Chris wrote:
So ERS, we seem we have three levels of tires:
1. Low cost high k factor ST's.
2. Mid cost poly carcass LT's.
3. High cost steel carcass LT's and commercial grade truck trailers.
Of the three, which one have we not seen many failures reported on (excluding the GY G614)?
Which two have similar k factor numbers?
This is our forth winter in a snowbird park in Az, so I get to see a lot of damaged trailers and talk to the owners. This year on our short little street we had a no name ST failure and a G614 failure, both with a lot of damage. Around a Conner is a Cameo that lost a Duro, and when installing new G614's he found the three remaining ones starting to separate also.
So despite saying they are built similar, they clearly do not perform similar.
My statement about ST tires being for delivery and display is probably truer than one thinks!
Chris
I don't know that we have any reported failures on the load range E all steel carcass tires, and I don't expect we will get any. In the course of a little over a year reading a lot of these threads, I know I have read of one where the OP was not happy with a fabric carcass LT, and it was not because of a failure, it was because of harshness to the ride. I suspect if you push them hard enough, you can get them to fail. The LTs of course all have the same K factor, but that just determines the official load rating on the sidewall. There is nothing that says you can't overbuild the tire, and I think that is what Michelin did with the XPS Rib. We can't go more than two days here without a reported failure on an ST tire . . . but we are not seeing those being a Maxxis M8008. I suspect that Maxxis overbuilt those too.
I have quoted you before on the delivery and display purposes only line. But I think it may apply to more than ST tires. Even in the rare case that a unit comes OE with LT tires, I think the tires are damaged somewhat by the time they get to the dealer. I think they also experience more damage sitting on the dealer's lot. We know if a trailer sits in one spot for a long time, and especially if you let the tires get low, they are more succeptible to ozone damage. How many dealers regularly check and air up all of the tires in the units sitting on their lots?
