Retreads are not the problem

Knock on wood, I've never had a tire I bought new blow on me. On caps I have yet to have one make it to 30,000mi yet, so I would never buy another one. I monitor my pressure too!

 

Written by retread company stock holder?

 

I'm curious on how you came to this conclusion. Must have at least 50+ years of experience under your belt running multiple trucking related companies in order to come up with such a scientific conclusion.

I think I just got my answer.

You have no idea what your talking about. You should hire a tire expert like genius above. While you think you've had good luck with caps what's actually been happening is while your sleeping someone has been switching your tires. That's the only conclusion I can come up with because there's NO WAY you've had any good luck with caps, I mean come one EVERYONE knows they'll barely hold up a empty truck long enough to run away before they explode killing everyone around them.

I love forums like this. So far I've learned you absolutely CAN NOT make a dime with a W900L/379 it has to be a plastic POS. You CAN NOT put a dump valve on a spread axle trailer without it breaking. Any weight over 80k is more dangerous than a hydrogen bomb except for recap tires which kill millions of people daily. In fact if you look they kill more people yearly than heart disease. Oh and also if your not from Europe your an idiot.

Do some caps suck? Yes! I can take a tire that failed inspection at my usual shop and take it a mile away to the cheap guys and they'll cap anything that's black and round. This is the type of shop most of you with bad experiences have dealt with. News flash but most truckdrivers are idiots and they only look at price, the cheap shop is cheap for a reason. A lot of guys get mad when the good shop fails their casings so they go to the cheap guys then blame the cap for the failure. I run caps on most stuff because they work. I won't own a truck or a trailer that doesn't have the correct mud flaps on them (Mac trailer must have Mac flaps, KW truck must have KW flaps ect.) so do you think for a second I'm going to take a chance with a tire that will tear up something expensive? I'm not your usual bean counter. I understand that one tire failure can cause thousands of dollars in damage so I use what has proven to work for me and millions of others.

 

In my experience, if you recap tires as Krooser does, you will have very few problems. I worked for a large transport outfit and they had a very good tire man, he would walk around, and test tire preasures, he knew every truck and what preasures to run in them to get maximum mileage. They only used Michelin's and had no problems. The casings when they came back had a green patch on them any yellow or red casings were sold back.
Everything ran great, they decided that they could get rid of him and have the tries done by the mechanics, they would, buy extra tires and save money. The truth was that, the got a load of crap tires, and a mixed brand set up does not work. A sumitomo beside a toyo and the toyo did not touch the ground.
If you know what you are doing you can save a lot running recaps. If you do not you will be the one with the flat and piles of rubber on the road.
When I drove, I use to stop every two hours and check hubs, brakes and tires. I live in the mountains of B.C. and there is a brake check on the hill above our town, now a days the number of drivers that stop is minimal, most stop and do there log, open the door for 15 seconds, wait 5 minutes and open the door for 15 seconds, never getting out if there is a computer monitoring system. Some get out for nature, very few check their tires and hubs.

 

WOW, didn't realize I was getting lucky all these years with my recaps...

 

My point exactly! Are they perfect for every situation, absolutely not. But neither are super singles. But as you can see "trucker ballpark facts" and blanket statements seem to rule.

 

Ding ding ding!!!! Someone else that gets it! Don't mix and match, don't run them down until the casing is ruined, don't run them low. You can't put a 16ply Continental next to a 12ply Michelin, I don't care if they're both brand new. You've got to know more about what's going on than just if they're black and round.

Hate to pick on someone but I don't think caps are your problem. It looks to me like your ability to visually inspect things might be an issue.

1st. tires have a date on them, if they're old get rid of them virgin or not.
2nd. I'd like to bet the fact that they were caps had nothing to do with them blowing, they were old that's why they were stuck on the truck before you bought it.
3rd. Your brakes have to be almost totally gone for them to cam over, inspect things before you take off and you wouldn't have issues like this. Only other way this can happen is if someone puts "Q" shoes on a trailer with the smaller "Q+" cams.

If I had a driver that had this many issues related to preventative maintenance I'd find a new driver.

 

Great idea, I do the same thing, one thing that I want to point out about doing it this way though is when you take your readings, take them between the tires (sidewall of tire facing opposing sidewall) reason being is that if you take a reading on the outer sidewall of outer tire and then the inner sidewall of inner tire your gonna be way off. course I guess you could shoot the treads too. (I've always shot sidewalls) Point is like you say, once you become familiar with the temps your tires run you can easily detect a problem if one or more of your readings are way off...

 

Good point, I never thought about that, I'm going to try it and see how different it is. I usually stick the gun right on the tread. I have found that I have to use it from the same distance from the tire/drum/hub every time, or I get readings that are way off. I have a cheap gun, I would bet a better one would be more accurate.