Recaps or New Tires?

[pearce trucking]

I used recaps on drives for many years with similar results as others here report. I finally decided on some new michelins. While at the tire shop, I asked the manager his opinion.
He said, "They've always been good for US."
That was the end of caps for me. I didn't realize how much headache I was putting up with to save a few bucks. Not to mention fuel economy. I run otr, and I only use low rolling resistance virgin tires now.

[arch_stanton]

I run local dump trucks and have had really good luck running recaps but only using 16 ply rough service Yokohama my 507 all position tires 26/32 tread depth or Yokohama my 053 drive tire with 32/32 tread depth they both have the same buff radius. All first time caps are drive with 32/32 tread the 2nd and 3rd capping can be drive or trailer rib. I have never had a virgin Yokohama blow out and have very few problems with caps and only once the casing gets to about 10 years old I did just have 3 casings fail in the last 4 months 2 were from 2006 and 1 from 2008 they were all running out on a trailer, Parkhouse tire will not cap a casing older than 5 years so those tires had been well abused on that trailer for awhile.

I only get 40K miles out of a new or recap tire with 32/32 tread depth on the drive position and we only run about 45K a year. The trailers are not pulled all the time so I,m not really sure on miles but it would be closer to 100K on new tread.

If you are going to run caps you have to do some research, all casings are not the same they have very different designs and some just should not be capped, my business is very hard on tires but not in the same way you over the road guys are, a long run for us is 25 miles loaded then empty back we don't really have a heat build up issue but we are overloaded and jump curbs all the time

[Brock]

I've been running bandag bdr-w recaps for a few years now, 140,000lbs highway.. .... 120,000lbs bush work and 100,000lbs highway year round and so far I have never blown out a single one...

All the bandag ones I've used have always been awesome with zero issue...... I have ran mom and pop shop recaps and had serious issues though.

[arch_stanton]

(05-29-2018 )Brock Wrote:  I've been running bandag bdr-w recaps for a few years now, 140,000lbs highway.. .... 120,000lbs bush work and 100,000lbs highway year round and so far I have never blown out a single one...

All the bandag ones I've used have always been awesome with zero issue...... I have ran mom and pop shop recaps and had serious issues though.

Yes you are right Parkhouse is a Bandag cap shop and they are very careful with what gets capped the cap shop removes all patches checks the casing under the patch and then puts on there own patch and all casings get X Rayed.

I also had good luck with a Michelin cap shop but that was 10 plus years ago they moved their shop 25 miles south of me so I went to Parkhouse 3 miles from the yard and almost always on the way home.

[smorgan87]

Recaps are a waste of hard earned money, barely cheaper than a good import but blow out or lose a cap within 20kmiles. Im with rawz, they oughta be illegal.

[DUKE58]

I am leased to big truck company .ALL of the trailer tires are replace with recaps. In 7 yrs I have blown 2 tires They have the air system on all trailers

[the missing link]

It cost me alot of coin to learn this , there all different levels of recaps . I used them my first year trying to start up in the bush . Half the Damm things never made it a hour from the tire shop. But he was selling rejects I am sure . In the bush or up here you can put on a 1000$ dollar tire and have cut or non fixable in a day . I do think there are places to run them and not to . If all I run was hiway , pulling under 80,000lbs , I would have the best low Rollin tires you could get . But each to their own , pulling 140,000 lbs , offroad you have to weigh everything . The touqe alone will burn them up , even running under 20 lbs of boost , miss that in with off road and you need a balance .
Just my personal verbal diarrhea

[kryten]

Up until about 8 years ago I ran mostly Bandag recaps. Of the first 2 sets one was good one not so good. The one not so good only 3 tires of the 8 wore the tread out. This set was also from a different retread plant than my tires normally came from. After this I had started building up a large enough supply of virgin casings that I could send in my own casings and get them back. If I didn't have a casing and had to buy one or more I made it clear that I wanted matched "A" casings (first time capped).

Now with the national account of my current carrier virgin Michelins are only a few hundred bucks more than recaps. The spokesman for the retread industry always said the miles to removal is the same for retread or virgin. I only ever managed to get 2 recaps to go over 500000 km (barely) but my virgin XDN2's when I put them on a couple of weeks ago for their last summer they had 585000 km and still have 7-9/32". With the extra miles I'm getting from the virgin rubber my cpm is lower than retreads.