Tandem axle vs single

Bobbo wrote:

BarneyS wrote:

Lwiddis wrote:
Snip... Blowing a tire, which will happen…and to you, is another. Snip...

Not necessarily! I have been driving for 70 years, 50 of them towing a trailer of some kind, and have never had a blowout in all of those years. Only had one flat tire and had that changed in about 30 minutes.
Barney

What Lwiddis said. I haven't had a blowout, but I was at a campground waiting for a friend to arrive. I got a call, he was about 10 miles out and had lost the tread off of a trailer tire, shredding the tire. He had called AAA. I drove over there and put his spare on for him. If it was a single axle trailer, it would have been on the rim, or on its side.

Sure, single axle would end up with the rim hitting the ground.

BUT, the exact same thing WILL happen with dual axles.

Flatten a tire on a dual axle by taking the valve core out and you will see that rim drop the entire distance of the sidewall. Put a load on the trailer like the average RV'r does and that rim WILL be touching the ground. Dual axle suspension will attempt to equalize and will push the blown/missing tire of that axle down until the good tire hits the top of the suspension limit.

Remove the flat tire on dual axle and the drum will start hitting the pavement. It is for that reason one must "strap" and restrain the axle backup to "normal position" if one were to attempt to drive on with a missing tire.

As far as "tipping over" goes, you have bigger problems if your single axle trailer tips over with a 5" drop. Tire sidewall at most is 6" tall with air, no air that shrinks to about 5" (tread portion of tire thickness is nearly 1" including the rubber under the tread).

A single axle trailer with a flat is not going to tip over unless you do something dumb to help it over the center of gravity.