Tire Servicing Safety: Don’t reinvent the wheel with Andy Wood - Part 2

Tire Servicing Safety is often overlooked unless it’s your full-time job.  Hazards from lifting and repositioning a heavy tire in an awkward position or being struck by a falling or exploding tire are all common exposures for workers serving tires in the shop or in the field. In the conclusion of this two-part Tire Safety episode with Andy Wood, MEMIC's Forest Products Programs Manager, we dive deeper into preventing tire-related injuries, and how we can keep ourselves safe when handling, changing, or servicing a tire. Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch, manager of Digital Technology for Lost Control and safety management consultant with MEMIC. This is part two of our tire safety episode with Andy Wood, Manager of Forest Products Safety Services. Andy brings many years of professional experience dealing with hand and mechanical logging operations and servicing his own equipment when he worked in the industry. In part one of this podcast, we address the regulations how more than just big rig service centers are covered by these regs, and then began to discuss the different injuries that can be caused when servicing tires. In part two we will roll into more injury causes and then different controls. And as only Andy can, he draws from his personal experience to give us great perspective around why these are sometimes hidden or overlooked hazards. So let's pick up where we left [00:01:00] off. Andy Wood: [00:01:03] So let's move along from our frequent injuries. We talked about some struck by injuries. We've talked about manual material handling. But let's talk about some more severe injuries. And we're growing from the back and shoulder and wrist injury or from the crushing injury that happens from a tire falling on someone. But really, when we get into a tire exploding, we're getting into ballistic type of injuries. So let's talk some more about those and what kinds of injuries come out of a tire exploding and what might cause the tire to fail catastrophically. Andy Wood: [00:01:37] Yeah, you mentioned the ballistics. I'll just preface this by saying an injury I get quite frequently. If a tire blows up for whatever reason, I'm usually going to get a claim of ringing in the ears or the concussive force has blown out the eardrums. So even if a person doesn't get hit with anything or physically damaged, just the concussive force of the pressure in the immediate area is going to blow out his eardrums [00:02:00] or cause that ringing, which sometimes the ringing will just go away in a few days if things if it wasn't too bad but it could certainly be much worse. The tires when they blow out, those are the serious injuries. We've had people struck by the tires itself, struck by the part of the tire that gets shredded, struck by the tire cage when it goes screaming across the floor and the garage. I mentioned the concussive force, pretty, pretty blunt trauma, pretty, pretty serious injuries. A couple causes, I guess weak spots where they're going to fail. First one is the bead rim failure. So that's a question of when the tire usually during re inflation, because that's when a person is going to be right there. The bead of the tire goes over, either rips or it goes over the edge of the of the edge of the tire. So this is where the rim charts come in. You've got to make sure even if you put a new tire on a new rim, you can miscalculate. And the rim charts would tell you that they're not compatible, but [00:03:00] by looking at them, you can't tell the difference. So you've got to have RIM charts to make sure that you're matching, whether it's a single piece or multi piece wheel, that all the components and the tire are all compatible. The bead will be damaged frequently in operation and it can be damaged when it's dismounted and remounted. So the bead inspection is really important to make sure the beat of the tire is still in good condition when it goes back on the rim. Now the other thing is that the rim where the bead seats can be damaged as well. I don't believe this was as common a problem with the steel rims that folks always used to run, like on a on a truck tire, a tractor trailer type tire on road. They've switched to a lot of aluminum tires. We're starting to do that in the woods as well. And what we're finding is with the severe conditions that we have in the woods, you know, the logging roads aren't level, they're not paved. A lot of times you're rolling your tires, you're going around the corner and the weight is shifting to the inside tire. So the beat of the tire actually chafes on the rim and wears into the aluminum rim. So [00:04:00] the rims are getting deformed so that you can put a brand new tire back on a used rim. And even though it matches based on the charts, the rim charts, the rim has been damaged bad enough that the tire during inflation will blow right over it. And that's one that was probably one of the at one year a couple of years ago, the biggest injury I had was from a bead rim failure. And what happened was they were putting a new tire back on a used rim. They were re inflating it and the tire blew over the rim. No one got hit with anything physically other than the force, the air and the mechanic that was standing right in front of it was blown right across the garage into the next bay. You got wedged underneath the drive train or the rear axle of a truck that was in the next bay. And it was every part of his body I think was damaged. He had both shoulders needed to be operated on knees just from the force of him being blown backwards, hyperextended his knees in the opposite direction. You had dental surgery, he had [00:05:00] cuts and bruises, and it just went on and on. He would go through one surgery. He would recover from a little while. He'd go to light duty for a little while, and then he'd go have another surgery. So in that case, it was just a question of they make these little rim gauge rim flange gauges. When the tire is off, you just hold it up there and