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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Dead Tires

Anyone else notice all the dead tires on the side of the road? The vast majority of them are truck tires. Some sections of road on my recent trip were so littered with rubber that it would be dangerous to try to pull to the side of the road.

There’s always been a few trucks losing tires. Inside duals are particularly prone to disaster. The driver can’t see them in his mirrors. A tire low on air can go unnoticed until it fails catastrophically.

While tires have always failed, it certainly seems there are a lot more of them. There are plenty of possible causes: more use of retreads, overloaded trucks, tires used past their time, drop in quality -lots of possible causes. It could be as simple as road clean up not happening as much as it used to.

Anyone else notice? Any ideas?

-Sixbears

7 comments:

  1. I've also noticed more tire fragments alongside the highways, I'm guessing budget cuts from highway departments are to blame. Also noticed carcasses of road kills seem to stay longer as well.

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  2. Budget cuts for the road tires and poor or lazy people for the tired tossing into woods, down hillsides, etc. Our land in the UP and the roadsides were full of old tires. They didn't want to pay to dispose of them.

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  3. I guess the lack of maintenance on both the roads and the vehicles are both to blame!

    It's a shame, but looks like it won't get better anytime soon!

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  4. Most people and RVers keep old out of date tires on their vehicles just because they still have good tread depth and don't seem to be bothered about the weather cracks. Tires should ever be used se end tears from the mfg date stmoed on the tires.

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  5. Being a "fleet maintenance" person, I can tell you it's poor quality. Especially all the "high qwarity, make in China!" crap that is out there now. I gave to replace the tires on our fish hauler goosenecks every other year. Still plenty of tread left, but after two years (two summers, really) they will start shedding the tread and/or blow out. Boat trailer tires too, couple years max. Truck tires are good to 40k or so, but the trailer tires maybe only 15k. Not too good, especially at the prices they're charging...

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  6. Thanks for the input everyone. Looks like things are slowly going downhill on a number of fronts.

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  7. I agree with Craig. Just poor quality junk from China...down here we call the roadside trash leftovers, road gators...

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