RZucker
Senior Member
This is the same story I hear all the time from outfits that buy cheap tires and expect 5-6 recaps on their own tires... Aint gonna happen. But they are all crooks.
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trailer tires in drive axle position.
- Thread starter workshoprat92
- Start date
workshoprat92
Senior Member
Apperently you have never trucked in missouri? It gets pretty dMn hot her in summer also! Last year was a real schorcher.
And yes i usually buy used tires where i can for cores. Main thing there is i can controll what im getting for my carcass and thats the key to recaps. I wont buy it unless its a virgin within about a 3 to 4 years old. By the time im done i always have under $200 in the tire and its got a quality carcass i know is good!
crane operator
Senior Member
I've also given up on recaps workshoprat92. My tire man never wanted my carcasses, and at 250 for a recap ($50 for a carcass + cap + mount) I'm not very far away from new tires. And the last caps I got had terrible carcasses. Weather checked, gouged sidewalls, I even got one that had a big boot on it which I found when it blew out. I only send the guys to the tire shop if I'm not around to mount up something else. I've gone to mostly buying new and mounting them all myself.
I've got a wholesale place near me, that I can get pretty good drives around $300-325. They're tires from overseas, but not much isn't anymore.
Truck shops price for goodyears is way lower than we would find here, I think here they'd be close to $400 each. You probably buy enough tires or parts from them you get a pretty good cut?
There's a guy in Springfield that I've had decent luck in buying used regrooved virgin tires for trucks that I don't use much, or for spare tires. He's a carcass buyer, and regrooves some too. I wouldn't want them on something heavy that I use everyday, but for occasional use, or totally replacing tires on something I'm going to sell, its not bad $ spent. He's usually $70 or so a tire. If you're buying 10 tires that's only $700, vs spending $3500 for all new. A rebar or shot rock doesn't care what the tire cost. And I really don't like having more $ in tires on a old truck than what I spent on the truck.
But the crane's I've given up on caps, I just can't get good tires, and you'd think with all the trucking outfits in springfield, there would be tons of good carcasses, but there's not.
So usually any more, I'm running new tires on my everyday stuff, or regrooved virgins on my seldom used equipment.
If you want the number for the guy in springfield I get the regrooves from, PM me.
I've got a wholesale place near me, that I can get pretty good drives around $300-325. They're tires from overseas, but not much isn't anymore.
Truck shops price for goodyears is way lower than we would find here, I think here they'd be close to $400 each. You probably buy enough tires or parts from them you get a pretty good cut?
There's a guy in Springfield that I've had decent luck in buying used regrooved virgin tires for trucks that I don't use much, or for spare tires. He's a carcass buyer, and regrooves some too. I wouldn't want them on something heavy that I use everyday, but for occasional use, or totally replacing tires on something I'm going to sell, its not bad $ spent. He's usually $70 or so a tire. If you're buying 10 tires that's only $700, vs spending $3500 for all new. A rebar or shot rock doesn't care what the tire cost. And I really don't like having more $ in tires on a old truck than what I spent on the truck.
But the crane's I've given up on caps, I just can't get good tires, and you'd think with all the trucking outfits in springfield, there would be tons of good carcasses, but there's not.
So usually any more, I'm running new tires on my everyday stuff, or regrooved virgins on my seldom used equipment.
If you want the number for the guy in springfield I get the regrooves from, PM me.
workshoprat92
Senior Member
I always feel lucky if i can get 2 caps out of a carcuss. Usually by the second the sidewalls are trashed from missouri rocks. I always start with virgins. And in 10 years all my carcases were no good. Not even one and im not supposed to think they are crooks? I never have a problem with anything i take to an out of town capper but here in town o.g every core i own is junk! Yes they are crooks and im keeping that statement clean lol!
Shimmy1
Senior Member
I guess all can say is sorry for stirring the **** pot. I know heat raises hell with tires, and my tire guy will not send anything to the retread shop that is more than 5 years old, not even your own tires you want to get back. Like I said, I guess we're just lucky to have an awesome tire shop 20 miles away.
DARO
Well-Known Member
Around here its common to see trailer tread on drives in the construction/ blacktop trucks. Most of them dont run much past end of October so the snow traction is a non issue. The off road traction is still enough to get by.
Cheaper tires are not allways the answer to high tire cost.
Making a driver mount there own tires would help bring tire cost down.......
Cheaper tires are not allways the answer to high tire cost.