see how much wear the rim has, to see if it's safe to reuse. Andy Wood: [00:05:21] They looked at the tire or they looked at the wheel afterwards and determined, you know, the rim was worn out. It really couldn't be used again. And when they put it together, it seemed okay until they inflated it and it came right off. So the bead rim is one failure point. Another one that we hear often is what's called the zipper failure or the zipper rupture. And that's usually in the sidewall and the upper portion of the sidewall close to the tread. And again, it's usually during re inflation, it's going to result from a tire that has been either overloaded or run soft. And when someone goes to reinflate it, what happens is when the tire [00:06:00] is overloaded or runs. Soft. It flexes the sidewalls beyond the designed parameters, and it causes the steel belts in the sidewall to flex. If you took a wire and bent it in the same spot several times, eventually break right there. Same things happening in the sidewall when they get squatted from too much weight or from being underinflated, one or two strands of that metal cord may break in there. And then when you reinflate it, the casing itself can't hold the pressure. And there's a weak spot where those one or two chords, the casing will start to expand between those and it'll pop the chord on the next side and the cord or the next side and the next chord down. And that's why you hear that pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And people call it a zipper failure because it sounds like you're opening a zipper and it'll just the entire sidewall will just open wide up and it release all that air at one time. So if the tire if you get the air in the face, that's bad, that may blow you across the room. Or if the tire is against the harder surface, it may propel a tire across the garage floor. [00:07:00] There's a guideline, it's called the 80% rule, which really is intended for just this situation. If you check a tire and it is lower than 80% of what its running capacity is, what it's generally designed to be run at. So if you're less than 80% of that, the tire should be removed and treated as a flat repair. In other words, the tire should be dismounted from the rim, should be inspected inside and out, put back in a tire cage and inflated there because there's just no way to know whether damage occurred or not without that close inspection. And we just had one of those on a logging truck. A person was had a loaded truck, got to the mill, noticed the soft tire, went to reinflate it, and the tire blew in the process. So the injury there again was just the concussive force. It was a ringing in his ear and damage to his eardrums. Peter Koch: [00:07:50] Wow. So it's a good rule, that 80% rule. I hadn't thought of it that way, but if you've got less than 80% of what the capacity is or what it's supposed to be inflated [00:08:00] to, then you've got to treat it like there's been some damage someplace because under normal conditions, the tire shouldn't lose that much tire pressure. So if you're just running from wherever you're landing is bring in logs to the yard or bringing logs to the mill or bringing logs to wherever. It shouldn't lose that much. So identifying it, especially if you've done your inspection prior to work that day and all the tires were properly inflated. You get someplace and it's 80% less or it's less than 80% of its capacity or inflation. Treat it like it's been damaged. Just don't try to reinflate it because you're putting more pressure than the vessel can handle or potentially put more pressure than the vessel can handle. Andy Wood: [00:08:43] And in theory, the tires have all been in the pre-trip you know, the tires have all been checked that morning. So that's all air you've lost that day. So, yeah, you're right. That's a lot to lose in a few hours or even several hours of service. Peter Koch: [00:08:55] And that's a good point. You know, in theory and we both talk [00:09:00] about that as it's a given that it should be done. But I don't know if everybody's doing that every time. And I imagine, like the greater the potential for failure, the bigger the truck, the bigger the tire, the heavier the load that you're going to be checking those. But even with even if you're running a work truck, you know, a three quarter ton or a full ton truck and you're using it for plowing or your hauling landscape material from point A to point B if you haven't done your PRE-TRIP inspection and inspected your tires, making sure that they're all properly inflated before you start. When you get someplace and you notice a soft tire, you have no idea. Was it soft before you left? Was it soft from the night before? Was it soft between the point where you loaded it and you got to where you noticed it so you don't really know. So that information of what were what's what is the condition of the vehicle, condition of the tires before you start is a very important [00:10:00] thing to have a piece of information that you need to have in order to make a good decision later on down the road, if you notice something that's not functional for you. Excellent. So let's talk a little bit about, I don't know, maybe some you talked about a cage for re inflation and we talked about servicing some of these tires. You're going to treat it like it's a flat. So you get a tire that you notice is soft and you're going to have to bring it in for servicing. So the person that's servicing it is going to get this tire. It's not completely deflated. It's still got 80% of it's pressure inside of it. There's injuries that happen because you're treating a tire or you're dealing with the tire before you deflate it. So can you talk a little bit about that, maybe some of the injuries that might happen that way? And what are some of the recommendations to deal with a partially inflated tire, something that doesn't pass that 80% rule? Andy Wood: [00:10:57] Right. The standard is pretty clear on that. And [00:11:00] you will see this repeated. Over and over and over in the TIA