Pro's and Con's of Super Singles

Singles have no place for water,snow,or ice to go.
Dual tires have the area,in between,where the ice and snow can go.
Ever try to drive a car with wide tires,in the snow?
Singles are the dumbest invention ever..just to satisfy,the super cheap,mileage hounds.

 

If singles were so great,everyone would be using them.
The megas dont use them...that should tell you something.
Penny wise and pound foolish.

 

I shouldn't even be admitting this, one time while on a 10 hour break I heard a great explosion. I go check it out, the trailer had blown an inside tire. Got loaded that night and limped it to my storage place and picked up a spare tire then proceeded to the Love's to fix it. $36 bucks and back running.

Seen countless supersingle truckers out there sitting on the side of the road, if they were lucky it would only cost them about $1100 for the mount dismount roadcall of the spare, otherwise if they damaged the rim and/or didn't have a spare, you're talking big bucks.

 

I'm hearing about carriers going back to duals from singles

Cowan has an entire "lightweight" fleet of super light wabash vans with singles

My T700 is 32000 with singles on the tractor and and old struck van with steel wheels.

I'm about to get a 2007 utility reefer with thermo King unit that has steel wheels. I'll get the weight comparison when I switch the trailer to singles. I need to scale 44550 loads in the reefer

 

I've run both now. The company I lease to has singles on all it's trailers. I was initially a skeptic, but after seeing my trailer tires last 140,000 miles on a spread axle going into a lot of tight docks I decided to try them on my truck. After over 3 years of having them on my tractor too, my enthusiasm is tempered a bit. I think the advantages of super singles is pretty easy to quantify, the drawbacks are a bit more difficult to put numbers to, but they do exist. To wit;

They are a major PITA to work with. I do my own brakes/hub seals & it's way more work to get a s/s off & on, way harder to load one in a pickup.

A s/s wheel is harder to polish than a dual wheel. I do my own polishing too.

If you have a flat, you ain't going nowhere. You're likely to ruin the casing & wheel just trying to get it off the road. I don't care what anybody here thinks of it, I've run hundreds of miles over the years, getting a flat/blown dual to a place where it could be dealt with properly.

If you have a flat you'll be sitting waiting for road service. A s/s is too heavy to wrestle in & out of a spare carrier by yourself.

If you run into more remote areas you may have trouble getting a replacement tire or wheel. I've been camped out in Crescent City CA waiting for a wheel from Medford OR. If you consider the costs associated with the above, it can be pretty easy to wipe out whatever you save on tare weight & fuel mileage.

I don't run recaps, but there is no way I'd cap a s/s in an OTR operation. The last think I need is a thrown cap in July on US 95 in the middle of the Nevada desert.

I can't find anyone to buy my s/s casings. I've always been able to trade in my dual casings.

Like I said, it's hard to quantify these, but I believe that if you add it all together there just isn't any substantial cost advantage to super singles over a set of really low rolling resistance duals. The industry is full of people trying to sell us stuff that we really don't need, & really doesn't work. Having run both, my next truck will have duals.

 

If you're going to run super singles consider using Michelin. If you have a flat and they can't get a replacement to you in 2 hours the service call is free (via 800-TIRE-911).

As far as saving money, the savings you get from running super singles comes in every day and every mile you run. You might have bad luck and blow a series of tires in bad spots such that you temporarily spend more than you save but in the long run the savings are substantial.

I've now driven over 10 years and over a million miles with all but about 3 months and 30,000 miles on super singles and I wouldn't even consider going to duals unless they had substantially better fuel economy or durability, neither of which is likely in the foreseeable future.

I had one set of drives last over 450k miles and most of those miles pulling 80k gross weight reefer loads for example. They still had 5 or 6/32nds left on all but the outermost channel.

Good luck,

Jim

 

Anyone calling them petite doubles?

 

I've only had one single drive tire blow out on me.

 

I dont see the point in Supers just more money

 

Supers if they are set up right are great in the city. Out on the road there are no good. They are very positive for gasoline tankers because they spec the truck for the super and in a years time you would be surprised on the shavings.