Making a driver mount there own tires would help bring tire cost down.......
workshoprat92
Senior Member
Yep I know you know exactly what im talking about on the springfield area crooks. Wingfoot over on chestnut was doing great for me on recaps. Well over a hundred tires with them and not an issue one with the tire. Then they changed managers and again all of the sudden all my cores were unacceptable.
Now i go to a place in kansas city. Suks to have to go that far but im just not going to let the guys here rape me anymore!
I tried the new $300 chineese tires and they didnt last 4 to 5 months before they were bald. A couple of them chipped out so bad the cords were showing and not cappable!
What does your core buyer get for a core that not over 4 years old?
workshoprat92
Senior Member
Your ok man! Its just amazing how it differs from area to area. I never had this problem when i was based out of denver co.
crane operator
Senior Member
He's kind of vague about what he's buying them for, and what he gets for them. He drives all over and sometimes I think the cappers try to stick it to him a little and just don't buy anything from him, and then he's sitting on a bunch of tires.
He always seems happy when I buy some regrooves from him, but I will say the last two I got from him, weren't any good, one had a zipper/crack in the sidewall, and the other was a really really cheap tire, but I sent one of my guys to pick them up as spares, and the guys aren't nearly as fussy as I am. Now I've got to make another trip to springfield, trade him out the two bad tires, and he'll give me two others, but its just the time to swap them that kind of bothers me.
While we're talking about caps- My local tire shop buys them from Springfield, and they are seamed caps. Its what they keep on hand, and they don't have a lot of choices on what shows up as carcasses. I stopped buying them when the bad one with a boot blew out on me, I took it in and told them it should have never been capped. It wasn't very old, and the "refund" I got on it, was a $50 core discount for the carcass on the next cap. It was my last cap.
Anyways (sorry I just needed to spill it out while I was thinking about it- I'm still a little steamed) I was talking to a guy the other day, and the only caps he will run are a one piece cap, says he has much better luck with them.
Anyone else run one piece caps or have a real preference on caps?
crane operator
Senior Member
Also- he regrooves tires, anyone else ever do this? I've never seen it done, and I'd think it would stink to high heaven, and be a tedious job.
workshoprat92
Senior Member
The caps i was getting from wingfoot are not one piece and i could always count on them to run till bald. Only time i ever had a problem with them was driver error or stupidity or damage from road or jobsite beyond my controll!
I have learned the success to running caps is quality control in your core! Buying local caps and taking the chance on the carcasses they were giving me had a large failure rate as you also know. As soon as i started getting my own carcasses capped that i purchased with my quality control and standards my blowouts and tire downtime entirely went away!
RZucker
Senior Member
I wont run them, period. When I ran grain trucks I got tired of rescuing one per week or so because of a crap tire.
Shimmy1
Senior Member
Get enough flats when tires get worn out, regrooving would just make that worse I would think. If we run our tires down too far, they get rock-drilled and then they won't cap. FWIW, we only run caps on the sidedump tractor (because of the high risk of running over crap), and the trailers. If a guy is 100% highway miles, regrooving might work.
Birken Vogt
Charter Member
When I ran vocational trucks we ran caps exclusively. Usually we had a couple pallets full of cores and fresh ones to rotate through.
Sometimes when we could not wait we would just core swap for whatever they (Les Schwab) had on hand at the moment. We got all sorts of weird Chinese and rotten cores that way.
Some of them we capped 2 or 3 times. Sometimes they got rejected but not usually. Never had a one piece tread that I knew of. Never had a blowout or separation that I knew of either.
Although we were a lot of stop and go and mostly in winter (propane) so the tires maybe did not have such a chance to get all hot on long drives. Also 2 or 3 caps may not have been many miles, all the sharp turning scrubs them down I think.
They certainly did have their share of bad roads though, more than once I had a fist size rock ram right through the center of the tread and lodge there wrecking a tire.
Sometimes when we could not wait we would just core swap for whatever they (Les Schwab) had on hand at the moment. We got all sorts of weird Chinese and rotten cores that way.
Some of them we capped 2 or 3 times. Sometimes they got rejected but not usually. Never had a one piece tread that I knew of. Never had a blowout or separation that I knew of either.
Although we were a lot of stop and go and mostly in winter (propane) so the tires maybe did not have such a chance to get all hot on long drives. Also 2 or 3 caps may not have been many miles, all the sharp turning scrubs them down I think.
They certainly did have their share of bad roads though, more than once I had a fist size rock ram right through the center of the tread and lodge there wrecking a tire.