training or the in the OSHA standard that any one of those things you notice out about a tire that it's been damaged or run slack or before you're going to service it or do anything to it, you're going to remove the valves, then you're going to deflate by removal of valves. Then taking the valve stem completely out is the only way you're going to ensure that all the air gets out of it. You have a tire that's run soft and people say, well, that's, that's leaking anyways. There's not much pressure in there and they'll go and try and service it and it'll be a lot more pressure than they expected. Actually, I had that happen to a on a forklift at a sawmill. They had a tire that was going flat and several days they would just air it up and use it and air it up and use it. And finally they got the time to take it off. And there's in one bolt circle, there was two sets of nuts. There was there were big nuts and little nuts. So they took I can't remember which one was which, but they took one set of nuts off, say it was the big nuts. They took all the big nuts off [00:12:00] and they couldn't get the wheel off the hub. So what are they going to do next? Well, they'll go to the little nuts. When they took the little nuts off, they just took two or three of them off and the tire exploded. And what had happened was the it was a two piece rim and one set of nuts held the two pieces of the rim together and the other set of the nuts tell the whole assembly on the hub of the forklift. So when they couldn't get the rim off, they went to the other ones and they were actually unbolting the two sections of tire. And even though the tire was flat or considered flat under the weight of the forklift, there was enough pressure in there to still blow the tire and damage the rim, you know, deform the rim and damage the tire. And the person got hit in the leg. It wasn't a terribly big injury, but certainly there's a lot of there is a huge force there when that energy is released all at once. So, yeah, the first thing you're going to do under any of those conditions, remove the valve core and let it deflate itself. Peter Koch: [00:12:58] Yeah and that you said that's part of the standard when you're [00:13:00] servicing. Andy Wood: [00:13:00] That is written standard repeatedly. Peter Koch: [00:13:02] Yeah, right on. And something that if you're not if you don't if you've never read the standard or you're not a professional tire technician, a service technician, you may not have known it might be something that you've been taught before by someone that has mentored you before, but know that that's part of the standard has got to be part of something that that gets done every time a tire is going to be deflated and removed from the rim. So deflate it, remove the valve core for sure. So we've been kind of talking we've mentioned this term a few times around here, tire, cage, you know, some shops will have a tire cage, some shops won't have a tire cage. Some people won't know what a tire cage is. Or some people will tell you that, yeah, they don't service tires, so they don't need a tire cage. But you know, like if we think about our curiosity when we go to the shop and we're not just looking at the injury stats all the time and talking about some of the manual material handling. We're [00:14:00] we're looking around the shop and we're going to ask some questions. And there's been some pretty interesting answers that I know I've had not about tires, but and I know you've had about tires and tire cages when you've gone to talk to some of your service guys. So as we start talking about tire cages, tell me a little bit about some of the different shops that you might have worked with and their and their answers. When you ask them about do they service tires or do they use a tire cage? Andy Wood: [00:14:25] Most of these blow out incidents occur during the reinflation, for whatever reason, with mismatched or damaged tires or whatever. So there's some specific guidelines that go along with the reinflation process. And I think because of the, you know, you should have a tire gauge that's specified in the OSHA standard. You're going to have three things. You're going to have a tire cage, you can chain the tires. But I have never found anyone to chain of tire. You're supposed to have three chains around the rim and the tire assembly when it's being inflated. I've never seen anyone do that. So basically you're going to have a tire cage, [00:15:00] you're going to have a clip on Chuck with an adequate length of hose, and you're going to have a pressure regulator in line to set the pressure for the tire. So a lot of folks will say, you know, we just we don't bother with tires. And if you think about it, it's probably not the best use of your mechanic's time to be changing tires when tire shops are set up just to do that. But everybody's going to end up in a pinch and they're not going to have a spare and they're going to need someone to break down a tire and remount it and repair it right on the spot. So, yeah, it's interesting. Everyone up front says, you know, no, we don't do that. But in the reality they do quite a bit of it. And certainly we've had injuries to prove that I was in one shop and I asked the guy about the tires, how do you serve as tires? And he said, you know, no tires in my garage. I don't I tell those guys I don't want those things are too dangerous for us to deal with. If they want to do a tire, they have to do it out in the yard somewhere. I'm not going to have those things in my garage. So I said, Oh, well, that's good, I guess. [00:16:00] So we talked. We walked around. Garage. And, you know, he started opening up a little before we finished. He pointed up to the ceiling and it was a metal building and it had the metal girders and it had a metal roof on the inside. And there was a big place where the girder had been deformed and the roof had a big gash in it. And he says, You see that up there? He said a skitter tire went right up. That roof was probably 25 feet off the ground. Peter Koch: [00:16:24] Wow. Andy Wood: [00:16:25] And he said someone was inflating a Skitter tire on the ground. They had it laid right flat on the floor, on the cement floor, and they had a zipper rupture on the floor side. Of course, it exhausted right onto the cement, which is a great place for you to get that. Peter Koch: [00:16:41] Physics again, right? Andy Wood: [00:16:42] Yeah. Yeah. Physics to the thrust from the solid surface. And that tire went right up to the ceiling. And then he said after that, he said, that's when I made the rule. No more tires in the garage. So certainly and we've had a lot of tires and laying the tires on the floor is one that's got us repeatedly. We [00:17:00] have a colleague that mentioned that had a person just filling up a passenger car tire and the tire zipper failed on the on the down side. So the tire was catapulted into the air and it took him right across the forehead because he was leaning right over the tire and it fractured his skull. And then that one again went through to put a hole in the sheetrock ceiling in that garage. I had another person who was, again, tire was laying on the floor in the garage and they were leaning over with a non clip on truck. So you had to stand there and hold it and it was shot into the air. A zipper failure in the sidewall shot the and broke both of his forearms. So that's one we've seen. We've seen again and again. So the standard would be that first that nobody's in the trajectory. So the trajectory of the tire is if you have if the tire is standing upright and you stand with your back right to it, you put your arms out in front of you and just swing them to a 45 degree on either side. Looking forward, that would be the trajectory. [00:18:00] So as the rim goes out, that's where the tire, if there's any explosion, mostly that's where it's going to go. So there's supposed to be no one in that trajectory. The tire is supposed to be in a cage. That clip on Chuck allows you to once you clip it on, to get out of the trajectory. Otherwise, you have to stand in the trajectory zone to hold the truck on to reinflate it. So you put the clip on, Chuck. You've got a hose long enough for you to step back out of the way and the regulator is on the side. So then you can if the tire is rated for 80, you can put the regulator up to 80. Or if the tire is a truck tire, you need 110. You set the regulator for 110. The shot pressure. This is another problem we've run. You know, bigger garages are running shop pressures of 150 or 200 psi. If you can't regulate that down to the 80 or 100 or 110 at the tire, should have you easy, easily overinflated if you're not right there watching it. So the clip on Chuck gets you out of the way. The regulator lets you set it for whatever the tire is. So [00:19:00] that's kind of the standard guideline for doing that. And they do make smaller tire cages that are portable. And I know the tire people have those in the field if they have to service the tire in the field. But you can go on YouTube and you can Google exploding tires. And it is amazing how much energy. In fact, I found one that if you have an 11, 11 by 20 tire truck tire, 14 ply truck tire at 100 psi, if that were to zipper fail in the sidewall, it can it can lift a £3,000 car 21 feet into the air. Wow. Okay. So that's a that's a that's a truck. That would be a small tractor trailer tire. A 20 inch would be a big pickup tire or a small tractor trailer tire. 3,000 pounds is about the your average. Yep. 21 feet in the air. That's a lot of that's a lot of force. It's a lot of energy. Peter Koch: [00:19:56] A lot of and people don't think about it like 110 pounds of pressure. That's not [00:20:00] doesn't seem to be a lot of pressure. But when you think about the amount of cubic inches of air that it's in, the tire that's released at 110 pounds all at once, that's a substantial amount of force. It's not just a little pinprick that 110 pounds is coming out of it. It's a substantial amount of force, especially when it is going to be pushed against a solid surface like asphalt or concrete or the hard ground. So yeah, a lot more force than we think. I didn't realize 3,000 pounds, 20, 21 feet in the air. That's crazy. Andy Wood: [00:20:34] That's a long ways. Peter Koch: [00:20:36] That's a long ways. Andy Wood: [00:20:37] That's the family car skyrocketed it right up to the Ridgeline house. Peter Koch: [00:20:41] No doubt.   Peter Koch: [00:20:42] The standard to avoid those solid surfaces, the standard says that the tire cage cannot be mounted with a solid surface within one foot of it for just that reason, to give that air a chance to dissipate a little when you lay the tire in the ground and it ruptures on the on the bottom side or into the cement, [00:21:00] that's great for surface for thrust. Peter Koch: [00:21:02] Right. And now there's also some requirements about how you secure that tire cage as well. Correct. Andy Wood: [00:21:08] There are holes in the bottom of the tire cage in the base. And most people thought that was to be bolted down. So it didn't move across the room because I had a situation where one the tire cage, the tire blew in the cage and of course, blew off center and started the tire cage spinning in a circle. And it went right across the floor of the garage and people thought it should be secured. Actually, if you read the directions on most of the tire cages, they're going to say, do not secure them, because that's one more way that they dissipate that energy by moving. And the other thing is, if you bolt that down, unless you had one inch bolts into cement, it's just going to shear them and become more projectiles. So most of the tire cages, instructions for installation, you know, no solid surfaces around it, nothing on it. Don't hang out or anything. Person's [00:22:00] not supposed to be leaning against it and don't secure it. Put it in an area where it should be allowed because it is going to deform substantially if a tire blows up in it. Peter Koch: [00:22:09] All right. Andy Wood: [00:22:09] That's the way it absorbs