Well, if your forklift tire looks like the one in the above picture, you certainly don’t need new lift truck tires yet. Unless your forklift tires are brand new, however, they most likely don’t look like that. This post is about identifying whether or not you need new forklift tires and some signs that maybe a replacement should be in your near future. When discussing forklift tire replacement, you want to know the type of tire you have. 

There are a few main signs that it may be time to replace your forklift tires or maybe just one tire. They are outlined below:

1. Chunking
 Chunking describes the process where bits of the tire, or chunks, chip off. Let’s look at this image below:

You can see the top of this forklift tire has some chunks missing from it. If this happens to a significant amount of the tire or is concentrated in a similar area on the tire, it may be time to replace the tire. It will get worse over time and creates a bumpy, rough ride. If extreme, it can lead to pallets “bouncing” as the wheels travel over the “chunked” area on the tire.

2. Puncturing

We don’t have a picture of a punctured tire, but we hope it’s self-explanatory. If your air pneumatic forklift tire has a flat, you already know it needs to be repaired or replaced. A puncture may occur due to collisions with objects, repetitive contact with debris. and driving over coarse terrain. 

3. Wear

Wear is constantly happening to your forklift tires whenever they are in motion. That is fine, but once they reach a certain point, it can become a hazard and, if unaddressed, can lead to significant downtime. Let’s look at the following two pictures:

The picture on the left is a treaded tire that shows extreme wear. There is so much wear, in fact, that the tread is almost gone completely. See that ring that is right below the tread? On the forklift tire on the left, it is about a centimeter from the end of the tire, and on the forklift tire on the right, it is roughly 2.5″ – 3″ from the end of the tire. That is the very end of how much the tire can wear before you need to replace it. We suggest replacing tires before that much wear accumulates as, depending on your application, waiting until the tread is completely gone can lead to hazardous situations. Comparing these two tires directly does an excellent job of illustrating how much tread has worn off of the tire on the left.