12,500 pounds per tire?

[Executioner]

Titan Tire ships world's first 63-inch tire

Remember in the first Crocodile Dundee movie when he gets mugged in New York City and Sue says "He's got a knife," and Dundee says, "That's not a knife, this is a knife," and then he pulls out a beast-killing monstrosity of a blade? Well, that's what the folks at Titan Tire are saying right now about every other -- smaller -- tire in the world.

Titan has made a 63-inch rubber behemoth for use on trucks in Canada's oil sands. The stats on these rubber donuts is impressive: the 59/80R63 is the biggest production tire in the world, standing over fourteen feet tall and weighing 12,500 pounds with a load rating of 101 metric tons. It makes Titan a very appropriate name for the company, as we learned from another movie, Remember the Titans, that in Greek mythology the Titans were greater even than the gods. Now we can only hope this development will make the price of oil drop another ten dollars...
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/07/31/tita ... inch-tire/

[b-man1]

that's pretty darn cool.

[EvilHorace]

I have to wonder what type machinery installs those on rims and what that's gotta cost too. Big $$, no doubt.

[normalicy]

Yeah, and they pay around $2-3 per pound of capacity too. I saw as show on these. They make them by hand & lay hundreds of layers of rubber. Then after the basic shape is set (look like slicks), they put them into monster presses to get the final shape. Pretty much everything on those trucks is handled by cranes.