Tire Maintenance: It’s Not Just Checking Tire Pressure

27 Nov by Vitaliy Dadalyan

Tire Maintenance: It’s Not Just Checking Tire Pressure

<img width="150" src="http://www.automotive-fleet.com/fc_images/articles/m-uneven-treads-bald.jpg" border="0" alt="

This truck demonstrates uneven treads on dual tires. Photo by Les Smart.

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This truck demonstrates uneven treads on dual tires. Photo by Les Smart.

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Have you read articles on tires until you are blue in the face? Perhaps there will be a nugget or two in this article that you haven’t thought of. Or maybe you are putting off tire maintenance because it’s too costly, too much trouble, or any number of excuses.

I will go into some of the usual topics like tire pressure and tread wear, but first …

You have built a $3 to $30 million business over one or more generations, and you are making an appropriate profit most years. Do you think about liability? I bet you do, but do you relate that to tire failures and more specifically to catastrophic tire failures? What happens to your business if a worn, damaged tire fails at speed — it doesn’t even have to be high speed — and your driver loses control of your fleet vehicle and it plows into another vehicle?

If one or more of the occupants is a young to middle-aged passenger, especially a working mother or father, your liability skyrockets. I like to call this the $5 million accident. You don’t want to lose your business in the event of one of these failures just because you were lax in making sure that your tires were in good condition. Let’s see what you can do to avoid this type of situation where your tires are concerned.

Tire Pressure

This one seems obvious, but do you (or your supervisor) check each tire’s pressure periodically? Or do you leave it up to your maintenance provider? Buy a decent tire gauge and use it. There are two types of gauges. Make sure that the tire gauges read truck tire pressures and aren’t only for passenger car tires, which operate at lower pressures. If …Read the rest of this story

Source:: http://www.truckinginfo.com/channel/maintenance/article/story/2017/11/tire-maintenance-it-s-not-just-checking-tire-pressure.aspx