A few years ago I came home from fishing and had to run into the house to use the bathroom before unhitching. I have a 200 yard long sloping driveway with a deep 30 foot deep creek channel at the bottom of the driveway. When you get to the bottom of the drive you have to turn left or right to avoid the creek channel. I was parked at the top of the drive. The first thing I always do is chalk my trailer tires immediately upon exiting the truck. That day I had to take a leak so bad I had run into the house and neglected to chalk my trailer tires. When I came back outside to unhitch I forgot that I had not chalked them. I dropped the trailer support wheel, removed the chains, and started cranking. When the boat trailer popped off the ball it started rolling backward down the driveway. I was trying to hold it back, but boat weighs 3000 lbs not including the trailer, so it just drug me along. It was picking up momentum down the driveway, and at this point I was running to keep up with it. At the end of the drive by the creek there is a big Chinese Elm Tree about 30 feet uphill from the edge of the creek canyon. I figured my only hope was to steer the trailer towards that tree and hope to catch the starboard back corner of the trailer fender on the tree to keep the boat from crashing into the creek. My plan worked and the tree stopped the trailer and boat. The force of hitting the tree broke the winch strap and the boat slid 1/2 of the way off the trailer. The back of the boat did not hit the ground, but it was almost to the point of falling. The tree had a nice size dent in it, but the only damage to the trailer was a broken trailer light. I greased up the running boards and put a new strap on the winch. It was a lot of work, but I winched the boat back onto the trailer and said a little "thank you" prayer. That was a good lesson that I won't forget. You can bet I now double check, and sometimes triple check, to make sure the tire chalks are in place before unhitching.

WoW.. You got lucky. Glad you didn't get hurt.

Forgot to chock the trailer once. Just once.

Fortunately the fence was pretty sturdy.

I spent too much time on the flight line chocking aircraft to ever forget to chock my trailer before decoupling. I do however sometimes forget to pull them before leaving.

I placed flat 1" thick 9"x12" paver blocks on front & back of tires. If you have concrete driveway you can epoxy them down. Used a 16" diameter 1" thick round paver for trailer jack. Now when I parked boat its in right place & chocked when I get out. Drop jack & unhook. She ain't rolling. Same place everytime.

I did it once, almost got killed in the process. I survived that moment of stupidity.

Make it a habit to keep the chains hooked up until after you unhook the trailer.

Once.I ran into the bumper of another vehicle but did no damage.

Oh yes... Boat damn near rolled off a cliff while i was in Lago Vista. A dead shrub stopped it

I use safety orange color chalk on all my tires, but it comes off easily. I admit I do get some strange looks at the ramp.

BTW, when I unhook my trailer, I CHOCK the tires so it doesn't roll, no matter what color chalk I've put on them!

Oh yeah... In 1998 when BASS brought the invitationals out west I was entered in the Elephant Butte tournament.. And staying at the Desert View Motel in Truth or Consequences.. Small motel and guys could only leave their boat in front of the room it was so tight. I got out to unhook my boat after backing it up to the door of my room and threw down my standard "block" (2x4)out of the back of the truck and unhooked the boat.... now there was only about a foot between each of these boat trailers and I went into the room for a couple of minutes and came out to move my truck to the parking area and apparently either I or someone else walking in between the boats had kicked the two-by-four out from underneath the tire and when I got out of my truck and started back towards the room I could see my boat slowly moving down the slight grade away from the room... my first thought was to rush it and see if I could stop it but I thought better of it and watched it do a nosedive into an old abandoned cinder block laundromat about 30 yards down the hill on the next door lot... about 18 inches of the bow blew through the wall ..it toasted my brand new trolling motor broke the transom straps and busted the u-bolts on the winch stand... it's an old memory now and I can still my new Nitro rolling down that hill just like it happened yesterday.... and still extremely happy and thankful that no one got hurt... The B.A.S.S. photographers were upset though because they showed up just a couple of minutes after we got the boat pulled out of the building and they didn't get pics... I would have never lived those photos down. LOL. And telling you the story just brought back that same queasy feeling in my stomach.