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Was at a customer site the other day, waiting for the loading bay, and walked over to a couple other drivers (same company as each other, but not me) to ask if they were waiting for the bay too, or if they'd finished their business and were waiting for something else.
Turned out they were discussing a problem on one of their trailers - the left front outboard tire was bald after only 2 weeks.
The backstory was that they'd got new tires on the trailer, and the LFO stripped the cap off its casing. Cue new tire in that position. When the second one stripped its cap, the company had an alignment done on the trailer, and the tire guy even used a depth gauge to match tread depths on the second replacement to its companion. This second replacement is the one that wound up bald after 2 weeks (and the inboard was down to about 1/4 inch - normally trailer tires start with around 3/4" of tread).
I took a quick look, and the root problem was obvious - how it could have gone undetected in 2 tire replacements is beyond me. The left front inboard was an 11R22.5 - the only one on the whole combination (truck and trailer), all other tires were low-profile 22.5 inch. When the trailer got a new set of tires, somebody had grabbed one of the wrong size without noticing it.
Since the inboard was taller (matching tread depths doesn't do jack shit unless the casings are the same diameter), it was taking the lion's share of the load, so most of the slippage due to different diameters went to the outboard tire - and pavement makes a fair approximation of sandpaper.
As for the title, whoever put a wrong size tire on the trailer clearly screwed the pooch.
Turned out they were discussing a problem on one of their trailers - the left front outboard tire was bald after only 2 weeks.
The backstory was that they'd got new tires on the trailer, and the LFO stripped the cap off its casing. Cue new tire in that position. When the second one stripped its cap, the company had an alignment done on the trailer, and the tire guy even used a depth gauge to match tread depths on the second replacement to its companion. This second replacement is the one that wound up bald after 2 weeks (and the inboard was down to about 1/4 inch - normally trailer tires start with around 3/4" of tread).
I took a quick look, and the root problem was obvious - how it could have gone undetected in 2 tire replacements is beyond me. The left front inboard was an 11R22.5 - the only one on the whole combination (truck and trailer), all other tires were low-profile 22.5 inch. When the trailer got a new set of tires, somebody had grabbed one of the wrong size without noticing it.
Since the inboard was taller (matching tread depths doesn't do jack shit unless the casings are the same diameter), it was taking the lion's share of the load, so most of the slippage due to different diameters went to the outboard tire - and pavement makes a fair approximation of sandpaper.
As for the title, whoever put a wrong size tire on the trailer clearly screwed the pooch.