Looks like that link in now behind a paywall; here’s a different version of the story from a different source, including a picture you don’t see every day.
Once I was driving home from college on the freeway, and found myself behind a pickup truck which was carrying a stack of about a half-dozen wooden pallets. The pallets were tied down with a single length of rope, and were very obviously going to fly off the back of the truck sooner or later. I got into the far lane to protect myself from the inevitable, and sure enough about a minute later the one piece of rope broke and a half-dozen pallets went flipping out onto the freeway. I think the car behind him managed to stop in time. I don’t recall if the pickup truck stopped or not; I was sufficiently freaked out that I lost track of him.
Shows my age but the only thing I’ve ever lost is a hubcap, while making a turn a bit aggressively for a Ford Granada. I almost lost a door once. I was backing up while parking and my teen brother decided to help by opening the door to see the curb - the open door his a tree, but I stopped before it came off the hinges. My grandparents took the view that the driver is responsible for damages even if their passenger is a dumbass. I paid for the repairs out of pocket, bought my own car, and my brother got to borrow theirs.
Once helping some friends move, we had a tall dresser in the back of the truck with the drawers *facing out. * :smack:
Yes, we took one hard left turn and the top three drawers flew out and dumped their contents in the dead center of a busy intersection. We parked and ran out there picking up drawers and clothes while avoiding speeders and honking cars. There were coins EVERYWHERE. Left them. :rolleyes:
Once hit a garbage can that fell off of a work truck in RI.
Nothing else to add except for the internet classic:
Vehicle runs over mattress, hilarity ensues.
The story has been UL’d into a blonde woman driving a Mustang, but the pictures clearly show a full frame truck/SUV.
I once saw a work truck carrying a whole lot of 10’ PVC pipes on the rack in the back. As far as I could tell, they weren’t even tied down. I thought to myself “those are going to fly right off of that rack…”
Sure enough, the guy made a “show-off” jackrabbit start at the next light, and all that PVC slid right off the back and into the intersection, where it was turned into shards in a jiffy…
I’ve had a few cardboard boxes and twigs and leaves and stuff fly out when I’m taking either a lot of recycling or tree limbs to the trash transfer station.
The only interesting thing I ever lost was a rear-view mirror on an old Suburban I once had. Apparently the one on it when I got it was an aftermarket one where it had been screwed in funny such that I could adjust it when I got it, but at some point on a trip to go pick a buddy up whose car had broken down somewhere near Crockett, TX, the mirror started oscillating up and down violently while I was driving about 75- it stayed attached long enough for me to turn my head and see it go up and down a time or two, and then it just detached and that was the last we saw of it- I saw it go sailing off into a cow pasture in the rear view mirror.
People don’t seem to realize how much lifting force gets put on a mattress or box springs when a pickup is driving at any kind of speed. Those things need to be tied securely. They’re amazingly aerodynamic. And yet I keep seeing them being hauled with no tie-downs at all.
I started checking mattress tie-downs on pickups after one suddenly lost three of them right in front of me on I-5. They scattered suddenly from the truck bed, like blown-on dandelion fluff. One flew to the lane to the left of me and one flew to the lane to the right of me, but the third was 85% in my lane. Even if there hadn’t been traffic right behind me, slamming on the brakes wouldn’t have kept me from hitting it. I just slowed and gritted my teeth, wondering what it would do to the car.
Then a semi passed me in the right lane. Its wheels hit the corner of the mattress that was in its lane and it flipped like a tiddly-wink out of my lane and into the left one. The mattress that was fully in its lane turned out to be a box spring, and that was splintered. I was saved. The semi and I drove on with traffic coming to a standstill behind us.
The pickup slowed and got to the right, but there wasn’t a good shoulder to pull off onto. So they just looked at what was left for a couple of beats and started driving again, with two unsecured mattresses (or box springs) still in the back.
Parts used to fall off the Harley everytime I rode it. Lost the rear axle nut. Both a blinker and taillight fell off and hung by the wiring. Rear brake pedal started to fall off, but I caught it in time.
While living in Vegas, I had a HUGE box of pink and green packing peanuts in the back of a pickup. I was cruising down Nellis Blvd and a big gust of wind picked it up and dropped it right in front of the car behind me. I looked in my mirror just in time to see a MASSIVE explosion of peanuts! I hate to admit, it was hilarious! I didn’t even think about stopping.
