A friend directed me to a photo of his wife’s recently damaged vehicle tire. A large chunk of rubber had departed the tire (which WalMart decided to categorize as “road wear”) for no apparent reason.
“Road wear. Sure, if a hammer and chisel are road wear,” my friend said.
The story doesn’t end with WalMart and the loosely woven rubber tires, however.
Needing some assistance in changing the tire, his wife called the law enforcement. Though the policeman arrived, he was unable to assist due to liability reasons.
The policeman could not help due to liability reasons. (Repeated, for emphasis.)
He was able, luckily, to leave her with a business card, because a business card makes for a handy tool when your tire is molting.
“You should see his name,” my friend said. For full effect, he typed the name of the policeman so that I could see it in print: Assink.
Good news, indeed. Once the liability issues catch up with the police department and effectively renders them obsolete, this man, at least, can open up a tattoo parlor. The logo and slogan possibilities are endless.
I knew there was a reason I never buy cheap Chinese tires (which these almost certainly are) from Wally World.
That’s an interesting bit of wisdom to glean from an otherwise light-hearted post. That is, not to buy cheap Chinese tires from WalMart lest you suffer the same fate.
Relying on the brand name to determine whether the tire is a cheap Chinese tire or something else is not reliable. What many people think of as American tire companies (e.g., Firestone, B.F. Goodrich) are actually owned by foreign companies (Bridgestone and Michelin, respectively). And many tire companies have manufacturing facilities all over the world, including China. As with all consumer goods, tires marketed under one brand name acutally may have been manufactured by a different company.
If you want to know where and by what company the tire was manufactured, you have to retrieve DOT code on the sidewall.
Tires are actually quite complex, and various tire companies (both foreign and domestic) file US patent applications almost daily. And as far as Chinese tires being sub-par, my 2010 Consumer Reports tested 23 mid-priced light duty tires, 7 of which were made in China. Six of those placed in teh top half of the test group.
I am not a communist, but I don’t care for sweeping generalizations, generally.
Here’s what I know about tires:
Back when all those Wilderness tires were being recalled (was it Firestone? I don’t know), I was watching the evening news with dad. The report went on to describe the kinds of vehicles these tires were most often found on, which happened to be SUVs. I have a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I turned to dad and asked if those were the tires I had on my vehicle.
“Yes.”
“Should I be concerned?” I asked.
“Were you concerned ten minutes ago?”
That’s about all I know about tires.
Oh, you can get any quality level you want out of a Chinese factory: look at, say, the iPhone, a pretty reliable device considering the low-suds network it has to run on. And I don’t expect Volvo to go to hell now that Chery is paying the bills.
But Wally World is not going to sell you Bridgestone Potenzas at a modest markup if they can sell you some off-brand at a bigger one.
(I drive on Dunlops. Dunlop, at least outside the Pacific Rim, is a brand of Goodyear. I don’t much care where these were made, since they’ve long since proven themselves to me. Then again, they weren’t cheap.)