Truck retreads on the highway

[TiredTrucker]

The sad thing is, most commercial truck drivers are simply steering wheel holders. You watch them at truck stops and such, and they will hardly ever "thump" a tire to check to see if it is even inflated before leaving, let alone stick them with a tire gauge. And there is so many "drop and hook" situations where trailers are exchanged every day or even several times a day. Again, proper pre-trips are not done.

I have over 3 decades in commercial trucking. I have NEVER lost a recap. NEVER. I stick my tires each and every day before taking off. I walk around and check things whenever I stop.

Virtually every time (99.9%) that a tire blows is what others have stated.... low air pressure, overloading, high speed, and a driver that didn't even do a proper pre-trip and check this stuff out. Commercial tires have various weight ratings and speed ratings. That is when everything is perfect. Put a knot head at the helm, and all sorts of interesting things happen.

There really is no way to effectively deal with the problem. Government regulation can only go so far. If a driver is not going to check things, stuff is going to happen. And that goes to another point, how could it be proven precisely that he didn't check things and maybe had tire damage from road debris later and wasn't aware of it?

That being said, I can run around at 80,000 lb gross all day long, in 100+ degree heat, and never have a tire issue. Have done it for years. And have done it for years on recap tires. I like em, I use em. I save a grip of money in my operation by using caps. It costs $1100 dollars for just one wide based single tire for my tractor. I can get a Michelin cap for just under $500 with my casing trade in. For regular truck tires, a new can go for between $500 - $600 each. A cap..... around $275. And if you check with the Retread Tire Association, it has been shown, that with proper air pressure and maintenance, a cap tire will hold up as well, and even sometimes better than a virgin tire. The tire casing goes thru extensive X-ray and other analysis before a cap is even considered.

The Retread Tire Association will provide a free pass to anyone who wants to tour a retreading facility and check this all out. Michelin has several videos online showing the process.

http://www.michelintruck.com/michelintruck/tires-retreads/retread-process-video.jsp

 

[fdcg27]

The easy and safe solution would be to get long haul freight off our roads and onto the rails where its belongs.
Cheap truck freight rates, a product of the deregulation of interstate trucking, have resulted in an overload of long haul trucks in many areas, often operated by barely qualified and poorly paid drivers. Rate competition has not been a positive factor in either driver skill or vehicle maintenance, including tires. The tires that fail are probably not Michelins, either, but the cheapest thing that the operator could find.
Get this long haul freight off our roads and the problem of truck tire debris causing damage and injuires is reduced to almost nothing.

 

[fdcg27]

You, sir, are the kind of guy I like sharing the interstate with.
You have experience and you are concerned about safety.
Your many miles seem to indicate that any quality cap will last if proper inflation is maintained.
It's really too bad that so many others are either unaware, inexperienced or simply not very clever.
I'd venture that you also haul the kind of high value goods that make sense to ship by truck and not by rail.

 

[grampi]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
The easy and safe solution would be to get long haul freight off our roads and onto the rails where its belongs.
Cheap truck freight rates, a product of the deregulation of interstate trucking, have resulted in an overload of long haul trucks in many areas, often operated by barely qualified and poorly paid drivers. Rate competition has not been a positive factor in either driver skill or vehicle maintenance, including tires. The tires that fail are probably not Michelins, either, but the cheapest thing that the operator could find.
Get this long haul freight off our roads and the problem of truck tire debris causing damage and injuires is reduced to almost nothing.


You absolutely hit the nail on the head! For years I've been saying this country needs to ship the long haul stuff by rail. There are way too many semis on our highways...have you driven on I-80, I-70, or I-65 lately? There's literally more semi traffic than there is passenger vehicles. It's beyond ridiculous, and it's dangerous.

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: whip
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
The L.I.E is littered with them. I like the idea of the trucker being ticketed and held accountable for it, but that's a pipe dream. The problem is catching them. If by luck the police are involved the trucker should be fined for every bad tire on his rig.

If a driver gets pulled over and inspected, he will be fined for the bad tires. I wish the general public was also held to that standard.


Me too.

I wish they imposed the truck tire law a little more strictly here, seems the Police are very lax about it, at least the few that I know.

 

[Silverado12]

Originally Posted By: TiredTrucker
The sad thing is, most commercial truck drivers are simply steering wheel holders. You watch them at truck stops and such, and they will hardly ever "thump" a tire to check to see if it is even inflated before leaving, let alone stick them with a tire gauge. And there is so many "drop and hook" situations where trailers are exchanged every day or even several times a day. Again, proper pre-trips are not done.

