Volvo and shredded fan belts

Is this a common problem or am I just lucky?

I'm now on the side of the road in NV holding a shredded fan belt in my hand and it's the 3rd time in a year, and second time in this particular truck. The first time it happened it was a result of a froze up belt tension-er but this time the tension-er is fine. I've caught the problem once, before it could happen in a pretrip and got a new belt (the one that just broke) put on less than 6 months ago. It had a little tear on the edge of the belt but this one was fine this morning.

I religiously check the #### thing every morning and the belt was fine when I did my pretrip this morning. There are no burs on the pulleys. So what gives? Am I doing something wrong that's causing this? I'm going to start carrying a spare but #### it looks like a royal pain in the ### to put the thing on. If it matters it's a Volvo with the D16.

 

Out of alignment is a possibility I suppose. I've had 2 separate Volvo dealerships verify the pulleys are in good condition but to my knowledge no one (including myself) has verified the alignment. I'll look into that.

 

Well, upon further inspection the idler (smooth) pulley froze up. Last time this happened it was the (ribbed) tension-er pulley. Last time was also on a Saturday night. I was down for 3 days in BFE WY... wonder how long I'll be down this time....