Ok, Men. Tell Us What You Think About This – IOTW Report

Ok, Men. Tell Us What You Think About This

40 Comments on Ok, Men. Tell Us What You Think About This

  1. Meh. I started as a tire buster at Kmart, and worked on cars for the next 20 years, so I did stuff like that and more when I was younger, with steel wheels too no less

    Which probably helps explain the bad knee and hernias Ive had since…

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  2. In the mid 1970’s my dad was wholesaling tires out of Hasty Tire in Rudyard MT, that was before Tire-rama and almost everything was handled by hand. Tires rolled off the semi trailers and there were a couple guys who grabbed them and slung them over their head up to the second story where another teen guy and I would catch hold of them. My dad could pitch them up too. There weren’t many who could. FWIW, there wasn’t much need for compact car tires in Rudyard MT in the mid 1970’s.

    The loft is above the office and at the the floor is at the top of the bay door level.
    https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x536af50053e254e1%3A0x54b0443e4a1c31a6!3m1!7e115!4s%2Fmaps%2Fplace%2FHasty%2BTire%2Brudyard%2BMT%2F%4048.5606495%2C-110.5538269%2C3a%2C75y%2C91.76h%2C90t%2Fdata%3D*213m4*211e1*213m2*211sg50o5O9OrGyvVAnFXAYCkQ*212e0*214m2*213m1*211s0x536af50053e254e1%3A0x54b0443e4a1c31a6%3Fsa%3DX%26ved%3D2ahUKEwjUuOqQxYuHAxVqgo4IHQ6KAMIQpx96BAg1EAA!5sHasty%20Tire%20rudyard%20MT%20-%20Google%20Search!15sCgIgAQ&imagekey=!1e2!2sg50o5O9OrGyvVAnFXAYCkQ&cr=le_a7&hl=en&ved=1t%3A206134&ictx=111&cshid=1720032809478791

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  3. I used to work at this exact Sears store. I had graduated from buster to front ends and brakes by then, but tire loading and scrapping casings was an All Hands evolution because Sears sold a blue million tires.

    If you look at this video where I have it cued at 02:55, the small roll-up door at waist height you see opened onto a really rickety but broad conveyor. Tires were stored on the second floor, so the truck would pull up 90 degrees to this door and we’d take turns throwing tires out, throwing them in the opening, and picking them off the top of the conveyor and wheeling them to the proper rack upstairs.

    https://youtu.be/oMcyIn-vXfo?si=yc0JhpBiTyoqnSd3&t=2m55s

    The double door immediately to the left of this opened to where we kept the junked casings, which were in all kinds of different shape and often had steel belting sticking out of it. They didnt roll well all the time so we’d open these doors and unstack hundreds of them, all interlaced together for stabilty, throw them into the semi, walk them all the way back, then relace them to the ceiling.

    Whoever made this video (not me) didnt do a great job looking inside, but if you look all the way to the right as he pans in the window at 04:53, you can barely make out the tire sink where we’d wash the blue covering off the whitewall tires (yes, THAT long ago), and the tire chute from the second floor next to it. Youd get your ticket and go upstairs (staircase in the upper left behind a door, or walk up the tire conveyor on the upper right), pick your tires and roll them to the central chute and throw them down. After washing the bluing off you couldnt leave water in them so the most common way to get rid of it quickly was flip the tire rapidly and repeatedly so the water would come out, then you could mount it, balance it, match it, and install it on the vehicle. You would then take the old tires back to the room with the conveyor on the upper right, unless the customer wanted them (which they rarely did).

    Because of this, every man in that shop and at least one woman (yes, even THEN we had one, a rather boxy model but a woman withal), myself included, COULD have juggled tires if they wanted to.

    But I cant imagine ANY of us actually WANTING to…

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  4. @ aircubed WEDNESDAY, 3 JULY 2024, 15:15 AT 3:15 PM

    It took all day to unload a semi trailer full of tires, it took two hours if you threw them upstairs instead of hauling them up the stairs.

    @ SNS WEDNESDAY, 3 JULY 2024, 15:20 AT 3:20 PM

    I remember flipping tires to get the water out after washing the bluing off of them.

    My dad was wholesaling tires all over No and So Dak, Wyoming and eastern Montana. We sent a lot out on a gooseneck behind a GMC pickup, we sent as many on Grey Hound busses. The Grey Dog stopped in every two bit town back then and we could get some pretty large tires “there” the next day. Seven days per week. It wasn’t unusual for someone to call first thing Sunday morning and my dad and I would pull the tires and drop them off at the Grey Hound station after church. He had tires stored in every conceivable location back then, quonset huts, backyard sheds, granaries, calving sheds and one side of two car garages in town. I remember moving tires from one place to another before harvest.

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  5. I had a 73 Mercury Comet that would eat through tires every 2 thousand miles or so. It needed an alignment but was so rusted no shop would touch the thing. Luckily I had a buddy working at the local tire shop, he would save out the tires they were going to send to the dump for me. He’d work Saturdays when no one else was there, I’d take a 6 pack and go over to see him and he would mount tires on rims for me, I usually had 3 or 4 spares in the trunk. I got really good at changing the tires on that car, I’d have another one on in less than 5 minutes.

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  6. As a kid I always worked haying in the summers for 50 cents and hour, but never got arms like that guy, and now the hands on the clock are doing me in.

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  7. I used to draw a chalk line on the center of the front tires (spin the tire and mark the center) then measure the the distance between the two at the front of the tires and do then same at the rear (of the front tires). Adjust the alignment to make them the same adding a smidge of tow-in to compensate for running. Worked good enough for a poor college kid! It wouldn’t align them with the rears, but that usually wasn’t the biggest issue.

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  8. Harry
    WEDNESDAY, 3 JULY 2024, 17:35 AT 5:35 PM
    “I used to draw a chalk line on the center of the front tires (spin the tire and mark the center) then measure the the distance between the two at the front of the tires and do then same at the rear (of the front tires). Adjust the alignment to make them the same adding a smidge of tow-in to compensate for running.”

    …One of the rigs I used at Kmart was literally a pair of wheel clamps with 2 tape measures, one in front and one in back. It was really basic, but with most cars then having mush bucket suspensions, paralleogram steering linkage, rear wheel drive, and bias ply tires, it actually worked pretty well. We had this magnetic bubble level thing that stuck to a plate in the middle of it for camber and caster, so with that, some shims, and a little basic math we were good to go, no computers required.

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  9. SNS -lasers and computers have written the book “Alignments For Complete Dummies”, but the principles haven’t changed. Yes I know there are some exotic suspensions out there today, but the average family truckster isn’t that different than 40 years ago.

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  10. @ Harry & SNS
    redneck alignment:
    tape measure, plumb level and string. with patience its just as good as the machine for toe, camber and front-to-back, but you can’t check caster.

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  11. Old weight lifter here. Can I through those tires that high. I can. But it would hurt. Can I catch those tires. I can. But it would hurt much worse then throwing them. I need to get some one to hand me fresh tires and 5 pounds of ice for my shoulders. It ain’t fun getting old.

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