Skid steers are extremely useful equipment that is available in different shapes and types, based on their required utility. The smaller variety is ideal for jobs like landscaping, minor demolition, site development and movement of materials. Bigger varieties are used for lifting heavy goods and transporting them. Because of their massive lifting capacity, they are also great for removing debris from a site.
Given the intensive nature of work that skid steers are required to do, their tires experience a considerable amount of pressure.
Here are some facts that you may find interesting about skid steer tires.
- Flat proof tires: If your equipment is working on a construction site, it’s not exactly difficult to run over sharp objects like nails or glass. So how many times do you replace a punctured tire? None. Flat proof tires cannot be punctured because they don’t have the inner tube that traditional tires do. However, keep them restricted to flat surfaces.
- Pneumatic tires: Considering that all work cannot be restricted to a flat surface, the pneumatic tire variety lets your vehicle take on the rugged and rough terrains with absolute ease.
- Visual inspection: All you need to determine the need for a tire change is by inspecting the tires visually. Cracks, missing chunks and damaged treads are some signs that tell you that you need to get new tires.
- Uneven tire wear: If you take a look at the skid steer tires, you may often find the front tires more worn out than the rear ones or the other way around. There is no need to get baffled by this as it is quite common for skid tears to cause more wear and tear to one set of tires first. In such a situation, you can interchange the tires if the damage is not too much already. But it is always safer to change all four of them.
- Grounded and engaged: Make sure that the tires operate on the ground rather than the road as that is what they were designed to operate on. Running the tires on road surface will cause them to wear out way faster than if you just use them on the ground. Also, the skid tires experience a lot less damage when all the four tires are engaged with the ground. The front tires may lift above the ground causing stress to the rear tires when incidentally, the bucket is placed much lower than a load.
