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When a tire reaches it's fifth year, we need to be concerned about dry rot. It will happen. It's an old tire having reached its life cycle and needs to be replaced.

Sumner wrote: my main concern now is that the highways are so crowded and the places to get off on a wide shoulder are not always available and/or especially safe. It is no fun sitting right next to busy lanes on traffic that are going by at over 70 mph. When I'm towing, especially through cities I often think...'man I hope we don't have a problem here'.

I hear you there. Murphy is a nasty character and his law states this will happen. You won't get a flat on a slow road with a nice pull out area to change the tire. After reading stories on here about blow outs and wheels flying off, I would rather invest in new tires every 5 years and not have to worry.

--Russ

I lost the bearings on a rear tire on my trailer (two axles) - pretty much the same as loosing a tire.

Never noticed it until 30 miles later when I got home. Now I know why I was getting all those rude looks (as the ball bearings went their merry way).

Sumner wrote:I had that happen also to a pickup I'd drive in Wyoming short distances. Moving down to Utah at about the 500 mile mark I had 3 tires give out in less than 100 miles ,

Sum

OK, how the heck did you manage to drive short distances in Wyoming???? Our own governor once said "Wyoming's a really small town with really long roads...."

Back on topic - I weighed our M after we loaded gear (nothing ridiculous, just normal gear, tools, clothes for a week, food) and it was about 4,900 lbs w/trailer - bearings were running about 115 degrees after extended highway runs, which isn't too bad, but I was nervous about being just past max weight. I've got almost 5,000 miles already on the Loadrite we got in April - 7,500 GVW, no worries, and any extra gear goes in the boat.

I was thinking about mounting an additional spare on the tongue (I tow with a diesel dually, 2.5" Class IV hitch, so tongue weight is essentially irrelevant) but haven't seen the need.

- Clay

RussMT wrote:

Sumner wrote: my main concern now is that the highways are so crowded and the places to get off on a wide shoulder are not always available and/or especially safe. It is no fun sitting right next to busy lanes on traffic that are going by at over 70 mph. When I'm towing, especially through cities I often think...'man I hope we don't have a problem here'.

I hear you there. Murphy is a nasty character and his law states this will happen. You won't get a flat on a slow road with a nice pull out area to change the tire. After reading stories on here about blow outs and wheels flying off, I would rather invest in new tires every 5 years and not have to worry.

--Russ

And Moore's law says the chances of that happening will double every two years!