the energy by deforming. Peter Koch: [00:22:12] Yeah. So really it's there to absorb the energy. It's not going to keep it in one place, but it's trying to limit the amount of damage that the tire can do in the open space of the shop. Andy Wood: [00:22:22] And it's going to minimize the projectiles that come off of it. Hopefully, the tire will all stay together. Peter Koch: [00:22:27] Okay. So let's just think about those preventative pieces again. So, you know, we started at the beginning, we talked about the correct personal protective equipment. So safety glasses hearing protection steel toes, if you need all that. But then if you're going to reinflate tire cage appropriately positioned clip on Chuck with an adequate hose length. So you're not going to be in the way in case it does fail and then the remote pressure regulator so I can fill it and I don't have to stand right there. And again, all of those all of the requirements are [00:23:00] based on injuries and repetitive injuries that have happened in the past. And you just spoke about a few of them that have occurred over just the few years that you've had experience with it. But if you go back in the history of servicing tires, there's hundreds of thousands of injuries that have that have occurred, I'm sure, at the reinflation stage that some of them will probably never even know about if you get back far enough in the history of automotive. Peter Koch: [00:23:28] Let's take a quick break. Insurance is more than premiums and claims. It's also prevention and consultation to prevent harm from happening in the first place, to help injured workers get help fast MEMIC policyholders, have free and unlimited access to 24 seven injury triage and telehealth specialists. Policyholders can speak directly with a registered nurse within minutes of an incident which helps reduce overall medical costs and helps with faster claims processing. [00:24:00] Importantly, we found that 24 seven injury triage services can reduce claims for some policyholders by more than half. To find out more, go to MEMIC.com and then search, triage or telehealth. Now let's get back to today's episode. Andy Wood: [00:24:19] Just the stories that I've been told since I was been aware of the tire hazards. I always ask the questions in the stories that I hear, you know, that some did or didn't or didn't generate injuries. That's like, wow, that's going on way more than we would think out there. Peter Koch: [00:24:32] Yeah, it definitely is. Definitely is. And that's one of the pieces, like we said at the beginning of the podcast, like, you know, hopefully if you've thought that this has never happened in your shop before, we'll go back and have some conversations with people who've been there maybe longer than you have or have been dealing with tires for quite a long time. And I'll bet you there's at least one story in the history of your shop or history of your facility where [00:25:00] something has gone wrong and they've probably made some changes about how they deal with it to address that particular historical event. The problem becomes once that person leaves, or once you get comfortable with the process again, then you get back to just dealing with it like it truly isn't a hazard and that tire is almost that sleeping hazard. We don't think about it as a vessel pressure vessel, but that's really what it is. You put that much air into anything and there's certainly the potential for something to explode. And, you know, rubber and steel are it's not as strong as your as, say, like a steel a steel pressure vessel that you might have on a railcar or something like that. There's certainly the potential higher potential for it to fail. So think about it as a pressure vessel. Think about it as has the having the potential to truly kill you or someone around you. [00:26:00] So let's move from there. We've talked about the frequency of injuries. We've talked about the severity of injuries and what causes those types of injuries. Let's talk about some of the injuries that might happen actually on the road. So you've got some information about wheel failures on road wheel failures or actually some other challenges that we might have trying to manage a tire, whether it's still on the vehicle or the vehicle's actually traveling. Andy Wood: [00:26:28] Sure. And the injuries and the liability shifts dramatically when the truck goes back on the road. If your mechanics or your operators are working on tires, it's really an injury to them. When the truck goes back on the road, it's an injury to the motoring public. And not only do you have to deal with the injuries to other people, but the liability becomes catastrophic. Managing that when you have one of your trucks fail, some component of one of your trucks fail on the highway. And maybe because it wasn't properly serviced, it can be, and again, just on the very limited [00:27:00] not servicing the bearings or the axle at all, but just you took a tire off and you put another one on. So you might have a failure of the wheel, failure of the tire lug nuts studs or the hub assembly. That's all. Just by changing the tire that you're exposed to that much. And one of the common scenarios is what they call a wheel off event. And that's when one of those failures of any one or multiple of those components allows it a wheel, or it could be a dual wheel to separate from the vehicle. If you're lucky, that wheel goes off the side of the road into the ditch, goes into the tree somewhere. If you're not so lucky, it could go down the highway and hit another vehicle or a pedestrian or anything else, do serious property damage or personal injury or and we had one of those just recently, about two years ago, we had a kind of a worst case scenario. We had a wheel off situation. Dual wheels came off, a log truck [00:28:00] rolled down the side of the road, hit the guardrail, and then went right down the inside of the guardrail. And there was a state trooper had stopped a vehicle, was actually assisting a motor vehicle, and he was standing