I prefer to do my own dirty work
Today’s driver calls a tire service to repair or replace a flat. You stay clean — but it costs money
Inever was flush enough with cash, or brave enough, to order a brand new rig on credit. Instead I was always happy with buying “experienced” three-year-old rigs, and with each one I made good money.
But it wasn’t until recently that I discovered a feature that can’t be ordered with the purchase of a rig, new or used, diesel powered or one of those new plug in jobs. You cannot order a spare tire.
I came to this realization when a friend asked me to go with him to check out a car that he was thinking of buying. He did buy the new-tohim vehicle, and when we got it home and were crawling all over it, we both realized it did not have a spare tire. No jack or tire iron either.
Too late to do anything about the absence of what we thought were needed parts, but then I realized that a spare tire today is almost a forgotten language/forgotten item.
What often comes in a spare tire’s place is a goofy looking tire that looks like a rubber band around a wheel with instructions that it is only safe to use to drive to the nearest business to buy a replacement tire. Then too, with some cars, the owner needs to buy two tires so both have equal wear or the car is thrown out of alignment. Still other vehicles come with just a can of goop you squirt into the flat tire in the hopes it will inflate. Good luck with that.
It’s all in the name of saving space and saving weight, thus saving fuel in today’s world of cookie cutter stamped-out vehicles.
Rigs are slightly different. I’ve had a few front steering axle flats, and managed to change them myself on the side of the highway. I wasn’t carrying a spare tire. I was driving on one. What I did in each case was jack up the rig and take off one of the drive wheels, flip it around, and put it on the front axle and head for home.
It required the use of two bottle jacks, but that was easy enough, and I always carried a lug wrench that allowed me to take off the tire bolts. It consisted of a long wrench with a hole cut through the end, into which I slid a one-metre long bar.
I stood/jumped on the bar and had 175 pounds of torque, and off it came, and on went the tire nuts. Simple physics. Manual labour. Dirty work. Something today’s drivers would never think of doing.
Instead, today’s rig driver immediately reaches for a cellphone and calls a tire shop to send out a tire repair/ replacement truck to do what we used to do ourselves. Easy couple of hundreds of dollars spent, just to stay clean. Must be nice!
I still carry my trusty wellused manual tire torque wrench and bar in my company rig. You never know. I also carry hand cleaner and rags. Two very handy items to keep on board in case of a flat tire. I’m old school, and not about to change anytime soon.
When I first started driving, tires had tubes. Flat tire? Take off the wheel, pull out the tube, find the hole, patch it with your always-in-the-glove-box repair kit, and for 25 cents the tire was soon pumped up with the standard equipment car tire pump, and Bob’s yer uncle.
Radial tires presented a different challenge, but if a spare tire, jack and tire iron were in the trunk, the spare was soon on the vehicle, and that was that.
What we have today are cleaner, lazier drivers who are supplying work to guys who don’t mind getting dirty. I guess it is a win-win situation, but I still prefer keeping my money and doing my own dirty work.
I could fill a newspaper with stories about life on the road, but why not share yours? Send them to Driving editor Andrew McCredie at amccredie@postmedia.com.