Tire Patch

This is a picture of a tire on my trailer.  Notice the white dirt on the tread.  This is a very simple way of detecting where the tire touches the road.  This tire is getting the maximum tread on the road, which is what I want.  This is called the tire patch.  The more inflated these wide base tires are, the smaller the tire patch and the less traction you get. 

With a smaller tire patch you also get more miles per gallon because there is less rolling resistance, but the tire will wear out faster and it is very unsafe in wet or slippery conditions.

In the absence of white dirt, many things can be used.  You can even use chalk by drawing a line across the tire in several places and seeing where the chalk has been worn away after driving around the parking lot. 

The tire patch will change depending on how much weight you have on your trailer.  There are several ways to manage your tires.  Tire pressure is the number one reason for tire failure.  In addition to that, tire punctures are one of the main reasons for decreased tire pressure.  A great place to acquire tire punctures is the shoulder of the highway where debris accumulates over time. 

Tires are relatively important so knowing the most you can about how they play a roll literally, can help you greatly improve your bottom line.

Eighteen Wheels to Ten

There is an old trend emerging again in trucking. Super single tires are replacements for dual tires on heavy trucks. They are supposed to lighten up the truck and/or trailer as well as being more stable on the highway and bring the fuel mileage up. I have talked with about twenty different drivers who have hauled several different types of trailers and the popular opinion has been that they don't really add that much to the fuel mileage. They also are less stable in wet weather with a tendency to lose traction all together on a very wet road.

The other downside is that if you have one tire and it picks up a nail and goes flat then you are stuck waiting for the roadside repair truck to come and get you back on the road. I would hate to be stuck on highway 50 in Nevada over a hundred miles from anywhere with possibly no cell phone service and have a flat tire that I couldn't fix or even limp up the road with just because some nitwit dropped a board with a nail in it out of his or her pick up for me to run over. A road call for a situation like this could range in the thousands. Yikes! Hardly worth all of the savings they are supposed to be offset with.

Super singles are being used on gasoline tankers and I am seeing them being used more on flatbeds and some dry vans. These types of tires are more dependable than their former models from thirty years ago and from what I have seen, many large carriers are using them more and more. I don't see too many owner operators with one or two trucks using them and I can't see how they would ever benefit from their use unless you were running the same corridor everyday and had constant access to the truck for inspections.