The images you see both above and below depict a heavy duty tire exploding inside an inflation safety cage. The steel bars of that cage are deflecting because of the massive forces involved. Now imagine the same tire failure happening without the cage and it is easy to see why this can and is often a fatal situation. Tragically a New Hampshire family is dealing with the loss of a son in his 20s and a Maine man, also in his 20s was injured when such a failure occurred at a Sears Auto Center and there was no cage being used at the time. First responders found 22-year old Justin Almon lying on the floor having suffered blunt force trauma to his head. 23-year old Maine resident Adam Sproul was also lying on the floor with a head injury. He was air lifted to Boston Medical Center and his injuries were not considered life threatening. Unfortunately Almon did not survive the incident and despite being rushed to the hospital his life ended shortly upon arrival to that facility. This is horrible and it highlights the often invisible dangers that mechanics are in the presence of every day.
Virtually every news report of this fatal accident mentions that a heavy duty truck tire was being inflated on a tire changing machine when the calamity occurred. We have no idea if there was an inflation cage at the shop Almon was working in, we don’t know if he didn’t use it, we have no information on any of that but we do know that lots of you out there that read BangShift work around this stuff daily and we’re begging you to do it the hard way. Ultimately if you are on top of something like this and it blows up, you are going to be in trouble but if you have the equipment available to use, by all means please do. At the shop I worked in during college, you were IMMEDIATELY fired if you decided to fill a big tire without rolling it into the cage first.
It is horrible to think about what this young man’s family is having to deal with at this time of the year but the reality is that this is a pain that will never leave their lives. If you are out there working on tires big and small please take all the necessary precautions and keep yourself safe.
BangShift will keep the Almon family in our thoughts during this holiday season. Just a terrible deal.
Click here to see the whole story surrounding this avoidable tragedy
One night, at the end of a very long hard day, I needed to do some welding on a steel rim and contemplated just getting to it without letting the air out first. A part of me said “just do it…it’ll cool fast enough that the pressure won’t get that high…”. I thought about it for awhile but then added five minutes to my day and hit the Schraeder valve. The very next week after that there was a news story about a guy in a shop I was familiar with who welded on a wheel and was literally decapitated when the tire blew, there in front of all of his co-workers. Gave me a case of the creeps I still remember.
Some years after that my nephew witnessed a man killed when a truck tire blew while changing to a spare. What an unnecessary way to end a life.
Gruesome stories but I do believe they help us remember to stay safe.
The type of wheel isn’t described anywhere.
Was it a split rim? I’ve heard horror stories about them coming apart.
I am not certain, but I don’t think Sears will work on split rims. The one near me wouldn’t touch them. I don’t know of a corporate-minded car and light truck center that will mess with splits.
Just awful. Take the time to be safe. I don’t have an inflation cage, but use a clip-on air chuck and a long extension hose to the inflator. Hook it up and fill from 10 or more feet away, especially with split rims on old trucks. These use nearly 100 psi and can be lethal if something goes wrong.
In my younger days I was a tech for a trucking company If I was out in the field doing a tire repair I used to slide the tire under the trailer when I was inflating it
one time the (split ring ) came off … I’m glad it was under the trailer when It did scared the hell out of me
Smart move! Kind of a McGyver safety cage, huh?
Yupppppp! Split rims are nasty!!!!!!!!
I the late 80’s I worked at a local tire store that had a couple of locations and did truck tires at a few of them. One day I was visiting one of the stores that did truck tires and saw that the tire cage was damaged. When I asked about it the manager said he was changing the tire that blew and the only reason he put the wheel and the cage was that he could tell the ring on the rim was not right and that he normally didn’t use a cage. But when the tire blew up in the cage it still through him across the shop.
I personally own a triaxle dump truck, last season i was parked in a parking lot awaiting directions to my next job location when all of a sudden my right front tire exploded and literally ripped the front fender and part of the fiberglass hood right off the truck…..if someone had been standing near that it would’ve been tragic