Travel Crisis

The Hole in the Tire
Brunswick, GA
January 16, 2025

 Driving is supposed to be worry free.

And for almost every trip Chris and I have made that has been the case. 

Until yesterday. 

I noted, as the trip began, that the truck would go over 100,000 miles. I should have suspected that this would not be a maintenance free trip. We were 30 minutes from our hotel for the night when the truck tire monitoring  system advised me that the passenger rear tire was losing air. Rapidly. I was traveling about 75 mph at this point in the left lane of three lanes.

Fortunately we were about a half-mile from the Brunswick, GA, exit and I was able to navigate to a gas station. Sadly, they were unable to help except for giving me directions to a tire company. I filled the tire with air and we made it the additional half-mile to the tire dealership. But wait, as we pulled away from the gas station we started hearing a loud metal banging noise. Upon arriving at the tire company I discovered that one of the tail pipes had separated from the muffler.

I bought two new tires and had them installed, but that left the tail pipe. The tire store was unable to provide any assistance for the tail pipe. After unsuccessfully trying to find a muffler service shop, I determined that I could bungee the tail pipe in place and continue on to Tequesta and have my own mechanic repair/replace it. 

All-in-all we were delayed about 1.5 hours--but the truck should be able to make the roughly 4-hour run to Tequesta tomorrow.

Turns out the tire was in a lot worse shape than I originally thought. It was on the back and I could not examine the tread without contorting myself. It used to be on the front, but was recently rotated and I fear there may be a camber issue with the back tires.

-- Bob Doan, Kingsland, GA