How My Grandpa Helped Invent Dually Tires

Major automobile companies balked at the idea. But when he paid for a new dump truck in just 28 days because he could haul so much faster using double pneumatic rather than single solid rubber tires, they paid attention.

SPRINGVILLE, UT USA

The mid to early 1900's saw a different breed of do-it-yourself, make-due, can-do attitude than what is prevalent today, when everything is handed to us pre-packages, disposable, and mass produced.

Here's a story about my own grandfather that I heard for the first time just a few days ago, and here I am nearly 40 years old.

Back in the early '30s, my grandfather, Sylvester (Smuss) Allan, Grant Minor, and their buddy Bliss Childs, all from the Springville Utah area, took their wives and drove out to Detroit and bought three Ford dump trucks -- one each -- and one car, to take back to Utah with them. They wanted to get into the business of hauling rocks to solidify road beds.

While in Detroit, picking up their trucks, they had an idea to put two tires on each side in the back rather than one, and to use pneumatic (inner-tube) tires rather than the solid rubber tires that heavy vehicles used at that time.

All of the major automobile manufacturers they approached with this idea shoed them away saying that was a stupid idea. Besides, what did these hicks from Utah known, that their highly educated engineers did not know?

Firestone also said it would not work, but they agreed to at least help them fit their vehicles with the tires, putting necessary spacing between the two tires on each side so they would not rub against one another.

When they got back to Utah, they paid for the trucks in 28 days because their trucks could go so much faster than those that had solid rubber tires and could only go 15 miles per hour. They were paid by the load.

The automobile manufacturers send some people to check up on them, and about a year after this three-some had been in Detroit, the major automobiles announced a brand new improvement on their line of trucks -- duelly tires.

Now, as Paul Harvey would say, you know the rest of the story.

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http://www.greaterthings.com/News/FreeEnergy/Tangent/duelly_tires.htm