I drive a company provided minivan for my job. I pick people up and take them to their appt's. Anyway, Tuesday night, the mechanic who maintains our fleet did a bunch of work to my minivan -- mostly suspension work and new brakes and he put new wheels and tires on.
Next morning, I am driving the van with some clients inside and then all of a sudden the steering gets real shaky, so I slow down and start to pull into a parking lot. Right then, the wheel comes off and goes sailing down a parking lot and it hit a fence about 300 feet away -- luckily not hitting anybody. The van recieved some body damage due to the loose wheel hitting the fender. I am very lucky the wheel didn't fall off on the highway. The studs on the wheel assembly were all broke off.
Anyway, I get towed up to headquarters. The mechanic who did the work on the van the night before comes out, scratching his head -- "Gee I wonder why the wheel fell off." So I replied: "because you probably didn't torque the lug nuts properly." He replied: "No, that couldn't be it", and then walked off and started wrenching on another car. He is so detached and aloof, even after his shoddy work almost kills people. A lot of the drivers complain about his shoddy work, stuff not being repaired correctly, problems being ignored, etc..
I am just trying to figure out what other things could cause a wheel to fall off? Besides the tie rod and brake work, he also put different rims on it (it had steel wheels, but he put alloy rims on it), so maybe he used the wrong lug nuts? Looking at the hub of the wheel, nothing looks loose. Only visible problem is the 5 lug nuts that were sheared off by the loose wheel.