Just last week I had just talked with the fine folks at Truck System Technologies about their tire system monitor and contemplating the cost savings and ease of mind that it would add to my operation when: BOOM!!! I blew 2 tires on my trailer!
It was one of those days where I climbed out of the sleeper and had to have a "5-hour energy" to just get started. In other words, I was dragging.... After a successful pre-trip and loading of a car or two at the auction, I was eastbound and down! Just as I was starting to feel better, I heard the boom of a blown tire.
When I stopped safely off of the interstate, I discovered that the concussion of the blown outside tire actually blew the inside tire off of the rim. The sidewall was damaged enough on the second tire that it had to be replaced. I then remembered my own advice from one of my blogs and grabbed my trusty iPad and went to NTTSBREAKDOWN.COM. I was immediately able to find a vendor nearby who had two 265/70/19.5 tires that I needed. I always keep a spare for my trailer since this is a hard to find smaller tire that car carriers typically run.
Anyway, I hadn't had a tire failure since September of 2012 and I have separate tire fund in my budget where I save 4% of all revenue. Since I hadn't withdrew from the tire fund in almost a year, I had plenty of money available for the expense. However, I'd rather have used some of that money toward a tire system monitor where I could've saved one and maybe both of those tires on my trailer and thus having the monitoring system pay for itself immediately. I won't tell you how much the service call cost, but suffice it to say, I could've bought an 18 tire monitoring system quite easily with the money I spent on the side of the road...