Scary Blowouts - How Not to Move Cattle

September 19, 2011 - 10:36 AM

A photo can tell a story.

We have sold a number of our breeding cattle and are in the process of delivering them to the only place in Texas that is green; north of High Island near Trinity Bay on th eGulf of Mexico. One load went down on Friday, round trip of 600 miles, and no problems. Saturday morning it started differently. Before we loaded we noticed one tire on the trailer was low. It had a nail in it so off to town and get a patch. Then we saw that a herd bull was not with his ladies, but had gone through a fence to eat in our vegetable garden. So he had to be persuaded to go home. We got off 2 hours late.

Off we went happily and got 50 miles. As we exited interstate 20, on the ramp, bang!#@# A tire blew in half on the trailer. Smoke everywhere. We got to the edge of the road safely and started no grass fires. NO ONE stopped to help. Eva and I managed to jack up the trailer with the cows in it. Perhaps 14,000 lbs. Tire changed ,we consulted our GPS and a tire store in Kilgore was 2 miles away. We got there just before noon closing. They were very nice and we bought four new trailer tires, and an extra spare with rim just to be on the safe side.

All went well after that. The cattle were delivered and we spent Saturday night on galveston Island. Late Sunday afternoon, as we traveled on the toll road in north Houston on a bridge, Bang !#$@# The front right tire on our 1 ton pickup shattered. Nothing was left of it. We slowed and rolled off the bridge to the side of the road- sparks flying. I figured the rim was toast (it wasn’t).

A nice fellow stopped and with two jacks we got the turck up and chnaged the tire. Using the GPS again the only tire store options were 5 miles away. We found Sam’s Club an hour before closing. There jacks were messed up, but they were able to get the front of the truck up. We got two new tires and went on our way getting home before midnight.
The next day we got two new tires for the rear of the truck and ordered a rim so we have two spares.

Amazing in the past year we have hauled cattle over 6,000 miles and had no problem. I guess it was our time to be challenged. In any case, we have a few more loads to go and will have good tires to roll on.