Rubber on the Road - It's Not Always What You Think…

Rubber on the Road - It's Not Always What You Think by Dave Aldrich, Sales Representative, Paul E. Hawkinson Company (Manufacturers of Retread Tire Equipment and Systems)  I watched patiently through the airport window as he stood by the front of the airplane and wondered what Buck Blair and the pilot were discussing. It appeared that Buck was trying to find out something about the tires on the aircraft - he certainly was looking at them with great intent. Probably trying to sell the pilot on tire repairs, I mused. Buck is internationally recognized as an expert in tire repairing and has taught classes on tire repairing all over the world.  We loaded his bags into my van and headed up the interstate. No reason to hurry on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. All we were going to do was check in to our motel and go over our program for the next few days. Buck was to conduct a training session on tire repairing tomorrow night. Then we were going to call on a number of my retread dealers in the area and hold training classes on proper tire repairing. There were a few scattered chunks of "rubber on the road" which we stopped to inspect. None were complete enough for us to determine the cause of failure. Soon we were at the exit for our motel. After checking in, we decided to drive by some of the locations where we would be going tomorrow. As long as we were going out, we decided to have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants which was two exits up the interstate. Just as we were about to enter the traffic flow from the entrance ramp, we saw what appeared to be a complete tread laying across both lanes of the highway. I stopped the van and Buck ran to pull the tread off the highway (brave man, that Buck Blair). Buck immediately spotted the cause of failure. A very obvious nail hole. We decided this tread (actually, the belt package) was very recently thrown because it was still warm and because of its position on the highway. We drove about forty miles up the road, getting off at every exit and checking truck stops for the vehicle but couldn't locate it. We guessed that the driver just continued driving with seventeen wheels instead of eighteen. You can be certain that several hundred people saw this tread and had negative thoughts about retreads. If only we could have shown them this tread and explained the cause of failure. Quite possibly, the mate of this tire wound up failing too. And then there would have been another large piece of rubber on the road. Not a defective tire or retread, but a defective driver. Maybe the same one I once heard over my CB radio where the conversation between two drivers went like this:  Driver 1. "Hey, you know you got a flat on your right rear outside?" Driver 2. "Yeah, but it ain't my tire, ain't my truck, and I just wanna get home to mama. Only about a hundred miles to go." Rubber on the road. Sure it's there, but it just isn't from defective retreads. For a FREE video,"Dispelling Myths About Rubber On the Road", see Videos Available from TRIB.

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