That stretch of Nellis has those pink and green peanuts lining the gutters for weeks. 
The only thing I’ve ever lost from the back of my truck was a few empty plastic bags that I thoughtlessly threw in the back after sanding and salting the driveway. I forgot they were back there and lost them when I got on the highway.
I wasn’t there, but while my parents were driving through Vermont with a load of my stuff, they lost my mattress and box spring from the roof rack. A “very nice young fellow” stopped and helped them reload and tie them down securely. I still have the mattress and box spring in a guest room, but they’ve seen better days.
Once when driving on I-93 in New Hampshire (speed limit 65 at the time), I was following at my usual distance another pickup loaded up with household items. After a few minutes, I said to myself, “Self, it doesn’t look like that stuff is secured very well.” So I backed off a few extra seconds, and I’m glad I did. They lost a mattress, but I had barely enough room to slow down and change lanes safely to avoid it. The truck that lost the mattress never even slowed down.
Another time my sister was driving and I was in the passenger seat. We were stopped at a red light. In the lane to the left of us, a pickup carrying tires in the back started up too fast when the light turned green and a giant tire thunked onto the hood of the car behind it, rolled halfway up the windshield and then off into the median. Meanwhile, brakes were squealing and horns were honking. My sister was so intent on the light turning green that she didn’t notice a thing. I still don’t understand how that’s possible.
They may have been so drunk they didn’t notice it was gone until arriving home! But once upon a time I fond a ladder on the side of the road> I looked it over and seemed usable, so I put it in the back of my pick up and a few miles down the road I looked in the mirror and it was no longer with me!!!
On the way home from a record store many, many years ago, I took Thick as a Brick out of the jacket to see what the tracks were on it (I was not driving). I read side A to the driver, then I read side B, and as I went to put it back in the jacket, it was out the open window. We went back and got the record, which was a little bit scratched but still relatively playable (the paper sleeve prevented total destruction).
I lost a 20’ long, 9600 lb trailer. On a major bridge/interstate highway.
I was delivering said trailer for a relative that I was working for. He hooked the trailer up before I got to work that morning. The trailer required a 2-5/16" ball. The previous driver of that truck had a 2" ball on it, and my relative didn’t look. The truck could only do about 55, but you could pull a house or a feather at 55 and it didn’t feel any different.
I did my normal walk-around, everything was secured and hooked up. Lights worked. Off I went.
About 3 or so miles down the road, I passed a group of six or so power company guys installing a pole, two of the guys I knew, who watched me drive by with a look of disgust and interest. Huh. That’s odd. I talked to one of the guys a few days later - the looks were because I was dragging the trailer by the runaway chains.
Another two miles, I drive over a major interstate highway bridge. I was in the right hand lane, but passed a very slow triaxle dump truck going up the bridge. I moved into the middle lane to pass, then back to the right lane just as I crossed the peak of the bridge. As I move into the right lane, I look in my left mirror to see a trailer that looks just like mine, driving itself down the center lane at 55mph. This is not good. I need to fix this.
I pulled back into the center lane, thinking I would get the tongue of the trailer just off my left side and stop the thing. I didn’t quite execute it as I wanted, the trailer body bumped the truck’s left corner bumper and shot off into the (luckily) closed-by-barrels left lane. The trailer jumped onto the jersey barrier and rode it the last 1200’ down the bridge, the whole time I am thinking the trailer is going to go over the barrier into someone driving the other way.
Once everything stopped, I pulled past the trailer and started winching it from the barrier. The hitch was ground off, as were the chains. The runaway brake cable had pulled off the trailer and was dragging behind the truck (go figure). I called back to the office, they sent a flat bed which arrived about 8 minutes later. Ten minutes after that, we were off the bridge.
One of the scariest things I have ever had happen to me. I can only imagine the stories from the people driving past when it happened.
KCB615 that reminds me of another incident (I wasn’t driving so it didn’t come to mind initially).
Coming back from a hike weekend, I was riding in one of the back seats of a small 20 seat bus that was towing a large 4-wheel trailer.