I have over 3 decades in commercial trucking. I have NEVER lost a recap. NEVER. I stick my tires each and every day before taking off. I walk around and check things whenever I stop.

Virtually every time (99.9%) that a tire blows is what others have stated.... low air pressure, overloading, high speed, and a driver that didn't even do a proper pre-trip and check this stuff out. Commercial tires have various weight ratings and speed ratings. That is when everything is perfect. Put a knot head at the helm, and all sorts of interesting things happen.

There really is no way to effectively deal with the problem. Government regulation can only go so far. If a driver is not going to check things, stuff is going to happen. And that goes to another point, how could it be proven precisely that he didn't check things and maybe had tire damage from road debris later and wasn't aware of it?

That being said, I can run around at 80,000 lb gross all day long, in 100+ degree heat, and never have a tire issue. Have done it for years. And have done it for years on recap tires. I like em, I use em. I save a grip of money in my operation by using caps. It costs $1100 dollars for just one wide based single tire for my tractor. I can get a Michelin cap for just under $500 with my casing trade in. For regular truck tires, a new can go for between $500 - $600 each. A cap..... around $275. And if you check with the Retread Tire Association, it has been shown, that with proper air pressure and maintenance, a cap tire will hold up as well, and even sometimes better than a virgin tire. The tire casing goes thru extensive X-ray and other analysis before a cap is even considered.

The Retread Tire Association will provide a free pass to anyone who wants to tour a retreading facility and check this all out. Michelin has several videos online showing the process.

http://www.michelintruck.com/michelintruck/tires-retreads/retread-process-video.jsp

Some guys have all the luck. I blew more tires than I could count, and even a super single. The tire mfg tries to blame the driver, but some of their tires are just bad. We had a bad batch of Bridgestones about 10 years ago (new tires) and we were blowing out one a week. They do a lot of damage to the trailer, too. I check the pressure regularly, and the pressure was ok. You have to watch where you get your recaps and used tires from too. I blew a used tire (company wanted a used tire just to get the trailer back to the yard) after about 200 miles. No visible damage or cracking, and tire was sized correctly too.

 

[Silverado12]

I will add that after almost 2 million miles of driving I only hit one deer (lots of close calls, though) and it did minimum damage by just putting a small dent in the tank where he ran into the side of my truck. So I'm extremely lucky there.

 

[Silverado12]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
The easy and safe solution would be to get long haul freight off our roads and onto the rails where its belongs.
Cheap truck freight rates, a product of the deregulation of interstate trucking, have resulted in an overload of long haul trucks in many areas, often operated by barely qualified and poorly paid drivers. Rate competition has not been a positive factor in either driver skill or vehicle maintenance, including tires. The tires that fail are probably not Michelins, either, but the cheapest thing that the operator could find.
Get this long haul freight off our roads and the problem of truck tire debris causing damage and injuires is reduced to almost nothing.


That's already being done to a certain extent. Most places can't receive train shipments, so a truck is still necessary. Most loads I did were under 500 miles.

 

[dparm]

Don't Germany and a few other European countries prohibit trucks on certain days of the week? That might keep things a bit less crazy.

 

[Silverado12]

Originally Posted By: dparm
Don't Germany and a few other European countries prohibit trucks on certain days of the week? That might keep things a bit less crazy.


That won't work here. There would be so many trucks on the days they were allowed to drive no one would get anywhere. The best solution is to invest money in our roads to add more lanes.

 

[TiredTrucker]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
The easy and safe solution would be to get long haul freight off our roads and onto the rails where its belongs.
Cheap truck freight rates, a product of the deregulation of interstate trucking, have resulted in an overload of long haul trucks in many areas, often operated by barely qualified and poorly paid drivers. Rate competition has not been a positive factor in either driver skill or vehicle maintenance, including tires. The tires that fail are probably not Michelins, either, but the cheapest thing that the operator could find.
Get this long haul freight off our roads and the problem of truck tire debris causing damage and injuires is reduced to almost nothing.


I agree! Then you can do all your shopping at the rail head! How do you think that stuff you buy gets from the rail to the store? How about from the distribution center, food warehouse, etc to the store? And oh yeah, I can really see a load of meat doing well on rail. These guys can't seem to keep track of the cars they have now. It will be good to see a load of meat sitting on rail car for 2 weeks and then see how much of it you want to buy.

