When companies save money at the expense of security.
Hello from Uruguay,
Saving money was also the order of the day at Rhenania. That is why retreaded tires were fitted on all trucks and trailers.
Completely renewed tires are not new tires, they are old ones that have already been worn out, to which a new profile is stuck to the carcass of the tire and thus classified and sold as new.
A lot cheaper, of course.
Anyone who has a slightly larger fleet will certainly appreciate this option.
But are they also safe?
I'll say a very clear no, because my life was literally hanging by a thread because of these retreaded tires.
Once again I loaded 22 tons of margarine in Hilter . My total weight was around 40 tons with which I was on the A 45 motorway in the direction of Frankfurt and Mainz. Actually, a coming home was planned that evening. Mum had already adjusted to it and my daughter would certainly have been very happy to see her father.
But this one fell victim to austerity.
There is the Ambach valley bridge between Dillenburg and Herborn. You can get to this after crossing the Hirschkopf. It is a downhill section of the A 45 on which you have to drive a little slower to save the brakes. 22 tons in the cross push already tremendously.
I stood on this bridge for 17 hours.
I wanted, yes, something like that is never forgotten in life, slide a cassette into the cassette player of the radio when there was a loud bang and my box of the Mercedes 1632 started to pull to the right.
What happened?
Now about 800 meters before the said viaduct at 90 km / h, with the 22 tons of margarine in the cross, the tire burst in the front right. That's why the box pulled to the right.
If I had made the mistake now and had lashed out on the brakes in shock, I would have turned the box on its side.
I myself was so quick-witted that I knew that I was only allowed to do one thing.
Just don't brake.
The only brake I had available at that moment was only the engine brake, which limits the engine speed and also acts a little on the trailer.
So I dropped the cassette to have both hands on the steering wheel.
We heard music with something like that back then.
Good that the trucks have built-in power steering, otherwise everything would probably have gone wrong.
I activated the hazard warning lights and pulled the train into the left lane. The following traffic got what was going on and behaved accordingly. My train was getting slower and slower and I could switch to the right side and let it run out. I managed to move it to the hard shoulder where I came to a stop in the middle of the Ambach valley bridge, which was about 80 meters down.
OK. Truck, cargo and I were safe for the time being.
Unpacked the warning triangle, walked back and placed it neatly. Then I looked at the damage.
The cover has come loose from the tire, this is the part that is stuck to the tire during retreading. This ceiling damaged the fender of the truck and part of the corner of the cab.
What do you do when you have a flat tire?
You change the tire.
Unfortunately, I had to change the spare tire a few days beforehand and so I was left without a spare wheel. So a change is impossible. The ADAC came and wanted to help me, but they didn't have a suitable tire. The police came and asked if everything was okay. The highway maintenance department came and secured the stranded truck.
My truck was secured in a similar way.
I had to call my boss.
Cell phones and car phones were not yet known at the time. So a walk to the rest area was announced. There I could make phone calls, wash myself, have a coffee and eat something. The boss said he would send me a colleague who would bring me a tire. But this one would not leave until much later and would not be with me until the morning.
So I marched back over the shoulder to my truck to spend the night there. This was anything but pleasant, one should not believe how much such a valley bridge can sway. It is actually always in motion and when you lie in the box you notice it especially.
Well it actually took 17 hours until the spare tire was with me. Then the ADAC came back and helped me assemble it, which wasn't exactly easy because we had to work with 2 jacks.
We balanced the old tire on the loading area and then I drove carefully towards home, where I first went to a tire service in Mainz Kastell, with which Rhenania had a contract.
There I did something that the company didn't like at all.
I had all 6 tires on the motor vehicle replaced with brand new tires. This earned me very special sympathy in the company, because from now on I was considered a troublemaker who ignored the company's orders.
So we remodeled, just glued a new deck on it and that's it.
But it was about my safety and so I didn't care.
But that's how it happened that you lose mutual trust. You can imagine that my wife wasn't exactly enthusiastic about this campaign either. Once again she was at home alone with an open wound and the man was elsewhere.
Where, mostly only knew the dispatcher who made special use of this knowledge.
I will tell you how in the next article.
But you could believe one thing, retreaded tires were a NO GO for me from that day and also a criterion for whether I started with a company or not. I didn't want to experience something like that again.
Nothing has changed about that until today.
The tires and the brakes are the most important things on a car, regardless of whether it is a car or a truck, and especially on a truck.
And I give everyone who has read this a message to never brake if a tire blows. That is exactly what leads to terrible accidents because at that moment the vehicle becomes impossible to steer. Especially when it happens on the front axle.