Look Ma, No spare tire.

I did a gear run to St. Louis today and about 15 miles from the shop on I-55 something caught my eye in the rear view mirror. By the time I actually could look that direction I saw only a black flash that looked like a trash bag blowing out of the truck. I thought,,,,,,,,,,,"There wasn't anything like that in the truck.", then the old noodle went into overdrive. "What's-back-there-that's-big-and-black? The-trailer-spare-up-on-top-of-the-goosneck. Can't be, that's bolted down and I didn't hear or feel a thing." Then I ducked down to see up high in the rear view mirror and the trailer spare tire was gone. "It fell on the trialer." I thoght. I quickly checked my side mirrors and there were no cars for at least a half a mile behind me and I started making it for the shoulder. I got out and checked, no spare tire, the hold down stud was broken off at the factory weld, so I called back down to the shop, told them what happened, where, and to send sombody out to find it. I headed out for the city again and about 20 minutes later stopped and called the shop owner on her cell phone. She and her dad had just picked up the tire and it was exactly where I thought it would be but out in the median instead of off the right side.

I don't know why there was no sound or jolt or anything. When I got back to the shop the spare was standing over by the door and it had obviously gone under the trailer when it came off. The rim has a ding in it and the brand new high load rated tire was busted wide open with a sidewall split from the bead to the tread and scuffs all over it. The hold-down stud had broken off at the weld. They'll weld in a new stud, get a new tire, and we'll put a safety chain in the next one.

I felt very lucky that there were no vehicles around when it came off and that it didn't hit the ground rolling toward the southbound lane. At 70 MPH it would have been a killer that wouldn't have stopped in a quarter of a mile.

You dodged liability, bud.

Scary! Glad no one got hurt there. I had a couple of wire wheels come off the MGA years back. That was bad enough, but they don't weigh nearly as much as one of those wheels. One of them rolled about 2 blocks before bumping a tree and falling.

a video of something like that a big tire bouncing through the median and into the dirt was on TV did not hear it origin.

There were two people killed last week by tires that flew off trucks here in MN. One first was a garbage truck, the other I'm not sure but that's the one that was caught by local traffic cameras.

John:

By that one avatar of yours (Charles Atlas?), you don't look as if you needed to lose your spare tire.

Glad nothing serious happened.