If you understood just half of what you think you understand about product distribution logistics, you might have withheld this myopic post of yours. And if you had even the slightest understanding of trucking in general, you would also know that the MAJORITY of those gators you see from blown out tires on the road come from the poorly maintained trailers that haul the containers from the rail.

And you can virtually forget about that 2 day shipping you want on something you order off the internet. Well over 80% of air freight actually moves by truck. The vast majority of that fast shipping stuff moves by Forward Air, Conway Freight, FedEx Freight, YRC, Old Dominion, Estes, and a host of other trucking companies. You can see them every day pulling doubles, or what we call wiggle wagons. 24/7 up and down the highways. No problem, lets get rid of all the long haul trucking stuff. You can forget about a rush on your orders. And for those things you can get quickly, the cost to ship that way would be virtually cost prohibitive for all, but the wealthiest customers. So when you need that special part for your broke down auto, you will just get to wait a few more days.

Bet you never even thought about any of this, did you?

 

[FXjohn]

Originally Posted By: TiredTrucker

I agree! Then you can do all your shopping at the rail head! How do you think that stuff you buy gets from the rail to the store? How about from the distribution center, food warehouse, etc to the store? And oh yeah, I can really see a load of meat doing well on rail. These guys can't seem to keep track of the cars they have now. It will be good to see a load of meat sitting on rail car for 2 weeks and then see how much of it you want to buy.

If you understood just half of what you think you understand about product distribution logistics, you might have withheld this myopic post of yours. And if you had even the slightest understanding of trucking in general, you would also know that the MAJORITY of those gators you see from blown out tires on the road come from the poorly maintained trailers that haul the containers from the rail.

And you can virtually forget about that 2 day shipping you want on something you order off the internet. Well over 80% of air freight actually moves by truck. The vast majority of that fast shipping stuff moves by Forward Air, Conway Freight, FedEx Freight, YRC, Old Dominion, Estes, and a host of other trucking companies. You can see them every day pulling doubles, or what we call wiggle wagons. 24/7 up and down the highways. No problem, lets get rid of all the long haul trucking stuff. You can forget about a rush on your orders. And for those things you can get quickly, the cost to ship that way would be virtually cost prohibitive for all, but the wealthiest customers. So when you need that special part for your broke down auto, you will just get to wait a few more days.

Bet you never even thought about any of this, did you?



Are you being obtuse? they have small trucks to haul stuff short distances from train depots and they have refrigerated freight cars. wow.

 

[supton]

I was going to say, it'd be pretty easy to do short-distance trucking. Get it close, then despite an 8 to 10 hour shift one is still home for bed. And of course, no one said it all had to go on rail--or did I miss something?

I could easily give up 2 day shipping. Never use it anyhow.

I'd gladly wait a week for something to come by rail. Well, I'd expect shipping to be cheaper, otherwise I wouldn't use it... I thought rail used less fuel per ton? Certainly use less tires.

For some time I've wondered why they didn't just run a rail line between the highway lanes. Usually it's just a narrow strip of grass. Seems like a decent place for a train, to me anyhow. Maybe not all routes, but at least in some places.

 

[TiredTrucker]

Originally Posted By: FXjohn
Originally Posted By: TiredTrucker

I agree! Then you can do all your shopping at the rail head! How do you think that stuff you buy gets from the rail to the store? How about from the distribution center, food warehouse, etc to the store? And oh yeah, I can really see a load of meat doing well on rail. These guys can't seem to keep track of the cars they have now. It will be good to see a load of meat sitting on rail car for 2 weeks and then see how much of it you want to buy.

If you understood just half of what you think you understand about product distribution logistics, you might have withheld this myopic post of yours. And if you had even the slightest understanding of trucking in general, you would also know that the MAJORITY of those gators you see from blown out tires on the road come from the poorly maintained trailers that haul the containers from the rail.

And you can virtually forget about that 2 day shipping you want on something you order off the internet. Well over 80% of air freight actually moves by truck. The vast majority of that fast shipping stuff moves by Forward Air, Conway Freight, FedEx Freight, YRC, Old Dominion, Estes, and a host of other trucking companies. You can see them every day pulling doubles, or what we call wiggle wagons. 24/7 up and down the highways. No problem, lets get rid of all the long haul trucking stuff. You can forget about a rush on your orders. And for those things you can get quickly, the cost to ship that way would be virtually cost prohibitive for all, but the wealthiest customers. So when you need that special part for your broke down auto, you will just get to wait a few more days.

Bet you never even thought about any of this, did you?



Are you being obtuse? they have small trucks to haul stuff short distances from train depots and they have refrigerated freight cars. wow.


