Never Be Lazy, Always Check Tires

So this might come as little or no surprise to many here, but I've already witnessed plenty of drivers who skip over the regular checks. This has certainly been more common during these extremely cold and snowy days. Honestly..Who really wants to wonder around the truck/trailer in -5 when your cab is a toasty 75+?

Here are two prime reasons. First is my trailer tire has clearly started to split. I checked my Tire Saturday before I drove only a short 3 hours. This morning during my PTI I found both my trailer and steer has sustained damage. Steer looks like rubble damage from construction if I had to guess. I 100% missed the trailer tire during my night inspection, I didn't have a good light source, which I've corrected. But I'm glad I caught it this morning! Fresh rubber is better than no rubber on a full load.

The same thing happened to the right rear tire in my 4-wheeler, a long tear like someone took a knife to it.

When I took it to the tire shop, I was told that I'm very fortunate the tire didn't come apart and that it is very dangerous to drive on.

I can imagine the consequences would be 1000x worse for a tire to fail on a big truck.

Right,

I'm sitting at about max weight too, I do not want to lose a tire in this weather with such a heavy load!. Just glad I caught it before it ripped apart.

Anyone seen tires chunk like the steers? I'm 100% confident I've not jump any curbs haha, and can't recall any major road debris I ran across.

I've seen steer tires do that, particularly on that design. Small rocks get wedged in that groove and will move around under the weight until they work themselves out, usually taking a bit of rubber with it. The groove is for wet weather traction but it's a terrible design if you ask me. Having water siping at angles in the sections works much better to clean out water and snow, leaving a better contact patch on the road but that style tire is designed specifically for fuel economy.

RIP another tire this week. That's three tires in a matter of days. This poor tire was off a dang near new trailer. Maybe 3-4 months old? It's dead.

On the bright side I was 24 hours ahead of schedule, and only lost 5 hours getting this fixed. a shippers lot didn't get cleaned properly well under construction..

Good for you on checking those tires! We can't depend on a new trailer being perfect. I once did a drop and swap where the trailer I was picking up was nearly new. As I did a quick walk around in the dark I found all four outside tires were not just flat but the beads were loose so the auto-inflators wouldn't work. When the repairman showed up we found a leak in a fifth tire. He said the valve stems were assembled incorrectly which caused the failure. It cost me a few hours of waiting but I got a nice trailer with new tires out of the deal.

Good for you on checking those tires! We can't depend on a new trailer being perfect. I once did a drop and swap where the trailer I was picking up was nearly new. As I did a quick walk around in the dark I found all four outside tires were not just flat but the beads were loose so the auto-inflators wouldn't work. When the repairman showed up we found a leak in a fifth tire. He said the valve stems were assembled incorrectly which caused the failure. It cost me a few hours of waiting but I got a nice trailer with new tires out of the deal.

It's one of those things that's easy to overlook with new equipment. Can't believe they assembled your trailer incorrectly! But least they got it fixed for you pretty fast.