On The Re-Tired Life

Tires. Those miraculous pneumatic rubber donuts that allow our vehicles to glide smoothly along the pavement. I can go weeks – months, even – without thinking about them. And then there are weeks like the one I am now experiencing.

I began one week ago today with the expectant excitement of new tires, following a reminder from Costco of my appointment for installation of the four new Michelins I had ordered for my minivan. The existing four Michelins had reached the end of their useful life, and I had been excited to take advantage of a small sale.

I will admit to being a Michelin partisan in my tire purchasing habits – I have never been disappointed in a set (which is something that cannot be said about other brands). And this time, I deviated from my habit to try Costco’s “Tire Center”. Why, he wonders, is everything a “center”? Especially on something that lacks a center? And maybe this is why there are no “Donut Centers”. But I digress.

The first problem came when I learned that my tires had never arrived at the Costco store. The email from the warehouse telling me that they had “shipped” was evidently optimistic. I had ordered them online, and it seems that the store were I set the appointment is out of that loop. But they saved the day with a slightly different model of tire and we were set. Until I got my keys back.

“Your lug nuts and studs are all corroded and one of them got cross-threaded. You will have to get that one replaced, maybe all of them” said the helpful person (who was not the one that had installed the tires). “Hmmm”, was my reply, remembering that I had just had them rotated not a month ago at my normal mechanic, who had mentioned nothing about such difficulties. Oh well. At least the van now rides smooth and quietly again.

Then came Sunday night – a quiet, uneventful night which is my most relaxed of the week at work. Until about 1 am when one of my trailer tires blew out and shredded itself. I noticed a small noise, then thought I saw some sparks in one of the outside mirrors. Most likely from the shredded steel belts spinning along the pavement.

It had been fine when I left – because I tested all of the trailer tires with my tire thumper. This tool, which I bought on some advice from a seasoned driver, is a rigid wooden handle (like a hammer) with a weighted metal cap on one end. When you smack a fully-inflated tire, it will have a ringing sound, and when all of the tires ring mostly the same, then your tires are in good inflation. A dull thud tells you that there is a problem, but I got no dull thuds on that trailer.

I called dispatch, which sent a mobile tire technician out to me. I was instructed to drive slowly to the next exit, which I did without incident. After the tire guy arrived, he got a laugh out of the repair order that said “repair if possible.” “There ain’t no repairin’ that!” was his reaction. All went well, but for a delay that led to a work day that ran to 15 1/2 hours.

Two days later (Tuesday evening) I was starting out and got one of those dull thuds on one of the rear tractor tires. I was fortunate that a mechanic was on duty at my company, who was able to find the nail in it and make a repair while I waited and only made me about 5 minutes late to my first stop. Score one for the tire thumper!

Then on Wednesday night, I got another dull thud when picking up a loaded trailer in Fort Wayne. It was a light load and the dispatcher gave me the choice of waiting on a service or getting to a truck stop to try putting some air into it. I am an optimist by nature, and was in no mood for another wait (not to mention that I had used my once-every-8-day exemption which allows me to add two hours to my 14-hour maximum workday under Federal law. I saw another nail and figured that with some air, the leak would be slow enough that I could get to my home base with it, and so I did.

As I write this I have one last weekly shift, so additional tire drama remains possible. But for now I am ready to stop thinking about tires for quite a long time. We shall see if the tires in my life agree.

25 thoughts on “On The Re-Tired Life”

  1. Ditto Michelin tires! I’ve had some pretty good tires but never as good as a complete set of Michelins have been. I spent years driving small Japanese cars, with 13 inch wheels, and even top notch tires were pocket change. I object to what I refer to as “wheel creep”. The last car I drove was up to 15 inches, and my current Kia is 17 inches, which I objected to but had to take as a package with a manual transmission. I can only believe that four of those will be pushing a thousand dollars! Writing that check will hurt!

    I made it through college buying Mohawk tires from the K-Mart auto center, they’d only last about a year. I remember they were just a solid rubber donut with four tread lines around it! All I could afford for a ‘66 Oldsmobile.

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    • In college days, my secret was to go to a tire dealer in a nice part of town. Older affluent people would buy new tires while their old ones still had plenty of life, and would then be sold used. I remember in the early 80s paying $10 each for four – mounted and balanced, even. The next set was a set of radials that were $15 each, and what a revelation that was! Used tires in the poorer neighborhoods was a tougher proposition, because there was more demand than supply.

      And I remember looking online at a manual transmission Soul one time, and was surprised at how restricted choices were on color, trim and equipment.

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  2. Wow, you’ve really had a week with tires! Stay safe. Hey, I thought about you. I wrote about Pop-Tarts this week. The inventor passed away, did you hear that? I bet you’ve written about nostalgic Pop-Tarts in a past post. You got me looking for Bit-o-Honey, which is hard to find and I had not had in a LONG time. Have a good/safe weekend.

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  3. About 15 years ago I was out driving my ’90 Chrysler Imperial with my ditzy cougar girlfriend when I a regular “click-click-clock” noise. Turns out there was a large bolt embedded in one of the tires. The bolt head was flush with the tire tread, as if it was “meant to be there”. Luckily, the tire still held air and we were able to drive to a service station and get the tire patched.

    If you laid a bolt on the pavement and told me that I’d win a million dollars if I drove over it and punctured the tire neatly like that, I wouldn’t be able to do it! How could this happen? Maybe if the bolt was placed upright?

    BTW, New Jersey roads are full of nails and other debris can that give you a flat tire!

