Tow or blow

[Dave49]

The question is why does Heartland continue to use the Towmax tires seeing all of the troubles Heartland owners have had?
Don

The answer to your question is they use them because they are less expensive to put on the unit. If you look at the whole picture of things everything on these units is all about compromise. And we the customer are the ones that drive this. We want these pretty units with all the glitz and glamour but we don't want to pay the price it takes to make them that way. So everything on these trailers are price driven. Goes along with the frame flex issues. This can be fixed as we know by putting in gussets, triangulating etc. But by doing that now your asking for more material (more weight) more welding time (more hrs making frame) etc. which raises the cost of the unit. I personally don't agree with the theory but it is what it is.

But Heartland is one of the best at standing behind there units, and that says a lot for them.

Dave

 

[Gaffer]

A few?

A few have blowouts with these tires but thousands don't.

 

[TravelTiger]

Since we've owned our coach and been active on this forum, (3 years), I can recall nearly every line of HLs with TowMax has had someone post here with a complaint of failure (blowout, premature wear, bubble, etc.)

I doubt that all these units were towed recklessly.

I believe the tire manufacturer produced some marginal quality tires 2009-2011. I believe that once folks complained, here and elsewhere (on other forums there are similar), HL may have asked that TowMax provide some solution -- thus we see the "new" TowMax with the nylon cap and a warranty. Time will tell if this "solves" it, but my personal thought is that I'd choose a tire with "no" or "few" failure posts, rather than "lots."

Erika


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[danemayer]

A few?

Let's make up some numbers for the purpose of discussion. Assume Heartland ships 25,000 units per year with Towmax tires. Forget the spares and the triple axle trailers. Let's keep it simple and say that 25,000 units = 100,000 tires. Four years of production = 400,000 tires.

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say there might be 100 people on this forum who have reported Towmax blowouts on Heartland trailers over the past 2-3 years that I've been watching the forum. But let's bump that up to 200 just to be conservative. Now on average, I'll guess that each of those people probably posts about their experience at least 6 times. So we probably have seen upwards of 1200 posts from those 200 people. But 1200 posts is still 200 blowouts.

Let's further guess that for every person who posts to the forum, there are another three who don't report their blowout. I have no idea if that's the ratio, but let's run with it. So for 200 blowouts reported, let's assume 600 not reported.

So that's 800 trailers assumed to have experience blowouts over the past few years. A few had multiple blowouts, so let's round it up to 1000 tire failures.

Let me further guess that at least 1/2 of those failures were caused by under-inflation, overloading, driving too fast, or hitting curbs. So we're back to 500 tire failures out of 100,000 that we attribute to tire quality.

That would be a 0.5% failure rate over a period of several years. If you have 4 tires, you'd have a 2% risk of a blowout over a period of several years. 1 out of 50 trailers having a blowout over a period of several years.

We have a high noise level on this subject because it's a traumatic event that results in a lot of damage to the trailer. Owners are understandably upset.

Are other tires really so much better? I wonder if the reason Maxxis and other choices seem to work so well is that we're judging from a much smaller sample. I wonder what the story would be if Heartland had 100,000 Maxxis in use.

Now I admit that this is all speculative. Maybe the failure rate is higher. But to read the posts, you'd think the failure rate approaches 100%. If that were the case we'd be seeing multiple posts about new blowouts every day. Week after week. That's not happening.

 

[Snow]

Thanks, danemayer that's makes me feel much better ⛄⛄⛄⛄��

 

[piet10]

I see that Tredit is giving a seminar on "RV Tires and State of the Tire Industry" at Goshen. I hope someone will report back what they say.

Al

 

[ncrzrbk]

Probably say that all TowMax tires built in 2012 are built to better specs and won't have problems. Curious to see what they say as well. So far traveling about 2k miles on mine, I haven't noticed any wear problems


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Tombstonejim]

Probably say that all TowMax tires built in 2012 are built to better specs and won't have problems. Curious to see what they say as well. So far traveling about 2k miles on mine, I haven't noticed any wear problems


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Wear has never been the problem. It is sudden and unexpected side wall failure and tread separation that is the problem. I got to pull mine from Tucson to Phoenix next week. It is gonna be 115 in the shade and I have very little confidence that tires that I have pulled less than a 100 miles will make it. I am gonna carry two of my horse trailer LT tires for security.

 

[FiremanBill]

Wear has never been the problem. It is sudden and unexpected side wall failure and tread separation that is the problem. I got to pull mine from Tucson to Phoenix next week. It is gonna be 115 in the shade and I have very little confidence that tires that I have pulled less than a 100 miles will make it. I am gonna carry two of my horse trailer LT tires for security.

Please let us know how it goes.

I've got over 2500 miles since Feb on my new Cyclone now and so far I am very happy with the tires.