Nope. Like I stated, most of the air freight still moves by commercial truck... 28' wiggles in tandem and triple configurations, 53' trailers just like everything else. And true, they do have refrigerated trailers. But you will find this only works well for frozen or long term products. Try it with lettuce. Not going to happen. Non-frozen meat? Not going to happen. You may have smaller trucks that deliver from the rail, but it will take substantially longer to have rail bring it to the rail head for those smaller trucks to pick up. Like I stated, you can forget about getting products you order online in a timely manner you are accustomed to now.

And all of just about everything you buy will increase substantially in price. Ever heard of "just in time". All auto producers live by it. It saves substantial costs in warehousing. Stuff arrives within a 30 minute window of the plant needing it. it goes right from the truck to the assembly line. And at the other end? They make the product as the auto OEM needs it. It is very common to pick up product coming right off of manufacturing and taking it 500 miles to a plant, with a 15 min either side of a set appointment time for it to go right onto the assembly line. It is one thing to have rail haul the finished cars, it is quite another to have them bring in the components from a hundred different suppliers on time. This has saved millions of dollars of warehousing space at each plant. It is so refined, that if a truck is late, they have a small buffer, but if the plant has to stop the assembly, it costs well over $100,000 dollars an hour in lost productivity.

And automotive is only one area that JIT is the norm. It is spread out across the entire manufacturing spectrum in the U.S. And you can also lay some of the blame for this on the government regulatory climate that forces plants to rely on more of this. And it is common knowledge, that just in food and other essentials, a 24 hr delay can be critical, a 48 hr delay is almost unthinkable, a 72 hr delay of essential goods would lead to rioting in the streets.

And you will have to give up that order from 1-800 flowers or Sherri's Berries for the wife on one of those special days. It just isn't going to get there unless flown by plane since all the long haul trucks would be off the road. And there just isn't enough aircraft in America to pick up the slack of thousands and thousands of trucks the would be sidelined

There are presently over 5 million trucks in America daily delivering all of your goodies. Sure, let's shut them down. You have no idea of the disruption and life changing results. There isn't enough rail to pick up much of any of it. 80% of all freight moved in this country moves by truck. Rail is close to tapped out. You would have to have the equivalent of the Berlin Airlift going on through the entire country. Not even remotely a reality.

 

[FXjohn]

who cares. we can get big rigs off the road and use more rail if we really wanted to.

 

[TiredTrucker]

Originally Posted By: FXjohn
who cares. we can get big rigs off the road and use more rail if we really wanted to.


If you can figure out how to do it and maintain the same standard of living we have now, then you will be richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet..... combined.

 

[FXjohn]

Originally Posted By: TiredTrucker
Originally Posted By: FXjohn
who cares. we can get big rigs off the road and use more rail if we really wanted to.


If you can figure out how to do it and maintain the same standard of living we have now, then you will be richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet..... combined.


and how much more per year do you think it would cost to use less trucks and more rail. you're not objective

 

[fdcg27]

I think TiredTrucker's point is that we currently have a distribution model built around trucks used on interstates.
Before there were interstates, we had a distribution model built around rail and there were short lines that went everywhere.
No reason that we couldn't collectively invest enough in rail to make it competitive in hauling less dense higher value goods.
A side benefit would be that a better rail network would also create the potential for more appealing passenger rail transport for smaller markets, since airline travel from smaller markets isn't all that quick, given the need to connect at a major airport to get anywhere.
If we could get reasonable train schedules from either Dayton or Cincinnati, we'd likely see a lot less of both DAY and CVG and would not miss either one.

 

[zzyzzx]

Originally Posted By: dparm
Don't Germany and a few other European countries prohibit trucks on certain days of the week? That might keep things a bit less crazy.


Exactly how does that help anything? It just forces more trucks onto the road on the days that they are allowed???

 

[zzyzzx]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
I think TiredTrucker's point is that we currently have a distribution model built around trucks used on interstates.
Before there were interstates, we had a distribution model built around rail and there were short lines that went everywhere.
No reason that we couldn't collectively invest enough in rail to make it competitive in hauling less dense higher value goods.
A side benefit would be that a better rail network would also create the potential for more appealing passenger rail transport for smaller markets, since airline travel from smaller markets isn't all that quick, given the need to connect at a major airport to get anywhere.
If we could get reasonable train schedules from either Dayton or Cincinnati, we'd likely see a lot less of both DAY and CVG and would not miss either one.


Yeah, I wonder how many WalMarts have a rail line going to them for deliveries.