I guess I probably got my money's worth

In an economy seemingly dependent on planned obsolescence, new versions of iPhones coming out every two years or so, technological advances so quick you haven't even paid for the last one before you have to have the new one, cars coming a step closer to driving themselves with every model year, I had quite a surprise today.

That's the tire and the trailer, now relegated to yard work but
sporting new camo rails.

The other day I was hauling some manure from my neighbor's alpaca yard to put on the garden over the winter.  As I was shoveling it onto the garden I noticed one of the tires on my four-wheeler trailer was loose on the rim and had broken the bead that makes the seal to hold air in it.

Of course my mind jumped to the worst possible scenario, one where I would have to replace the tire and the wheel.  If anyone has tried to buy just a tire for something like a small-wheeled trailer knows, you often have to buy the wheel too, partly because it is so difficult to mount a tire on those small rims.  So I figured while I was at it I might get a couple of those fat off-road tires for it that probably cost more than $100 apiece.

I couldn't think of anything that happened that could have deflated the tire, no heavy loads, no blowout, so I figured it might still be good, just lost all its air.  And then I remembered a trick someone had told me for mounting a tire on a small wheel.

I got one of the ratcheting straps I use for tying down loads on the trailer and the snowmachine sled and trailer and fed it around the tread of the tire.  Slowly tightening it forced the tire bead against the rim, I was hoping, tightly enough so it would hold air and let the tire fill.

It worked.

Today while I was putting the wheel back on the trailer I was complimenting myself for saving a couple of hundred dollars and thinking, that's pretty bad, a tire deflating and coming off a rim. Then I started doing some math. I bought that trailer in 1986 for hauling building materials over the trail while I was building the cabin at the East Pole.

So what's that?  Ten, twenty, seven.  Wow, I have had this trailer 27 years, which means I have had the tires for 27 years also and I don't recall ever filling the tires with air though I might have filled them using a foot pump once. It's just a cheap little Coleman trailer I got at Costco and it and the tires have lasted 27 years having gone over that East Pole trail maybe a hundred times, half of those with heavy loads.  Parts like fenders have been knocked off it but this tire failure was the only thing vital to fail so far.  But the tire didn't really fail , I did, by not checking it for air once in a while. Even if the tire was no good, I think I got my money's worth with 27 years of service.

The only regret:  I wasn't intelligent enough to check the other tire and today learned that one is soft, too, so another trip to the service station.  It's off the trailer and in the Jeep for the next time I go into town.  The only problem is, this one looks like it has a couple of cuts in a sidewall so I may have to spend that money yet.  But for now, pretty smug with how long this outfit has lasted.