between the car and the guardrail. And the tire came right down the side of the guardrail and struck him, you know, pretty much a dead hit and killed him. So that's kind of the worst case scenario. What can happen when you have a wheel off scenario. The good thing of that is it has stimulated a lot of awareness and a lot of training and a lot of questions. And in the state of Maine, at least, we've had a lot of training. In fact, I've been to a couple of trainings just recently, trainings just about tires in general and actually trainings about what exactly happened in that situation. And the interesting thing was there was no catastrophic failure when the tire came off that truck. They did an autopsy on the truck, the autopsy on the tire in the hub. And they actually the whole truck as the commercial motor vehicle folks would do. And I guess what I call death [00:29:00] by a thousand cuts, you know, it was just little teeny things that had been overlooked and clearly had been overlooked for a while, things that the mechanic should have picked up on, things that the truck driver should have picked up on doing his pre trips and his post trips. You know, it wasn't like there was some major thing that had just failed. It was like all these little things combined and it just kept getting worse and worse until finally the wheels came off. And like I said, that was about as bad as it can get. So a few things that are going to cause those failures from the trucks on the road. Heat is a problem. So heat is used in the garage. Sometimes if you have lug nuts that are frozen on, they're going to use heat to take those off. Going back to the standard, if you put a torch to a lug nut, the studs and the lug nuts all have to be changed. Sometimes you'll take all the lug nuts off and you can't get the hub that excuse me, you can't get the wheel off the hub because it's seized on there again. Sometimes you'll take the torch and heat up the rim to separate it from the hub. You put the torch on the rim, [00:30:00] it's out of service. That has to be changed. So heat there is going to be a is going to cause not necessarily a failure right then, but failure later on when the truck is in service. If you run a underinflated tire or an overloaded tire, it's going to generate heat in the tire as well. Andy Wood: [00:30:16] That will cause the tire to fail. And what generally happens is the different components, the bonding of the different components, the different plies in the casings, the sidewalls, where they're all glued together. Something will separate at the bonding point when the tire gets too hot. So heat's a problem that has to be managed anywhere in the system. And the other thing that's a problem is lubrication. Some tires go on. It's right in the standards. It's right in the manufacturer's recommendations. The studs are not lubricated. They have to be put on dry. And other studs like the hub pilot had stubs. The there they have to piece knots, they have to be lubricated and the stud has to have a lubrication as well in order to create enough clamping force to hold [00:31:00] the tire on. So it's. Very specific on how that lubrication works. Some are lubricated and some are lubricated. Same thing when you're servicing the tire. If you're mounting and dismounting tires on rim, you need to lubricate the bead. In this case, they're always lubricated. If you don't use lubrication or you don't use the right lubrication, you're going to damage the bead. And that's not going to be noticeable until you fully inflate the tire and then maybe have it loaded. It's traveling at a high rate of speed which generates heat anyways, or it's heavily loaded, which generates heats. So those are going to be failures that maybe not be noticed until the vehicle is back on the road. Peter Koch: [00:31:38] Early, early on in my career, having worked in some older garages for different vehicles and some old school mechanics, watching them actually trying to manage frozen on lug nuts for some vehicles. Seen them used torches before and had never I hadn't realized that that was part of the standard that you can't use heat to do that. So if heat's [00:32:00] not to be used to remove the lug nut, then what are some options that you have out there? Andy Wood: [00:32:06] Well, it's interesting. After the wheel off incident, the fatal wheel off incident in Maine, our local trucking organization did a training and they had a guy from the TIA certified to do tire training and they had the officers who did the accident investigation, not talking about the injury, but just talking about tires in general. How many guys use a torch to heat up the lug nuts? And the room was full of mechanics and truck drivers and they all put up their hand and the guy said, you realize, you know, when you do that, that lug nut and that nut is out of service and everyone no, never heard of that before. So yeah, there's a lot of people that wouldn't have been aware of that. They did talk about several interesting tools that make your job a little bit easier and you don't damage so much equipment. One was the nut buddy, which was kind of an interesting unit. It's got a ratchet on one end and you slide it over the lug nut. It's got a brace that comes out and leans against the next lug nut. So it's stationary and you put a [00:33:00] handle on the end and you just turn it. It works kind of like a planetary gear. Folks know how that works, and it just creates a gear ratio of 58 to 1. So just with a small handle, you can apply incredible amounts of force to back that off there. And you don't you don't ruin any equipment in the process. Peter Koch: [00:33:16] So I thought you were going to say. I thought you were going to say, are you going to use a longer cheater bar on your ratchet arm? Andy Wood: [00:33:22] Yeah, I know. Peter Koch: [00:33:23] I'm glad I'm glad there's a better solution than that. Andy Wood: [00:33:25] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That was one option that worked really well. Peter Koch: [00:33:31] Also, we were talking before, too, there are some things that you can do to prevent some of this stuff, or at least identify if there's any particular problems before you put the vehicle back on the road. And I think there's a an acronym for that, which is RIST correct RIST. So what does that stand for and how would you use that? Andy Wood: [00:33:51] Yeah, a very simple process that came out of the training and is in the manuals as well. RIST, R I S T. The first one is [00:34:00] remove all debris. I inspect all components S snug nuts in a star pattern and t talk to manufacturers recommendations. So one of the biggest problems with going back to I remove all debris that's there's going to be some rust on the hub or on the on the wheel. And if you put that back together with rust in there, it doesn't allow the lug nuts to create enough clamping force to hold the tire in place. So a lot of folks think that the lug nuts, the studs hold the tire in place, but the studs and the lug nuts only create clamping force. And what holds it on there is the clamping force against the hub. So if you if there's any rust or any debris in there, you can't get that clamping force. So cleaning that meeting surface is really important. The inside of the rim and the outside of the hub inspecting all components. I'll mention something in a second. The five and one gauge. It's important, as I mentioned, with inspecting the rim flanges to make sure they are worn, particularly [00:35:00] in the aluminum rims. But all the components need to be inspected. The nuts need to be inspected. The studs, the holes, are they are they starting to wear wobble a little wear open up a little bit. That's all going to be inspected in the process and a tool that they had. There was the five and one inspection tool and that would check the studs for diameter. So if the studs have been worn from just from age or if they've been stretched at all, they're going to change in diameter. This tool, it's just a little tool that fits in the palm of your hand. It's just a piece of metal that's drilled out in different diameters to check the diameter of the studs, to check the diameter of the nuts if they're starting to wobble on both sides, elongation of the holes in the rim and the diameters of the holes in the rim. So for one easy tool, it can check five different components and you know, you're good to go to put that stuff back together. At least that stuff is going to be very quickly within standards and it's stuff that you can't tell by looking at it. It's nothing [00:36:00] you're going to be able to tell. But this little piece of metal has got index marks on it. If you slide it in and it goes to that point, it's out of service. It's pretty, pretty simple to use. And it solves a lot of the a lot of the problems. So remove all debris, inspect the components, snug nuts in a star pattern. That's just a question of, you know, we all heard that I think driver's ed, we learned that in high school. You know, you work your way around the rim in a certain pattern depending on how many lug nuts you have to make sure that the stress on the rim is being distributed evenly and that it's not getting distorted or warped at all. When you tighten one side all the way down and then go to the other side, sometimes it'll get bowed. So you do that evenly. And then the last one is the torque. And of course a lot of your places are going to use a wrench. They're going to use a air impact or impact wrench to put it back on. And the common thinking is that more is better in this case. More is not better. It's going to distort the wheels and it's going to stretch the studs. And if you stretch the studs, the lugs, the nuts after that won't stay tight in [00:37:00] the standard that says you need to use a torque wrench. Once you snug up the star pattern, you're going to go round with a torque wrench and set the nuts, the lug nuts to the torque that's recommended for that application. Andy Wood: [00:37:10] You can't just wind it up. You can't just put the long cheater bar on there. You know, I made a tool when I first started in the woods. I made a tool that I could just designed for changing the lug nuts on a skitter. And I thought I was pretty smart. I had a custom made and you can put a big long bar on in that and I could snap lug nuts off like nobody. And I thought, Jeez, you think it would just tighten down and stop, but you get enough leverage and you can break those right off. Of course, just before they break off, you've deformed them to the point where they're not going to hold and you might not know that. So the torque wrench and there's different styles of torque wrenches that can be used by the torque wrench is supposed to be used to tension those lug nuts back on there. And interesting. I don't know how many people have ever calibrated their torque wrench. Most people buy them and just use them, but they need to be calibrated, occasionally [00:38:00] recalibrated, I should say, to make sure they're still within the specs. Peter Koch: [00:38:04] Yeah, those are all good points and I think there's quite a few people, if they've ever changed their own tires that have probably used a cheater bar, probably not have used a torque wrench to do that. So they can, they can probably sympathize with you and, and think about some of those potentials. And, and you think about it, if you're running an aluminum rim and you are driving that that lug nut onto that stud as hard as you can and refund on it, that aluminum is brittle, it's going to break. And even if you're running just a steel rim, it's going to potentially deform. And then once you start loosening that wheel on the hub, you're going to start having problems around the rest of the components that are holding that tire or the wheel onto the car. So it really just starts the cascade of effects that could cause catastrophic problems later on down the road and possibly turn [00:39:00] into a tragic situation that you referred to there where the trooper got killed in Maine here. And I did. I ended up Googling while we were