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Tips on how you can increase the life of your tires

Driving a heavy truck or rig?

If the answer is yes, we’ll share something that probably won’t come as much of a surprise.

If you take a quick look underneath your rig and do some counting, you’ll find there are eighteen wheels holding your heavy truck up, and on each of those wheels is a tire.

Eighteen “expensive to replace” on their own tires…and downright painfully “expensive to replace” tires if you have to replace all of them! Fact: no one (and we do mean NO ONE) enjoys replacing A SINGLE tire (much less eighteen of them) on any vehicle. Its like replacing your roof. Its one of those necessary evil/ “zero-joy” purchases. So unless you have money to burn or you are one seriously odd trucker, learning how to get as many miles (kilometres?) out of your tires is a great thing to consider.

So how do you increase tire life? There are a number of ways.

First always keep your tires inflated to within 5% of the recommended tire pressure. This is such a simple, yet critical thing, and all too often truckers neglect this. Driving on tires under inflated by as little as 20 PSI can have add up to and additional 25% more tread wear! That will seriously shorten the lifespan of your rigs tires!

Second, if you are travelling distances that see you going from hot to cold or vice versa, check your tires a few times along the way. Temperature swings quickly change the tire pressure you’re riding on. Another great idea is to swap your tires out to low rolling resistance tires. Not only do low rolling resistance tires last longer, they also actually require far less energy to keep them rolling. One caveat though here, you still need to maintain the proper PSI on these tires as well or else you’ll again find yourself wearing out tires faster than you should.

Something else that truckers are unaware of, is that speed has a serous impact on tire and tread wear. Studies have shown that driving at fifty five miles an hour as opposed to sixty five miles an hour can reduce tire wear by up to sixteen percent. Gerrys Truck Centre in London Ontario has been the “truckers choice” for Volvo Trucks for over three decades. We offer sales of new and used (pre-owned rigs) as well as parts and service, and pride ourselves on top quality service.

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