Anyone ever had a trailer tyre blow out?

[Cock Womble 7]

And if so, did you notice? Did you hear it? Did you feel it?


Seemingly silly question, but quite important. Thanks.

[Humper]

Yep, heading home up the M6 one Friday, nsr on a triaxle, was empty, dunno.when it happened, wasnt till a bloke in.a van let me know that I did?
( spent 3 hours.waiting for the tyre mob for the trumpet to.turn up)

[NormalWisdom]

M4 westbound, J8/9, c90 leptons and front nearside blew. Girlfriend was asleep and didn't wake until we pulled up on the hard shoulder!! Isuzu Troopers have been my hero ever since.......

<Edit> Just read the "trailer" bit, je suis un bouton......

Edited by NormalWisdom on Thursday 19th July 13:25

[HustleRussell]

CW7- Are you weighing up whether or not to replace old tyres on your trailer? I'm in the same situation, mine are all 8 years old but look 100% fine and probably have 6mm tread remaining...
For what it's worth I know several drivers in my racing club who have had blow-outs without dramatic consequences. Most stories include a sentence like "Something didn't feel right so I stopped at the next services and blow me down! one of my tyres was completely gone..."
I would be more concerned about that a shedding tyre carcass would do to fellow road users than controllability of the car. I, too, cruise at north of 0.80 so I do worry about it a bit.
EDIT: bugger, this is in 'Commercial Break', so I'm guessing you aren't talking about the little trailer you might put your Caterham on!

[R0G]

Two of them at different times on the rear of a 6 wheel rigid - boy did they go bang !!

Teach them to use cheap remoulds !!

They stopped using them after it worked out more expensive especially when the mudguards also needed replacing due to the blowout damage

[rt911]

Yes, on a TNT trailer I was hauling down the m1 in the middle of the night, didn't notice a thing until flashing of lights from vehicles behind, amount of smoke was horrendous as the tyre was locked solid and it was being dragged, and maybe the axle spinning inside the tyre???? Don't know if the wheel turned inside the stationary tyre, it stank...

3 hours later up and running !

[Flawless Victory]

Used to pull MFI trailers a while back and they used cheap Duramold remoulds and they used to explode at the rate of one a week. When they let go, they made an almighty bang, taking out the mudguard and usually the electrics too.

Also on an MFI trailer, had a brake-disc explode, locking the wheel and flat-spotting the tyre until it wore through and exploded.

[4key]

Many, for some reason the 6th sense normally kicks in and i've always noticed them during the daytime. Trailer normally gives a little wiggle that you catch out of the corner of your eye in the mirror or something. Find the middles on tri axles are the normal culprits, worst that i've managed to do damage wise is mud guards. Driven a fair few distances at night after one though, windows up radio on and no light behind you makes them fairly difficult to spot, especially if youre dragging a noisy flapping bulk tipper behind you anyway.

Make sure you only have blowouts on a steering axle on the unit, that way youll always notice straight away

[Life Saab Itch]

Yep. I've had two go on trailer i used to pull for the supermarket beginning with M.

They used cheap stty remoulds that would shed the tread on a fairly regular basis.


Both the blow outs sounded like a bomb had gone off and the explosion of debris that I saw in the mirror was quite impressive. They took the mudguard, electrics and the second blow out took out the tyre behind it too.



I've seen a shunter pull a double decker trailer to tight around a high kerb. that dented the rim and blew the tyre off it. No damage to the tyre but the rim was fked. That went with a helluva bang too.

[iva cosworth]

Life Saab Itch said:

I've seen a shunter pull a double decker trailer to tight around a high kerb. that dented the rim and blew the tyre off it. No damage to the tyre but the rim was fked. That went with a helluva bang too.

Saw something similar to that.

In Beckenham an artic took a corner too tight and went over some of those bell shaped

non-corner-cutting things and blew one out

[rumple]

Yes quite a few times, its something you have to see in your mirrors really,working for cowboy firms with cheap tyres ive had a lot of experiance, only tyre i havent lost is a front steer, worst phone call is when i had to ring my boss last year, id had new mich's across the drive and had run over a wooden block (off a pallet) this wedge inbetween the two offside tyres and blew out their sidewalls, the michelins had been on less than a week, welcome to double coin lol

[rumple]

iva cosworth said:

Life Saab Itch said:

I've seen a shunter pull a double decker trailer to tight around a high kerb. that dented the rim and blew the tyre off it. No damage to the tyre but the rim was fked. That went with a helluva bang too.