talking just a wheel off fatalities. And there's a number of fatalities that have occurred both in the United States and in Canada, where a wheel has come off from poor maintenance or from a component failure, and it's killed either someone in a car because it's hit the car and the car went off the road or it killed a pedestrian or someone who is on the side of the road. Peter Koch: [00:39:33] So definitely something I never thought about until we started having this conversation. But it's definitely out there and the things like I've said it numerous times outside of this podcast, the tires are the thing that makes your vehicle perform. It's just like having good shoes on your feet. You can't get good traction if you don't have good tread and you can't have good balance if you don't have good support in in those shoes and the same thing on your [00:40:00] on your car. The treads got to be good. The tires got to be well maintained and the serviceable condition and it has to be affixed properly, correctly and securely to the vehicle in order for it all to work. And then it's got to be the right tire for the right application. Your shoe might do everything that you want it to do, except when you want to try to play a sport with it, you're going to end up having some sort of failure. The same thing is going to happen with a tire that might not be designed for the load that you're trying to carry or the speeds that you're trying to travel. So we're gosh, I can't believe it. We've been here now for quite a while. We're right towards the end of our podcast here. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that I should have asked you, Andy, that you want to talk a little bit more around tire safety? Andy Wood: [00:40:46] Yeah, I think we've covered a lot. We've covered a lot of ground. Again, we're just trying to peak people's interest to maybe look a little further. I think for me, I had certainly been around heavy equipment, tires, been around trucks, and certainly [00:41:00] I have. I think I have the record in my at least in my family, five flat tires in one week. When I worked in the woods, you know, the gravel roads were just really tough on tires. So I spent a lot of time changing tires on equipment and on my pickups. It wasn't until just recently I went to some of this tire training and it was so simple and it makes so much sense. And yet it's nothing you're going to think of on your own until someone sits you down and says, This is the way this works. And you're thinking, Oh my gosh, I've done that all my life. I never realized that that's actually the way that's the way it works and that's the way it should be repaired. And so with relatively little effort, you can make yourself a much better technician as far as servicing, even if you're just doing occasional. And even when I change the tires on my pickup now I have a little different procedure and a little different process. So I would encourage folks to reach out there and look at some of the training that's available and get yourself or your mechanics or your technicians, or even if it's just operators [00:42:00] changing their own tires, get them to it as well. Peter Koch: [00:42:02] I think that's a great point. And so if I were to start looking for more information about servicing tires or maybe to try to get some of that training, where could I look? What are where? Some places that our listeners can find more information about surfacing tires or maybe find some of that training that you're talking about. Andy Wood: [00:42:20] Yeah. So the certainly the OSHA spells out what has to be in some of the training. But as far as getting the training, the TIA the Tire Industry Association, I would say that's the biggest trade group and they have the most training and it looks to me like it's pretty good. They have certified instructors that will go around to different parts of the country. Or you can go to, I think in the Midwest somewhere they are you can go to their facility and take the tire training, you know, and some of it's a combination of classroom training and hands on, you go to the tire shop, you have to do everything that you've talked about. The US Tire Manufacturers Association is another big group. So I would say those two would be places I'd start to get actual training by [00:43:00] myself. Peter Koch: [00:43:01] Nice. And we'll, we'll put those links and some other links in the show notes for the podcast. So if you're listening out there and you do want to find more information, you can go to either of those two organizations, Google those organizations, or you can check out the show notes in the podcast and you can head out there and see what's available for you. So, Andy, thank you very much for joining us today and for sharing your expertise or really, truly appreciate having this conversation with you. Andy Wood: [00:43:28] Sure, Pete. Thanks for the opportunity. And like I said in the beginning, when you start looking at these things and you kind of recount all the different situations you've been in, you realize, wow, there's a lot more things. I never really put all the dots together and think there's a lot more exposures than I thought I had out there. Peter Koch: [00:43:43] Yeah, for sure. I know one of the things that I'm going to just take away personally, like just managing my own personal fleet of vehicles, whether it be lawnmower or tractor or the cars that personally drive. And one of the things that I'm going to do is clip on Chuck and not stand anywhere [00:44:00] next to that tire when I'm inflating it. Because no matter how good I'm going to be at looking at it, I might not notice that something's going to fail. So that's one of the things that I can do personally that might keep me a little bit safer. And I'm certainly going to impart that information to my teenage drivers for sure. Thanks again to everyone for joining us today. This is part two of our two part podcast on Tire Safety with Andy Wood, Manager of our Forest Products Safety Services. Here at MEMIC, check out part one.