The Way of the Road - Trailer Tire Trouble

One? Two? Three?...THREE!

Well, the trip was supposed to only take a day, but we ran into continuous obstacles, the largest being the fact our trailer had a gremlin on it that kept eating our tires - ala Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Here is a quick little story of our trip:

On the way up we were towing our open trailer with our brand new Ford F-350 dually diesel. The drive from Tampa to Hammond, LA took a tire on the way up...great. Now it was too late to get the thing loaded up so we spent the night.

The next morning we catch some breakfast and head over to the guy's house. The wench is dead...it's hot and humid so we enlist some help and push the car onto the trailer. The guy notices our spare tire blown out and he gives us a wheel and tire to put on just in case. (THANKS!!!!)

We start heading home and were making pretty good time. This put us back home in Tampa at around 2:00AM...not too bad. We see a sign for a Taco Bell and decide we need a "Fourth Meal" so we pull off into a gas station and check the car over and the tires. Sure enough the cords are showing on the same tire. Obviously, as indicated by the first tire, there was something wrong with this trailer.

My friend Robert and I jack the trailer up and find out the wheel we were given was the wrong spacing, but the tire was correct. We try to find a place to get a tire but it's 9:30ish at night...this exit also happens to be the same exit as a Super Walmart so we head over there in hopes that they would have a trailer tire or something to help us.

This Walmart also happens to have a tire center that closed at 9:30! Well, we go in and plead with the assistant manager and tell him our story and he has sympathy for us and asks permission from his manager to open the tire center back up. The manager gives him the OK and we get another tire on the trailer and out spare since it was lost the day before. So thank you to the Assistant Manager, John, for getting us back on the road.

We get back on the interstate, pulling over here and there to stretch and see if the tires are holding up. By the time we get to Ocala the tires are beginning to show considerable wear, but there is still some time left in them so we keep on truckin'. We get back to the office and the chords are starting to poke through, bringing our total to 3 tires...wow!

It's safe to say that was one hell of a trip!