Saw something similar to that.

In Beckenham an artic took a corner too tight and went over some of those bell shaped

non-corner-cutting things and blew one out

That could have been me, because ive done that there, fked the wheel as well.

[iva cosworth]

rumple said:

iva cosworth said:

Life Saab Itch said:

I've seen a shunter pull a double decker trailer to tight around a high kerb. that dented the rim and blew the tyre off it. No damage to the tyre but the rim was fked. That went with a helluva bang too.

Saw something similar to that.

In Beckenham an artic took a corner too tight and went over some of those bell shaped

non-corner-cutting things and blew one out

That could have been me, because ive done that there, fked the wheel as well.

The left turn at lights by the Tram end of line.

[Life Saab Itch]

Has anyone ever had a damaged rim as a result of a blowout as opposed to damaging the rim which causes the tyre to blow out?

[Willy Nilly]

Life Saab Itch said:

Has anyone ever had a damaged rim as a result of a blowout as opposed to damaging the rim which causes the tyre to blow out?

yep

[philthy]

Had two in my time.
First was the offside rear axle on a tanker. Huge bang, and debris flying everywhere.
Scarier one, was offside stear axle on an 18 tonner. That went with a huge bang! Frightened the crap out of me!
Never damaged a rim though?

[Cock Womble 7]

Thanks chaps.

So, basically what you're saying is if a tyre goes, there's no way I wouldn't notice it?

Well, I had a tyre go (and damage to the wheel) nearly two weeks ago.

I've been suspended from work ever since, facing disciplinary action for "failing to report".

Thing is, I honestly, hand on heart, didn't notice ANYTHING.

I had driven from a cafe on the A4 just outside Slough, round the M25, up the M1 and off at J15 for our depot. From the picture of the damaged wheel/tyre I've seen, there's no way that it would have stayed intact (tyre still attached to wheel) for any kind of distance at 55mph.

I can only imagine that it happened in the yard, at low speed. Would that have made less of a bang?

There's a 2 hour window between me leaving the vehicle and the damage being noticed. It was not moved in that time.

We can rule out an FLT incident (sadly) as all of ours shut themselves down if they register an impact and have to be reset by a supervisor. No resets occurred in that time.


I've got the "big" interview on Monday and I am, quite frankly, stting it.

[4key]

I dont know who you work for but they are obviously a lot more proffesional than us, and we are a large national company. Constantly find trailers with damage/bits missing/deflated tyres/no lights/abs.

If its not compusory for you to do a vehicle check at the end of a run, then yeah I'd say theres a fair chance that you wouldnt notice tyre damage. Especially if it was dark, it was on the nearside and you didnt walk all the way down that side of the trailer. I've completely shredded and lost a tyre in a couple of miles so the distance is really irrelevant. If you are expected to do checks though, I'd be thinking up a decent excuse why you didnt do them rather than trying to explain how you didnt notice a blowout

[Cock Womble 7]

4key said:

If its not compulsory for you to do a vehicle check at the end of a run

It's not - we do our checks at the start of a shift. Part of my "defence" however, will be to suggest end-of-shift checks in future.

4key said:

so the distance is really irrelevant

Not really. If I'd done the damage outside of the yard, doing 55, 50 or 30mph, there is now way that tyre would still have been attached to the wheel when I got back.

[4key]

Your right, I should actually read whats posted for a change.

With an empty trailer I've done miles of motorway with a severly under infated tyre with no consequence other than realising it was flat when I've loaded it up. If it was completely deflated and you had done any decent distance with it at speed you would have atleast shredded some of the tread off of it or pulled one side off of the rim. If a trailers empty you hardly even notice a deflated tyre on a tri axle, even more so if you are standing right next to it between a couple of other trailers. if it was fully freighted though I would have thought that it would come off at the first decent corner. Congratulate them on their excellent vehicle checking procedure at the start of a run and suggest that it should implemented at the end of one too and put the damage down to a maneuver either in the yard or close by. Or tell them bks, its a tyre ffs, its part of the wear and tear of haulage, next theyll be moaning about stone chips in windscreens