Found my new truck for next Truck Camper!
Good good this would be cool with a TC on the back.
Forum Discussion
For what it's worth:
I challenge you naysayers who maintain that non-steerable tandems don't scrub on turning cicles (and thus wear faster on hard road surfaces) to draw a circle on a piece of paper. Then put a dot in the center of the circle. This dot represents the center of the turning radius that the tandem tires will be traveling around as they move along the curve of a turning circle. Now draw on this circle the view from above showing the set of tandems as they traverse around the circumference of the circle. Notice that each set of two tires in each tandem pair are linearly lined up with each other but being forced/dragged along the non-linear circumference of the turning circle. Studying this carefully, it's obvious what will be happening on turns with non-steerable tandems on vehicles.
This additional scrubbing is not a wear issue on soft surfaces, or much of an issue with relatively light-weight vehicles on hard surfaces or with tandem wheeled trailers on hard surfaces. But with heavy vehicles (like some RVs) - tandem rears will wear faster due to the scrubbing. Notice that U.S. big rigs don't use tandem duals to carry their heavy weights, as the scrubbing - even on gentle highway curves (let alone when maneuvering in loading lots) - will, over thousands of miles, cost them additional $$ from excessive tread wear over use of standard side-by-side duals.
I would not want a heavy RV with tandem duals if it was to be used for travel on hard surfaces thousands of miles over it's life. However, tandem duals definitely have flat-changing advantages and certain off-road traction advantages over side-by-side duals ... but on-highways ... tread wear is not one of them.
I challenge you naysayers who maintain that non-steerable tandems don't scrub on turning cicles (and thus wear faster on hard road surfaces) to draw a circle on a piece of paper. Then put a dot in the center of the circle. This dot represents the center of the turning radius that the tandem tires will be traveling around as they move along the curve of a turning circle. Now draw on this circle the view from above showing the set of tandems as they traverse around the circumference of the circle. Notice that each set of two tires in each tandem pair are linearly lined up with each other but being forced/dragged along the non-linear circumference of the turning circle. Studying this carefully, it's obvious what will be happening on turns with non-steerable tandems on vehicles.
This additional scrubbing is not a wear issue on soft surfaces, or much of an issue with relatively light-weight vehicles on hard surfaces or with tandem wheeled trailers on hard surfaces. But with heavy vehicles (like some RVs) - tandem rears will wear faster due to the scrubbing. Notice that U.S. big rigs don't use tandem duals to carry their heavy weights, as the scrubbing - even on gentle highway curves (let alone when maneuvering in loading lots) - will, over thousands of miles, cost them additional $$ from excessive tread wear over use of standard side-by-side duals.
I would not want a heavy RV with tandem duals if it was to be used for travel on hard surfaces thousands of miles over it's life. However, tandem duals definitely have flat-changing advantages and certain off-road traction advantages over side-by-side duals ... but on-highways ... tread wear is not one of them.
