Trailer Tires

fla-gypsy wrote:
There are many half truths in this document meant to generate tire sales

That's my take also and I sure don't view it as a reliable technical document, but mostly advertising hype to generate sales.

I would like to add a couple of my own "TIRE IDEAS/PHILOSOPHIES" based on my personal experiences of over 40 years towing with well north of 100K miles towing. All this has been using ST tires mainly the dreaded GY Marathons (since 1996 until two years ago when I went to the Kumho 857 tires) which have typically been loaded to within 100 to 200 lbs of their max load capacity for the GYs. During that time I have had two flats (no blow outs) and call me unlucky the only tread separation has been with one of the recent Kumhos that were only 18mos old and had less than 4,000 miles on it. Oh I'm also paranoid about keeping my speed under 65 and always inflat to the max sidewall pressure.

IMO the three major causes of tire failures are:

1. Excessive speed
2. Under inflation
3. Tire damage due to overloading or road hazards.

This last one is IMO probably the most important and again IMO comes from two not so obvious sources. If one has a flat with most stock sized tires this will cause the other tire on that side to be "SERIOUSLY OVERLOADED" with it being damaged with it's max load carrying capacity seriously compromised. Thus with the normal lack of real excess tire load capacity on stock OEM tires that means unless you replace that apparantly "good" tire you will be running around on a tire most likely "overloaded" all the time and this can result in the catastrophic "blow out" or tread separation scenario at some point down the road. Thus one of my rules is if I have a flat on the trailer "BOTH TIRES" on that side are replaced and will only use that potentially overloaded and compromised tire that did not go flat on the side of the trailer I had a flat on as an emergency spare. Another serious issue IMO is what I called road hazards and outside of the normal "curbing type" issues the poor conditions of a lot of our interstates is "TIRE HADES" due to the "INTERSTATE POTHOLES" mainly in the right side of the right lane. Anyone that has traveled I-95 thru SC and NC know what I'm talking about. Hitting these at interstate speeds over say a couple of hundred miles can IMO basically DESTROY what ever tire load capacity that tire had before you started beating those tires to death. I'm paranoid about this and when I encouter this issue I try and avoid these "Interstate Pothole" like the plague. To do this I'm with in the right lane or straddling the left and right lane only moving over to my normal right lane travel when someone is overtaking me. I have also been known to straddle the right side edge/shoulder in heavier traffic as long as the shoulder is good and clear of debris. All this requires a trememdous amount of extra attention and can really be tiresome and makes a 300 mile day feel like I have driven 1,000 miles.

In fact I have actually replace both tires on the passenger side of my trailer "TWICE" because of either a single or multiple "SERIOUS" "INTERSTATE POTHOLE" encounters in the last 30+ years I have lived on the East Coast. None of these tires went flat or were visibly damaged, but I could not further trust them and the $200 or so IMO was well worth the cost to potentially avoid a real tire failure and the resulting damage to the trailer for any tread separation.



Larry