 

[ncrzrbk]

Wear problems to me are anything that occurs to the tire while in use whether it be road hazard, tire separation, under inflation, overloading and thread wear.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[TedS]

After reading the blowout stories I remain concerned, but: 2011 Bighorn 2985, 4 towmax made Jan 2010, maintain 80psi, mileage a bit over 17,000 miles, total weighed axle load 9140 lbs(2285/wheel calculated), tire load rating 3520lbs. I drive 65mph, mostly; sometimes 70+ for short stretches when I'm paying more attention to traffic than my speed. I keep looking and see no signs of defects. Tires remain cool to warm when I check at fuel stops and rest stops. Maybe being 1235lbs under the tire load rating helps.
Just another data point.

 

[szewczyk_john]

I too can not make the National Rally this year so I would be interested in hearing what the general tire discussion was from those attending the rally.

 

[FiremanBill]

I've been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of days and can compare this to a situation in the Radio Control model Airplane world.

There are really only three MAJOR radio brands out there for us to use in this hobby. JR/Spektrum, Futaba, and Airtronics. there are several other small brands but their market share is negligible in the grand scheme of things.

JR/Spektrum has about an 80% or better market share with the rest split between the other two major brands and the rest. These are not hard numbers but are observations from some of the major events we attend based on the sign up sheets which require listing the radio type you use.

After a lot of these major events you hear a lot about radio failures that caused crashes and such. Inevitably it was a JR/Spektrum radio that seems to have been the issue and the radio brand hating wars begin. Upon further investigation though we usually, but not always, seem to find the culprit to be a poorly set up aircraft where the wrong receiver type was used, or the power supply to the receiver was not set up properly, or a miriad of other issues that caused the problem. Very seldom does it boil down to a true "radio" problem and when it does the failure rate between brands seems to be pretty equal.

What we do hear about is problems. The thousands of users out there who never have an issue remain silent for the most part and never say anything. With so many of these tires in use it is inevitable that we will hear of problems.

If there were 80%+ Futaba radios in use in the R/C world, they would be tho ones with the bad rep, not JR/Futaba.

Oh and for the record, I use a JR radio and have never had an issue that wasn't user induced. lol

 

[Snow]

firemanbill i keep crashing my blade sr120 any advice

 

[FiremanBill]

firemanbill i keep crashing my blade sr120 any advice

Stop flying heli's and get a plane! I never have been able to figure those confounded things out!

 

[M-S]

I just replaced all my tires 2 weeks ago, when I had a blow out at 65 mph on a set of Towmax tires that were made in 2010. Last fall I had one that had a belt separate in it, and had to be changed. When we thought it was due to a nail, or screw, the shop showed me where 1/4th of the tread was separated. Bought a new tire. Then 2 weeks ago, with the spare that was a Towmax tire with only 300 miles on it, blew violently, with the entire tread cap coming off, 3 holes the size of a baseball on the outside, and one the size of a softball on the inside and the entire tire was split on the seam where the tire was put together. I changed the tire, and then found a tire shop at the town where we stayed, and they put 4 new Omni Trail tires on for me. I had the first tire adjusted by Towmax and it was an ordeal in and of itself, but the warranty is only good for 2 years from manufacture. My recommendation, get the tires off and buy a good set of trailer tires. Towmax tires could mean a tow bill, no pun intended.

 

[Lynn1130]

Or, Bill, it is just "dumb-thumb" which is the case most of the time and it gets blamed on radio gear.

 

[scarabviper]

Power King Tow max 235 st 16R..
yes pure junk.... as others have said.
2013 Heartland Cyclone 3010, equipped with TST tire monitoring system because on the trailer Forurm we had heard that the Chinese tires were nick named China bombs.

After 3000 miles, 3 blew in 500 miles at 60 MPH, 2 within 80 miles. The second grenade/exploded doing much damage. inside side walls had split.
It appears they do not really warrant their tires...
The TST system saved me from losing both sides of my trailer(I could react with less violent failures. . Tires were in perfect pressure and temp range
Do not buy, do not get, no warranty...
Insurance companies cant go after tires made in China unlike Good year...
Pls post this and warn others.. will now go to heartland for help.. Note my insurance company has been tracking those blow outs and is about to stop insuring trailers wit Tow max Tires. Its also very dangerous as you are on the side of a free way,waiting to long hours for help. Now I hear that if I upgrade to G rated, our rims may not be rated high enough.. eh gads.... Love my Cyclone.. but this I an ares where cutting costs, can cost lives, vacations and thousands of dollars such as the repair bill... and the sub spec tires I had to have mounted by an on raod tire service , just to get me home!

 

[cookie]

Contact Heartland and they can put you in touch with the distributor.
Some have gotten help.
I hope that you saved the carcass of the blown tires.

Peace
Dave

 

[wdk450]

I think that beyond manufacturing defects, speed and heat are major factors in tire blowouts. I am currently rolling Geostar ST285/85R 16 LR G tires from Les Schwab tires, a tire chain that lives on their upstanding reputation, and believe in/stand behind the products they sell. The also have a store in just about every city in the Northwest (N. Ca, Or, Wa, Id.,UT,N. Nv,).
I am O.K. with arriving at my destination 10 minutes an hour later by towing at 55 mph than if I towed at 65 mph, and saving fuel, being easier on my engine, and tires.