You should always use ten ply tires in any heavy trailer. Even then there's
no certainty that they will stay together--you see far too many
tractor-trailer carcasses on the road to think that.
>From an acquaintance of mine who covers hundreds of thousands of miles per
hear pulling a 40' gooseneck comes this advice: Check tire inflation in the
early morning every travel day. Five pounds low is enough to do damage. Make
sure your load is just right--most people have too high a tongue weight
because they are afraid of the gollywobbles. Tongue weight should be about
10 percent of the tow weight. It wipes your truck rear tires and the forward
tire of the trailer pair if you have too high a tongue weight, and
equalizing bars don't solve that problem.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-fot@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-fot@autox.team.net] On Behalf
Of Jeff Snook
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 10:53 AM
To: fot@autox.team.net
Subject: Tireless in Michigan
It was a "tireless" weekend in Michigan.
We also blew two tires on our 44' gooseneck on the way home from Grattan.
The first blowout occured on I-96 west of Lansing. We're cruising along at
65 MPH and some biker guy pulls up next to us and motions to roll down the
window.
Tells me we got a flat tire on the trailer. I didn't even know it!! Pull
off to the side (big wide apron) get out the old bottle jack, dig the spare
out of the trailer and change the flat. No problem just going to be 1/2
hour later than we thought.
Forty five minutes later we hear a big bang! Damn, there goes another tire
and this time we got no spare. Limp off the expressway, drop the trailer at
a truck stop, drive the rest of the way home and get a tire first thing
Monday.
Drive back up to Ann Arbor (not too far away from us) mount the tire, hook
up and drive home.
Today I replaced all 6 tires (and the spare) with brand new Titan 10 Ply
Radials! Small investment for the piece of mind of not worrying about them.
Jeff Snook
http://www.snooksdreamcars.com
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