I thought that I was having a bad day until....
Rogue tractor-trailer tires give Alberta man rude awakening | Truck News
Rogue tractor-trailer tires give Alberta man rude awakening | Truck News
Where I had started as a driver in the early 90's we had a rash of wheel assemblies coming off, on four separate occasions on new Stoughton trailers.
These trailers had hub piloted wheels and our tire contractor was big on charging for torquing the wheels but not great on actually doing it.
Fortunately, the drivers cought the problem before the assemblies completely detached on three out of four events. One long-haul driver dropped the trailer in the yard and did not even know he had lost a set of duellies, the local driver found the problem the next morning. No one had a clue as to where the tires were lost.
I myself stopped to fuel in Oklahoma city with a big Peterbilt near 80,000lbs gross. While fueling I did a quick walk around and found my tractors rear axle on the driver side askew.
A closer check revealed that I had two nuts holding on the duellies and big rounded out holes in the aluminium rims where the other nuts should have been.
I was afraid of moving off the fuel island!!
The funny thing is that there was no vibration felt inside the truck at all. I remember running just East of Tulsa on the 44 at around 75 mph , when a state trooper followed me for a while , he came up close a few times and backed off. I guess he must have seen something fishy but was not sure enough to pull me over.
Again we had just had new tires put on the tractor.
Shortly afterwards all tire shops came out with that attempt to weasel themselves out of liability by letting you know that you had to re torque the wheels within the next 60 miles.