Is a Blown tire causing truck to leave the roadway and crash into trees a "not at fault accident"

If you think a company the size of USX runs recaps on their steers, and you swear that's what you've seen, then I stand by my statement that you don't have a clue what you're looking at.

 

Take some good pics

 

Ok well lets put this one to rest. I got bored today and decided I could use the exercise so I walked the whole length of the Irving terminal today looking at the steers of about 200ish trucks. Saw virgin rubber on everything until about 125 in and I came to a day cab with steers in the tread pattern of a drive. thought it was a little fishy so I figured what the hell might as well go to the horses mouth so to speak. So I went into the shop to talk to the shop manager on duty and asked point blank do we ever use recaps for steers? What he said was that it is company policy to use virgin rubber on steers, BUT about 2 years ago Michelin was having a hard time keeping up with demand and they had to get some recaps in and use them to keep the trucks rolling. Naturally ALL new truck come in with new rubber and since we change trucks out at 400k miles and it is standard to replace steers with new rubber it is going to be very rare that you see a recap on a steer, but it can happen.

 

I had thought about why they would use them as well, I just chalked it up to someone in the usx shop being lazy, or perhaps someone getting work done by a third party like TA and then them cuting corners. Good on you to get to the bottom of why, I never heard that one but I never asked the shop, just the TM.

 

This Industry is sick. Not in the slang cool word chosen by the young ones, but really sick as in illness. There has been way too much regulation and over firing people for things that happen which sometimes happen to the best of us. I never had a steer blow, but I have had discovered steers with bad belts that needed replacing. Now did that belt get ruined by oversteering or something else? Who knows? But I don't expect to be fired for something like that.

This industry has to go back to the old ways of fixing things that break normally and stop firing people, creating a situation where no one wants to drive at all because if they trip over something they are deemed drugged and must be tested/fired. /sarc.

As a personal policy I do not put or allow recaps on the rig. They fail. Therefore I can prevent such a failure by preventing anyone from slapping cheep recaps on there.

 

I've had way too many steers blow when I drive for this small too cheap to buy new tires company.My boss took tires off his other poor equipment if I had bad tires.Never lost control though because I finally reached the point I didn't trust his equipment and drive slow like 60 mph.

 

Problem isn't so much employers in this industry being too quick to fire, but rather the overly litigious society in which we live. So THIS incident was "property-only". If the NEXT incident involves injury or death, that previous property-only incident gets brought up in civil court as evidence that you run an unsafe outfit and are thereby on the hook for far more than if this was that employee's first and only incident and you have a proven history of strong disciplinary measures against "unsafe" drivers.

It's a CYA world, and companies are just C'ing their A.

As for recaps, not all caps are created equal. If you start with a good case that has been cared for and not abused, and the facility doing the capping adheres to industry standards, the tire you get back is as good (if not better) than a virgin. HOWEVER, if the case was curbed, run low, and generally abused in its previous life, and "cost" is your primary factor in selecting a capping facility, then the tire you get back will be absolute junk. I've capped my own drive tires and run them again...capped them again and ran them a third time...and NEVER had any problems. Company I used to pull for used a different facility that was quite a bit cheaper...would wrap new tread around anything that held air (and even THAT was negotiable). 50% of the caps they mounted on trailers I'd pull would blow inside of 2 weeks. If they lasted beyond that, they would generally run until the treads wore out again.

 

Tire fires seldom happen up in the NE

 

Go work dart they tell to kill the deer and they will fix your truck at 0 cost to you not one cent out of your pocket

 

Absolutely take the animal kill. It's way safer than rolling the #### thing into the ditch mashing your brains all over the cab and your freight all over the roadway in time for a angry morning rush hour to be stopped waiting on your body to be removed.