Should I Balance My New Tires?

Turtle n Peeps wrote:
I've balanced tires and haven't balanced tires for over 40 years on my trailers. I could never tell the difference in any of them.

I save the $100 bucks now.

I've also never balanced any of my trailer tires for the last 39 years and like you have never had any vibration or wear issues. Last trailer I had for 27 years and still had the original wheel bearings with over 100K miles on them.

Since to my knowledge no trailer tire/hub assemblies are hub piloted execpt for the old dexter "star"/Fayette type hubs you will never except for luck get a tire/wheel assembly centered on the hub the same each time when the wheel is actually being centered on the lugs. The only true way is to shim the wheel on the hub so the wheel pilot is centered on the hub and that can be a very time consuming and tedious process.

Based on my experience over the last 4 or 5 years I seriously question all this concern over trailer "shaking and vibrations". I say this because I am able to monitor the inside of my trailer via camera while traveling and I typically have a small 3' or so X-mas tree that lives on the dinette table clamped down for travel with all sorts of ornaments hanging from it. There is remarkably little movement of either the tree itself or the ornaments when traveling. I don't have shocks on my trailer, but do have the torsion type axles and not the spring mounted type.

Larry