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    • Stephen, ditto for road crap in Milwaukee, a working class town with a bunch of “Sanford and Son” pickup trucks driving around all the time throwing screws and bolts out of the rust holes! Too many flats over the time I’ve lived here. I asked a tire guy one time: why are all the flats I get on the back, especially with steel belted tires? He said your front tires hit the road debris, starts it tumbling, and then it shoots into your rear tire at just the correct angle, like that old picture of hay stalks being driven straight into a tree during a hurricane! One explanation, any way!

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    • I got a bolt into a tire once and thought the same thing! I remember being a teen and pooh-poohing my mother’s constant advice to “watch out for that broken glass, you’ll get a flat”. I couldn’t see how little itty bitty pieces of glass could puncture a tire with good, thick tread. Until it happened to me (thus destroying the first set of four matching tires I had ever had in my life.)

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  4. So how long did it take for tire buddy to change one at the side of the road? I’ve always wondered that, but never stuck around long enough to find out when I see it happening.

    We’ve had good luck with Costco for tires. Best of all Mrs DougD is the one with the Costco card, so I get to select them and she goes back later to have them installed.

    At least you don’t do winter tires (I think), with 4 year round drivers we seem to buy at least one set of tires for something every year, and there’s tires in the garage, in the basement, I parked the VW on wood blocks so I could slide tires underneath it.

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    • It took about 45 minutes for the guy to arrive after he was called then another 45 minutes to replace the shredded tire, which was one of the inner ones. Add time to (slowly) proceed about 5 miles to the nearest highway exit and it was probably a 3 hour ordeal.

      I have been buying from a chain called “Discount Tire” for many years, and they have convenient locations and really good warranties. But after so many people have raved about Costco for tires, I thought I would try them. In my area I can make do with good all-season tires, so I have avoided the winter tire thing.

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      • Never heard of Discount Tire until I lived in Indianapolis, altho they are near me now. While I lived in Indy, I got a tear line on my side wall of a tire on Thanksgiving Eve, and I was driving 250 miles the next day. I pulled into a Discount Tire about an hour after they were closed, and I saw someone working in there and knocked on the door. Imagine my surprise when they agreed to do the work that night, and sold me two matching tires at a decent rate, installed and balanced. We were there until late, as they were also trying to get another traveler out! You can bet I bought every single tire I needed at Discount over the next number of years I lived there! I hadn’t gotten service like that since our neighborhood garage man in the 60’s!

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      • I had a flat in Lafayette when visiting someone. They didn’t have my tire, but installed a similar one and ordered the correct one for my local store, which then replaced the temp. I agree, good service! I’m still wondering if Costco is a good substitute.

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  5. Tired yesterday, tired again today. Re-tired. When it rains it pours, it seems. On the lugnut thing on the van, I would consider asking the mechanic about it, just to be on the safe side, but that’s how I am.

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    • Yes, that is what I plan to do – I will probably take it there to get that stud/nut replaced. I could probably do it myself (genuine Kia parts will cost me about $10-15 if I order them online) but finding the time/enthusiasm might be a problem.

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  7. My goodness – what a week you had JP! It is good you have been a “car guy” all these years and, having knowledge about all aspects of vehicles, you were able to keep a cool head on the job. Still … the size of those tires on such a large cab/semi-trailer, wow. At least you have a nice long weekend to get refreshed and back at it, hopefully an extra day due to the President’s Day holiday. I believe I may have told you one time that I got my tires rotated or new tires (I think the former) at a tire shop and the technician did not tighten the lug nuts properly. It was just a short hop home – four or five miles. I didn’t hear a noise but as I drove down my street, on a warm Summer evening, some neighborhood men were outside and heard the loose lug nuts and came over as I pulled up in the driveway to ask if I had work done on the car. They told me to take it back and have it fixed. I worried all the way back something bad would happen to my little ol’ Pacer and me.

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    • That would have been a scary experience – one that I have (fortunately) never had!

      Working nights kind of plays with holidays. My nights consist of a “long trip” of about 8 hours and a “short trip” of about 4 hours. Holidays are also interesting because some of the larger facilities I go to work 24-7, while some in smaller cities close for holidays. So far, Monday holidays have me getting off of the short trip that finishes my Sunday (but is actually early Monday morning) and another short trip that starts my Monday. But the long trips on Sunday (Cincinnati) and Monday (Fort Wayne) will run regardless of the holiday. So it works out to Sunday ending the night early and Monday starting the night late (not coming on until maybe 8:30 pm instead of around 4:30. So it is a nice respite. And after years of self-employment, it is nice to get paid for a holiday!

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      • It was scary – I was wishing one of the neighbors would fix it for me. I was still young then – all bets would be off now. 🙂

        Eight hours’ driving is a lot … a long haul for your long nights. I found it tiring driving to my grandmother’s house in Toronto – exactly four hours (240 miles), but then I never did long-distance driving as I worked in Downtown Detroit and caught the bus to Downtown at the end of my street. Back when I took the bus, we had a lot of passengers that worked for the bank, Federal Reserve or the courts, so they always got two back-to-back long weekends: Lincoln’s birthday, then Washington’s birthday. We never got anything off – now it is simply President’s Day since the MLK holiday has been in place.

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  9. Will there ever NOT be nails on roads? I’m glad to know a semi can sometimes continue on a broken foot. LOL on the “donut center” thought. And your initial enthusiasm + Costco had me thinking about a new laptop in my future. My daughter and son-in-law just bought one… at Costco, for like $300. That has me thinking I can afford to replace this 10+-year-old girl after all. And I’m as excited about it as you are (were) about your new tires.

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