We were decending a steep hill on a very rough dirt road when I heard a ‘crunching’ sound, looked out the back window and realised that the trailer was a lot closer to the bus than it should have been. The driver was able to get us stopped safely and, on inspection, it looked like the trailer hitch hadn’t been locked down over the ball properly and had been shaken loose by all the bumps in the road. It was only being held on by the safety chain.
The trailer had wedged itself under the rear of the bus so we had to get all the kids out, unload most of their backpacks, dislodge the trailer and reattach it to the bus correctly. There was some minor damage to the body work of the bus and the electrical connector had been torn off the trailer.
Had the chain not held we could easily have lost the entire thing down a 300-400 ft hillside into a creek. Once I got my bus licence I took the lesson to heart made sure that everything was securely locked down whenever I drove 
A serial escapee!
I almost forgot this one. And it has a happy ending.
Because my car at the time was unreliable and the trip was close to 800 miles, I rented a car to drive myself and my children to my father’s funeral in Kamiah, Idaho. The highway to Kamiah snakes into Oregon before hitting Idaho.
Not very long after we crossed into Idaho, a big flat-bed truck loaded with baled straw approached us, coming the other way. There was a mild turn in the highway and as it reached the midpoint and began curving back, all of the straw just rolled off of the flatbed and came bouncing toward us.
I hit the brakes and swerved onto the shoulder, but a couple of them hit and one dented the driver’s side fender. It must have just been momentum, because when we got out to clear them away, they were very light and easy to move. Other cars also scrambled, and one passed me on the right, going into a ditch and back out. It didn’t stop.
The truck pulled over and we swapped insurance information. A cop came, who, when I said that he’d been really quick and cheerful providing it replied, “Well, he’s had practice.” There hadn’t been even one rope tying even a little bit of it down.
The good news? When I rented the car, they had asked if I wanted the supplemental insurance and it had only been $9. I was pinching pennies pretty hard at the time, but nine bucks had seemed cheap, so I’d gone ahead and bought it. I called their number and the customer service guy said just bring the police report and the guy’s insurance info back and turn it in with the car. And it was just that easy.
I don’t think I even had to sign anything. Mind you, I’ve never seen supplemental insurance that cheap since.
US 12? Where does that go into Oregon?
This is timely! I lost a canoe skirt (like a kayak skirt) about a week ago. The reason I lost the skirt was because it was stuffed inside the canoe when the straps holding it into my truck came loose and the canoe started flying pretty much exactly like a kite over the truck bed while I was driving 75mph. Surprisingly, the boat and truck only received minor damage.
'59 Chevvy, the mosquito fogger, had no floor in the rear seat. It had rusted thru, you could sit back there and watch the road go by. Had a bunch of empty pop bottles on the back seat, was returning them for deposit (we didn’t call it recycling then). Saw somebody I knew, so stopped to talk to them (residental side street, no traffic). Stopped too quickly. About twenty empty pop bottles rolled off the seat and onto the road under the car. Had to clear most of them out by reaching, driving forward would probably have flattened a tire.
We were moving this winter, and my dad and son had gone ahead of me with a truck and trailer load of stuff. About thirty minutes later, I’m driving from the old house to the new with my own load of crap when I spotted half of a very familiar-looking entertainment center on the side of the road… Dad and Son each thought the other had tightened the tie-downs. Fortunately, that trailer-load was already destined for the recycling center!
Less of a happy ending: During our previous move, about three years ago, I was making the last run from the old house to the new - had both dogs in the back seat of the pickup, and the bed of the truck was crammed full of all of those random odds and ends from the last bit of a move. (You know - when you’ve completely given up, and everything is crammed wherever you can fit it, because you’re so effing done with the whole moving thing!) About halfway through the drive, I came around a curve and there were three deer crossing the highway. I hit one hard - got out to see whether I needed to put it out of its misery, because that was going to be the best outcome of deer vs. Silverado at highway speed. Fortunately, a guy pulled up behind me just as I was getting out the .45, so I didn’t have to learn that night whether I could bring myself to shoot a living thing… he offered to check, and to take the animal home for meat. I finally made it to the new house, and while unloading the truck, realized that I’d lost my husband’s Kevlar vest during the impact. Went back to look the next day, my husband went the day after, but never found it. Had to replace it out of my own pocket. (And no, it wasn’t tied down. Those things weigh a ton, so I didn’t even think about it coming off the back of the truck. I know better now!)