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Why It Is Important To Have a Truck Tire Repaired Properly, and How To Make It Happen

YOU MUST TAKE A TIRE OFF THE WHEEL AND MAKE A PERMANENT REPAIR FROM THE INSIDE. NO EXCEPTIONS!

Consider this: You are an owner operator, or the manager of a trucking fleet and you have chosen to only use one of the best major brand tires on your fleet of trucks, whether it is a fleet of one truck or one thousand.

Last Monday you had one of the new tires you purchased installed on one of your trucks in a drive tire position. You probably paid in excess of $500 Canadian for the tire; let’s say it was an 11R22.5 or a 295/80R22.5, both popular sizes.

Your truck left the yard at about 10:00 AM and at 1:00 PM while traveling down the highway less than 100 miles from home base it picked up a large nail that had just fallen off the truck ahead of it.

A few minutes later the driver noticed that something was wrong – very wrong! – with how his truck was handling, so he pulled off the highway and discovered that the left front drive tire was nearly flat. Not being a moron he know that the right thing to do was to NOT continue down the highway with one grossly underinflated tire because he know that if he did he would probably ruin the tire and possibly damage the other tire next to it on the dual wheel position.  He also knew that it could be unsafe because he might not be able to handle the truck as easily as if all the tires were functioning properly.

What to do? Happily, he did the right thing and called for help. Since his truck had a spare (unfortunately, not too common; look for yourself the next time you pass an 18 wheeler on the highway) he only needed a service truck to come and change the damaged tire and put on the spare so that he could continue on his way.

About an hour later he was back in action with the damaged tire in the area under the trailer where the spare is normally kept.

That evening when he returned to home base he unloaded the damaged tire and the next day he took it to his local tire dealer who informed him that he was lucky that it was only a nail puncture and the damage was in the center of the tread area and not near the sidewall, meaning that “we can easily put in a plug and have you on your way in less than 15 minutes and it will only cost you just a few bucks.”

Whoa! Something smelled bad with what the tire dealer told him, and the trucker, not being a moron, decided to pass and visit another tire dealer just down the road.

Lucky he did! The second tire dealer had a well trained staff and understood that the ONLY way to properly repair a tire was from the inside and NOT by simply putting in a plug. The first thing the second tire dealer did was to carefully inspect the damaged tire to be certain it was repairable. Luckily, it was.

The second tire dealer than removed the nail and had the damaged area properly prepared for the plug and patch that would be installed into the tire from the INSIDE. The cost was somewhat more than “just a few bucks” but a whole lot LESS than the cost of a new tire, and more importantly the properly repaired tire was able to be put back into full use and live out its normal first life and even be suitable for retreading for succeeding lives.

By being smart enough to do the right thing the trucker saved hundreds of dollars and might have even saved lives because improperly repaired tires do come apart and when they fail on the road all hell can break loose, and may result in a catastrophic accident causing loss of lives.

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The moral of the story: Don’t be a moron, but do the right thing because there is never a right time to do the wrong thing and never a wrong time to do the right thing!

For more information about proper truck tire repairing visit any of the following web sites. Each one belongs to a member of the Retread Tire Association and each company is first class and will be happy to hear from you with any questions you may have about proper tire repairs.

www.31inc.com

www.elgitread.com

www.premacanada.ca

www.tech-international.com

Finally, please feel free to contact us for one of our Retread Tire Information Packets. There is no cost to you and you will find it very worthwhile as it contains a great REPUTABLE RETREADING DVD, along with a number of other articles and brochures about all aspects of proper maintenance for tires, both new tires and retreads. To order please send an email to info@retreadtire.org or call 831-646-5269.




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