Balance Trailer Tires

[Bird]

That will also happen if you don't keep your tires and wheels rotated. The tires will wear differently and will produce different vibrations at each tire. Not rotating will also cause some of your tires to wear out before the other ones. Most people ignore rotations but they should be done every 5000 miles, and most shops will provide free rotation for the life of the tires if you bought the tires from them. Follow the directions in your owner's manual to show you which positions get switched (usually back goes to front, and front goes to back and gets crossed). Even the new "directional" tires should be rotated (swapping front and rear on the same side of the vehicle).

Of course, that's for vehicles that drive on the road every day. I don't think too many people bother with rotating the wheels and tires on their trailers (probably not needed).

Having fleet management as one of my responsibilities long ago, I learned to never rotate my tires. Rotating tires will make them last longer, but if you are paying someone to rotate them, that will cost more than the additional wear from not rotating them. And by not rotating them, I used to only buy 2 new tires at a time instead of 4.

However, I do now buy 4 at a time from Discount Tire (less than 2 miles from the house), and they rotate them every 6k miles (instead of 5k as in years past), they re-balance them every 12k miles; i.e., every other time they rotate them without asking. Of course they will re-balance them anytime if the customer thinks they need it. And of course, they'll repair all flats at no extra cost.

I did check with several other places before the last time I bought tires and some of them were very close on price, although none lower than Discount Tire, but none of those I checked with in my area included "free" rotations and flat repair.

 

[Soundguy]

That will also happen if you don't keep your tires and wheels rotated. The tires will wear differently and will produce different vibrations at each tire. Not rotating will also cause some of your tires to wear out before the other ones. Most people ignore rotations but they should be done every 5000 miles, and most shops will provide free rotation for the life of the tires if you bought the tires from them. Follow the directions in your owner's manual to show you which positions get switched (usually back goes to front, and front goes to back and gets crossed). Even the new "directional" tires should be rotated (swapping front and rear on the same side of the vehicle).

Of course, that's for vehicles that drive on the road every day. I don't think too many people bother with rotating the wheels and tires on their trailers (probably not needed).

we do the rotations .. not worth it not to.

soundguy

 

[Mahindra One]

Does anybody have or use the HF balancer. It seems pretty straight forward.

 

[Skyco]

I don't think too many people bother with rotating the wheels and tires on their trailers (probably not needed).

Well...I can see some wear pattern differences in some of my trailer tires, so yes I sometimes rotate them.
Here is my question though- obviously the right side tires get the most abuse, most of the potholes/broken pavement etc are on the edge of the road, also maybe running over curbs on tight turns etc....so is it better to spread the abuse or keep it contained to half the tires? :laughing: