Does the tire brand really matter?

You'll easily buy two sets of drives compared to one set of the Goodyear G572's. I've had them for two years and I'm still knee deep in rubber.

 

These are 2010 TY577. A friend of mine bought the updated Yoko version of the old TY577 that has the same pattern tread but lacks the groove on the outside edge of the closed shoulder. This is their smartway green tire I believe. Different compound. He loves them and expects to get 300-350k. I'll never buy yoko's again.

 

I looked at the unicircle G572 caps yesterday. They have 22/32's. They look like a fuel efficient tread. Schneider runs them on drives so they must be economical. $215 each to cap my yoko's, of course if my casings need any repair work the cost goes up. If a casing is bad I can add a +$60 for another grade b casing. I hope they're all good. Of course TN .0975 sales tax, I neglected to check if that was part of the $214.92 or not... more expensive than I was expecting....

Still need to check on Michelin cap prices before I make a decision.

 

If you have tire problems now, wait till summer. You will go broke! Throw that junk away, you are better off with a Chinese virgin tire than the best recap. I am NOT advocating Chinese tires but if I were stranded and the tire shop had one of each, I would take the Chinese tire before a recap. If a recap was my only choice to get me home I would go straight to the tire shop before anything else. I live in Arizona, summertime out here is no place to be with recaps.

 

Good (for a) Year….. Great tires for regular OTR work but it hurts to put a rock in the sidewall of a $550 tire.

 

My company runs recaps on some of our trucks, never had an issue. But we only use Michelin casings that we had from new and haven't been repaired in any way

 

I've always had good luck with MRT caps as they X-ray the casings. The first company I leased to ran them on all but steers (100 trucks, 500 trailers) running heavy in the Northeast. I never had a single one pop on my company truck or trailer and I was a company driver for 6 months and an o/o for 1 1/2 years. Their rounded shoulder spread axle cap is pretty darn good. The price of caps these days has me only buying quality new tires. I paid $500 each OTD on my G572's.
Rollin, GA won't charge you sales tax if you use Bill's MC #.

 

Your right about tire pressure especially with caps

 

Even if 8 caps end up costing $2k that is still significant savings and money down the drain for virgins. And folks, just for arguments sake here, let's assume I'll be one of the lucky ones who gets good use of caps with no problems... ..get tired of the old arguments. If I blow one and tear stuff all to hell I'll post about it and eat crow.

 

As with virgin tires, not all "re-cappers" are the same. Some (many) do shotty work and the end result is more a matter of poor workmanship in the recap processes then the name on the tire casing or the original condition of the used tire casing.