Steer tire blew out

You made me do a Google search for nipple grease. I really shouldn't post the pictures.

 

Believe it or not the mechanic greased the truck about a week and a half before this picture was taken. That being said it has a harder life than most trucks. I put on just as many miles on rough lease roads as I do on pavement. It’ll get greased again tomorrow when I take my reset day. Hopefully they wash it too because right now you can’t hardly tell what color it’s supposed to be haha

 

Pretrip wouldn’t have caught it in this situation. That tire wasn’t like that when I unloaded. It happened sometime between when I unloaded and when I got to the next well 24 miles away. I check all of my tires at every stop since lease roads are so hard on them.

 

Amazingly, in over 3 million miles, I never had a steer tire blow out. And that's coming from the days when all we had were tube type. Ran over a bolt once, was a slow leaker till I got home, but never a blowout. Power steering has all but eliminated steer tire crashes, as years ago with manual steering, the shaking would literally pull the steering wheel out of your hands. It will probably never happen again, so you got it over with.
BTW, unless you carry a 3/4 drive impact, and an air compressor to power it, good luck getting those rusted Budd wheel nuts off. Reason Dayton style tubes were doable, is the nuts came off at least once a month.

 

I hate doing anything on the shoulder of the road! Used to carry everything needed for changing a tire and would always try to get to a safe location for doing it...
Blew a left steer on the Mass Pike once. I was in the hammer lane and it steered me just a little to the left, I may have even touched the grass...I remember what a pain it was to get my jack under anything with that rim on the ground. I think I had to drive it up on blocks just so I could jack it. That was no fun though changing a left tire on the shoulder! Usually with duals, I would try to get to a good spot or preferably a parking area. One thing always creeped me out about working on the ground in rest areas though was imagining how many truckdrivers had peed where I was working...

 

Tell your company that you want matching steers.

 

Especially crossing cattle guards on dirt roads with all the heavy traffic. I discovered that the first time I tried exiting from pavement to a lease road. WHAM! The trench on either side of the iron gets deep.

 

^^^THIS^^^

I would never want to put very many miles on a mismatched set of steers. The truck I just sold had Michellin steers and Yokohama's on the drives, with Centramatics on all axles. That was a smooth ride. I bought it with mismatched everything. Glad I put the coin in getting it right.