I had that happen to me before and I have even lost lugs. But only with aluminium rims, they tend to get lose after awhile

 

This is the main reason I use a torque wrench to tighten the lug nuts.

Kev

 

2 more cents worth

with aftermarket rims be sure they removed the little pushnuts before mounting- they can cause wheels to wobble/possibly even crack as the pushnut will only let wheel flange hit in a few places...OEM wheels are counterbored for clearance, most aftermarket are not...
if I had to guess, ether the pushnuts are still under there, and it was causing the wheel to move around slightly, or someone simply overtorqued the nut...if the pushnuts ARE still on there, I'd check out the wheel closely- a cast wheel flange could crack from being tightened down on those.

 

Dear ma'am or sir,

When a lug bolt, or more are slightly loose, it will cause the wheel to push against each bolt as it rotates. When enough pressure is placed against one bolt, it will shear off at it's weakest point.

That is often at the exposed threads at the base of the nut. Whick means a good section of the lug bolt is still inside the lug nut.

It's why tire changee places will tell you to check the torque on your lug bolts 25-50 miles after they rotate, or put new tires on.

It will often mean that there has been force from the wheel transferred to the threads in close proximity to the wheel, in-between the lug and the rotor, of the lug bolts that aren't broken off.

Are you getting it?

 

More than likely, the lug nut was put on crooked, or it worked itself loose, and put too much stress on the wheel lug. When I had aftermarket wheels installed before, the lovely people that did it put two of the lug nuts on crooked, and when I tried to back them off to make sure they were torqued properly, they wouldn't budge. Finally, after I put a 3-foot breaker bar on them, they both snapped the lugs off. I was terrified. But the lugs themselves cost like $2 apiece, and it honestly took me about 20 minutes total to replace both. If you want to go to the dealership because you really don't know what you're doing, put your stock wheels back on. Otherwise, it's really easy, just do it yourself.

 

Lost a wheel on my F150 as well. Passenger front wheel on the freeway doing about 50mph. Scary thing was the truck was lifted about 12" riding on 37"s. Turned out it was my aftermarket wheels. I had both front rotors replaced and didn't have any other issues.

 

UPDATE ***


So apparantly when they tried to take off the wheel at my Ford dealer another bolt snapped off... Either way its going to cost $250 to get the part and have it fixed [:'(]

 

I have to say CobraKev is the only one who gets it...........................torque the lugs with a torque wrench. Impact wrenches have way too much torque for standard lug nuts. Example, most lug nuts should be torque between 81-100 ft lbs. A decent impact, IR, Snap-on, etc put out 500-700 ft lbs of torque. If you rotate your own tires, go out and buy a good torque wrench and I'm not talking about one for $19.95. I always request that my tires get put on with a torque wrench.

I would check every one of your lug nuts, I bet some knuckle head wrapped them on with an Impact wrench and was paying attention.