CPT,
It was a Sunday in October, with the temp. about 80, and we were northbound at 65 mph on Hwy. 318 in the Nevada desert. A passing motorist gave us "the trouble back there," hand signal. Pulled over onto the soft margin, and after stopping saw clouds of blue smoke billowing "back there." Both door side tires on the Hi-Lo were shredded and virtually gone. I'd been riding on rims for a short distance and fortunately the rims were still serviceable.
As stated previously, a big problem was stabilizing the trailer so I could jack it up. Experienced a lot of slippage on that soft and sloping shoulder until I "anchored" the road side tires with the scissor chock. Finally got it jacked up and my one spare mounted, and VERRRRY SLOWLY limped into the next town (Lund) some miles up the road. Hah, rest assured I wasn't holding back traffic... on Hwy. 318, during rush hour, you might see a car an hour. At Lund I found a nice level piece of paving, and while I was disconnecting and stabilizing the trailer, my wife is making all the calls to locate a tire dealer (finally had cell phone coverage). The only thing open in Lund on a Sunday is the Mormon church, and they don't sell tires, so we drove north to Ely. My wife found a gent who would was willing to open his shop... so we bought, and he mounted, the only two properly sized tires he had (both used with about 25% tread).
Went back to Lund, installed the tires, hitched up, drove back to Ely and camped that night. Woke up the next morning, and our right rear truck tire was half flat. After pumping it up we went back to the tire dealer for the repair, and he found a big old framing nail in the tire, causing a slow leak. Talking with the tire guy, we conjectured that I must have run through a field of spilled nails. There had more of the front trailer tire remaining than the rear. The tire guy said when you run over a nail, the front tire lifts the nail so it will imbed in the second tire. I think our rear trailer tire was flattened by a nail, and the weight of the trailer destroyed the front tire.
We were delayed half a day, and this was one of those ruffles that makes a road trip interesting! I had too many years in the Navy involved with Repair Lockers, and damage control, to get too excited about a couple of flat tires. But what REALLY concerned me was that I never felt the flat(s), or running on the rims. If I'd driven much further and wrecked the rims, I would have REALLY had a problem, as the next closest rim would have been over 350 miles away in either Las Vegas to the south, or Twin Falls to the north.
Over the winter I bought four new tires for the Hi-Lo and for my birthday, my wife gave me a tire (pressure and temperature) monitoring system. I am, once again, a happy camper!
Jim
