Why I hate wide singles on a truck.

Wise hand. When you got a smooth riding hoss, just ride on. Do not worry bout the ####leburs might get in his tail.

 

While im not his boss and i dont manage his company and frankly what they do is their own business and their own issues. I DO run in a close enough circle to at least make an educated guess on the costs.

First going off the little booklet i got, a super single averages around $1200 a pop. $650 for the chinesium trash tier ones $2100 for some of the premium offroad style. My michlin duals are $450 each. So about $300 more per tire per dual. Total cost of a minimum and assumeing a 5 axle setup $2400 more then duals.

Weight is at most assumeing same setup around 800 pounds savings. Most bulk loads i do pay around $1800 profit per day. For sake of argument lets be generious and assume $2K a day for them. So that means to get $2000 extra from running the tires you need to do 60 loads. I would assume they can maybe do 280 loads a year lets again be genrious and for sake of math assume 300 loads a year per truck. So that means they make an extra 5 loads a year or $10,000 which is not bad and if you have say 120 trucks it adds up.

However judgeing the damage on the above trailer. Thats going to be a cool $5,000 to fix on the low end. Between the fender, mudflaps if so equiped, any missing lights, the wireing, labor and everything else that sounds reasonable. You are also looking at at least 2 or 3 days of work.

Also that damage will need to be cleaned up before he can leave. So tire+roadcall+labor your likely looking at $2000 for that road call. Assumeing the rim is not also damaged which we will assume it is not for the sake of easey math. So we are already at $7000 for a single blowout.

Next the driver has been sitting at least a day, so add $2000 for down time. That brings us to $9000. That trailer is likely going to be down at least a week getting repaired if it goes to an exterior shop. And at least 2 days internally. Lets go low end and assume their shop and your now at $13,000.

Next it sounds like the customer is angry and may shut down due to lack of product which is at a minimum going to mean the load is free. Or have a stiff fine depending on contract. Potentially even loss of the customer. Hard to caculate the cost of that since i dont know what they get internally or how many loads they do for them.

So $15,000 already at a minimum and a throughly pissed off customer. With enough trucks and if blowouts are rare enough i can see the argument its still worth it since say you get the same blowout rate of once per 5 years i have averaged. It would make sense as your looking at an extra 50k over that 5 years. And if all your trucks do it. Im sure even losing one customer is worth it.

That said, the math and above also means you need economy of scale to make it even worth considering just from a financial standpoint. Someone like me who has exactly 1 truck. This would be devastating financially. Even a company with 20-30 trucks that would be a hard pill to swallow. Hell even a company with 100 trucks, losing a customer is not good. The fact they (customer) may need to shut down may also mean a lawsuit is in the works especially if THEY lose enough money to make it worth going after you.

Personally i can see some of the logic but the potential hard to nail down costs just dont sound worth it.

 

Ran both singles and duals on the tractor and tank I was assigned, I was 1,200 lbs lighter with singles. They were actually better on fuel too, I lost 1mpg when they threw duals on the tractor

 

We are going back to duals on the tractors at least.
After 15 years.
We run 24/7 and got stuck so many times on unplowed and plowed customer sites I guess the boss got sick of 400 dollar 20 ft tow jobs.
The guys like the ride better also.

 

I’d rather take the loss on loading 1/2 a ton extra……

 

For what it's worth, I have never had other than duals on a tractor, but some years ago, must be more than 24 at least, all European max weight trailers have been tri-axle super singles, so somebody has done the maths. In my driving career, 59 years, I have never had a blowout, plenty of flats which, if noticed in time, do no damage. And that includes driving triples in outback Northern Australia which is often off the bitumen. My first trip, because I was the newbie and thus all the less than 1st class tyres were on my train (this at the start of the season which is shut down in 'the wet'), in a round trip of over 1,200 kms (800 miles) I had 16 flats, but no blowouts and no damage other than the tyres. No call out costs, changed the wheels myself, 4 spares on each trailer thus after 12 flats I relied on my mates giving me some of theirs because, having good tyres, they didn't need them. So what is going on here, better tyres, better roads, better driving (I don't believe that) or what?