Marty's Travels

My house has wheels

I Hate Buying Tires

The problem with buying tires is that you frequently don’t have a choice in the matter, some disaster has occurred and just like that you’re paying out $500. Or you’ve been happily tooling around the continent and just wear them out. Fine, come up with $500 or die alongside a remote desert road.

I bought tires for my boat trailer today. Two of them were so bad they were illegal everywhere. I had two choices: replace the pair of bias-ply tires for $350, or upgrade all 4 for $450. Yes, not only were the tires built before radial/metric became popular, I expect the date of manufacture were in the 1980’s. They had tubes. And one wheel had to be scrapped because the valve stem had worn it’s hole into a pear-shaped configuration. I could go on.

I went with the new stuff all around. That completes the upgrading of the trailer, a 1979-vintage EZ-Loader with new surge breaks, stainless brake lines and brakes, LED lighting, new winch, and now new tires. Once I work on the rollers, it will be better than new.

Now that I’m safe going down the road, my next boat project is being safe and legal on the water. But I’m out of money…..