. 5, 2026, and 1,187 Everest trailers built from Jan. 9, 2026 through Oct. 12, 2026. Great Dane’s own Part 573 report to NHTSA, submitted Oct. 27, estimates 10% of the recalled trailers actually carry the defect. This is a different recall from the smaller Great Dane action earlier this month covering 69 Champion trailers over an upper coupler plate — different component, different risk, different fix — so a fleet that already handled that one is not done.

The defect is a welding miss, and the report is unusually specific about how it happened. The K-braces are 3-inch channel assemblies built by Alliance Steel of Gary, Indiana. During the supplier’s robotic welding operations, component misalignment — the report blames manual clamping and fixture variability that let parts shift inside the welding fixture — could move the weld path off the intended seam, leaving reduced weld fusion and penetration in some assemblies. In plain terms, on the affected braces the bead is not fully on the joint it was supposed to fuse. The component is the landing-gear K-brace, part number 30300274, and the tell the report gives operators is visible: support gear legs that are not perpendicular to the trailer floor.

The failure window is narrow, and knowing it is the difference between a recall notice and a yard injury. Great Dane’s report states that failure of the K-brace is limited to situations where the trailer is parked without a tractor attached and without safety stands in place, and that 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. A brace failure “may increase the risk of property damage as well as increase the risk of injury to personnel inside or near the trailer at the time of failure” — which is to say, the person most exposed is the one on the dock or in the box when a dropped trailer’s gear lets go, not anyone on the highway. The problem surfaced inside Great Dane’s own plants, not on the road: two K-brace assemblies failed at production facilities on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, the returned assemblies showed weld bead misalignment and poor fusion, and Great Dane shipped samples to its research lab in early October. Containment followed on Oct. 12, when shipments of aftermarket Alliance K-brace assemblies and of trailers in Great Dane’s plants were put on hold, and on Oct. 16 the company decided to recall. Great Dane says it is not aware of any warranty claims or injuries in the field related to the issue.

The remedy runs through Great Dane’s authorized repair agents, who will inspect the support-gear bracing mount welds for proper penetration and alignment and install a replacement K-brace, free of charge, where welds are insufficient; the remedy brace differs from the recalled part only in having properly aligned welds. Great Dane began inspecting all K-brace assemblies in inventory on Oct. 1, so trailers built after the production windows above are not the concern. Owner notification letters are planned to be mailed by Dec. 22, 2026, and owners can contact Great Dane customer service at 1-877-369-3493 with questions, per the recall documents.

The practical takeaway for anyone running 2026 or 2027 Champion or Everest trailers is to treat the dropped trailer as the hazard until the inspection is done. Check whether your VINs fall in the production windows, look at the landing-gear legs for the report’s one field warning — legs not perpendicular to the trailer floor — and, above all, do not let the recall’s narrow failure window breed casual habits: an uninspected trailer parked without a tractor belongs on safety stands during loading and unloading, which is the exact configuration in which Great Dane says these braces can fail. The inspection is free, the fix is free, and the failure mode targets the person standing next to the trailer, not the balance sheet.