California man Carl Brewer dropped his daughter off at day care, then dropped his Toyota off at a local Jiffy Lube. Then the whole truck just dropped itself on the ground. As in, all four wheels fell off while driving.




Hanging out in the waiting room at Bakersfield’s Oak Street Jiffy Lube for a brake replacement, Brewer overheard a technician saying “everything fell off” to the manager.

Apparently Brewer didn’t think much of it until he was told a test drive of his third-generation 4Runner (with the sweet hood scoop!) had resulted in the windshield being smashed, driving through two signs, and of course all four wheels no longer being attached to the vehicle as reported by KBAK/KBFX.


He walked to the scene of his SUV collapsing where he saw one sad-looking Toyota and snapped the picture above, posted by local news.

The Jiffy Lube on Oak Street, Bakersfield CA (Image: GoogleEarth screengrab)

WCVB reports that the old Toyota has already been considered “totaled,” which is insurance-language for “the repair would be too big a percentage of the vehicle’s value” based on a combination of statistical and arbitrary factors.

That’s a rant for another day, but the point is Brewer had a car when he brought it in to be repaired and now he doesn’t. To his credit, he remained remarkably composed in his TV interview. Even when the newscaster dopily asks; “Will you ever go back to Jiffy Lube?”


Brewer’s answer, by the way, was “no, for sure not.”

For their part Jiffy Lube has reportedly paid for Brewer to have a rental car for a week and the franchisee of the Oak Street location has released the following statement:

\“As a local family-owned company, we pride ourselves in our guest experience and partnership with the community. We certainly understand the seriousness of this recent event and are working diligently and directly with the guest to resolve the matter. We are thankful no one was injured and we are committed to ensuring that our processes and procedures regarding quality and training are reinforced so that such an incident does not happen again. Please know that this is our top priority to correct this and earn your trust once again.


Once again? I’m thinking Brewer shouldn’t have trusted this shop in the first place. Hopefully he got a more personal apology himself.

“What if I had been doing that [driving] with my daughter?” Brewer said to KBAK/KBFX. That network also quotes another Jiffy Lube spokesperson saying the cause of the crash is still unknown, but “the franchisee is reviewing information around the service visit, interviewing service center employees and inspecting the vehicle to determine the cause of the accident.”




I suppose there’s always the chance that every lug nut on this truck was cracked and cross-threaded before this Jiffy Lube tech took the car out for that fateful test drive. But I have a feeling it’s far more likely that somebody went a little too wild with their impact gun and over-torqued the lug nuts holding the wheel on the car to the point of breakage.

Now it’s your turn to theorize! What the hell happened here and how can we make sure we never do it to our own cars?