Single piece or around here called ring tread are the only way to go for recaps in my opinion but they cost another 50 bucks if you have high quality cases it makes sense or when I was on the farm running trucks tires would go 6 months 9 at the most I could get 2 caps out of them those dirt and gravel roads ate tires alive
Now days I got away from running them none of my trucks put on 40000 miles a year so are tires dry wrought and blow out before we wear them out especially if you are up around gross weight in the summer when. The pavement is 140 to 150 degrees those tires get real hot most caps dont like that temperature that's were i have seen most fail
The case buyers around here sent want anything over 2 years old most cal shops wont cap a case over 4 years old in these parts
I buy virgin now on everything I do my own tires and if I have 215 bucks into a ring tread cap that's already 3 years old then I will lose money cause I wont make 3 years on it so I am ok with spending 300 to 330 on tires that wont give me issues for 3 to 4 years
Now days I got away from running them none of my trucks put on 40000 miles a year so are tires dry wrought and blow out before we wear them out especially if you are up around gross weight in the summer when. The pavement is 140 to 150 degrees those tires get real hot most caps dont like that temperature that's were i have seen most fail
The case buyers around here sent want anything over 2 years old most cal shops wont cap a case over 4 years old in these parts
I buy virgin now on everything I do my own tires and if I have 215 bucks into a ring tread cap that's already 3 years old then I will lose money cause I wont make 3 years on it so I am ok with spending 300 to 330 on tires that wont give me issues for 3 to 4 years
Truck Shop
Senior Member
A tire that had 100 psi cold in a 115 degree heat after running at 70 mph will have 130 psi. And casings are worth about 65 bucks apiece and that's if those are not rock drilled
Truck Shop
Truck Shop
I never heared of caping a tire more than one time. I dont know were are tires go to be caped but we have had good luck with them on trucks that do short local hauls. On our long hauls they stoped useing caps it cost more than they saved.I have used them and will continue to you have to do alot of things to make it somedays. If i needed tires and i had trailer tires i would run them.
Shimmy1
Senior Member
Twenty-plus years ago, capping a tire more than once was unheard of. In the last 5 years or so, with newer technology and better processes, along with the capability to x-ray carcasses, recapping is a whole lot better than it used to be. The heat is still an issue, but we don't see near as much of that 100°+ as some of you. I have an uncle that has been running caps on his hopper trailer for 3 years now, which used to be unforgivable due to damage when you threw a cap. He runs Bandag B197 caps, which are a little thinner that some others. They end up being about a 100k mile tire, which for a cap AND on a trailer is not terrible. I also think the thinner cap is a little more tolerable to the heat. We don't run second-time caps, but that's because by the time we wear out our own tires, they are almost 5 years old, and our tire shop will not sell 2nd timers off the shelf.
DMiller
Senior Member
Bandag STL has been known to brand the number of times a carcass has been capped on the side label, do not know if still do that. Have seen '4s' on a local dump truck from that suppliers.
Truck Shop
Senior Member
You get what you pay for on cheap tires and caps. Our rigs pack a steady 100,000 GVW, a set of Toyo 177 steers are $432.00 bucks mounted and those last about 60,000 miles.
Michelin's- average 115,000 to 120,000 $475.00 bucks, Bridgestone -100,00 same price roughly, Goodyear 399's 100,000 to 105,000 our cost after mounting $365.00.
We had some Goodyear drop axle tires 265's I think that ran 240,000. For drive tires Double Coin 400's average 170,000 miles. Caps on super short haul rigs well I guess.
But when you loose a cap the destruction of trailer can be costly. Not to mention the poor sole who hit it with his car. Tires in our shop are checked with a gauge every service
Half our trailers run auto air up. I have 1,152 trailer tires, 480 drive trires, 120 tag tires and 120 steer tires to watch after. Tires off-tires on everyday right along with brakes.
We have a 53' trailer at the shop full of tires all the time.
Truck Shop
Michelin's- average 115,000 to 120,000 $475.00 bucks, Bridgestone -100,00 same price roughly, Goodyear 399's 100,000 to 105,000 our cost after mounting $365.00.
We had some Goodyear drop axle tires 265's I think that ran 240,000. For drive tires Double Coin 400's average 170,000 miles. Caps on super short haul rigs well I guess.
But when you loose a cap the destruction of trailer can be costly. Not to mention the poor sole who hit it with his car. Tires in our shop are checked with a gauge every service
Half our trailers run auto air up. I have 1,152 trailer tires, 480 drive trires, 120 tag tires and 120 steer tires to watch after. Tires off-tires on everyday right along with brakes.
We have a 53' trailer at the shop full of tires all the time.
Truck Shop