Why do transport trucks sometimes have many spare tires hanging from their undercarriage, almost as many tires as those being used? Surely they don’t expect almost all tired being used to break down at once?

Question

Why do transport trucks sometimes have many spare tires hanging from their undercarriage, almost as many tires as those being used? Surely they don’t expect almost all tired being used to break down at once?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

I believe what you are talking about are tires that can be lowered to the ground and used as needed. Typically they are there to be used to distribute the payload across more tires. Let’s say a lighter load can use 6 tires and a heavier load will require 10 tires due to the extra weight.