Retreads/remoulds varied so much.
My first job before leaving school managed to sell a small batch of remoulds by Radial Remoulds Walthamstow to a well known tipper operator in Tonbridge, he carried on buying them over the years and they did good service, they used as many Mich casings as they could find.
Years later was issued with a new Daf 2500, in those days all 6 tyres were often the same type and i wasn’t exactly chuffed when my then boss had the 4 drives removed (for use on steers) and had 4 x Kenprest remoulds fitted across the back, had to eat my words because those Kenprests to this very day were the best wet gripping drive tyres i’ve used, the 2500 was lovely handling little motor and with a low bodied tipper trailer could be thrown about with gay abandon, you can never judge a book by its cover.
Kempston:
Juddian:
8 were fitted across the double drive rear of a Leyland Constructor, more than half of them blew out over a matter of months, that brought the short lived trial to an end due to lights wings etc being taken out.
Went back to using decent Mich XY or equivalents, considering the amount of tip work involved punctures and damage wasn’t the problem one might have expected (and proper tyre repair workshops were more common then), the biggest danger was ploughing things like steel sprung mattresses up on the landfill and them getting wrapped around the props.
I’ve had a mattress around the prop shaft, what a mess! 
Not a good thing ,the queen was coming to open something to our area o rural Scotland early 90s , we had to be in and out of our local landfill 2hrs before the section o rd was closed , it had been cleared n cleaned hedges trimmed daily for a week , well did jimbo not pull onto the rd with a part mattress explode wrapped round the prop , stop reverse back in , phone call to local council to. Come out and clean , was not a popular person for many weeks .
How about Vacu-lug or John Bull remoulds?
I can’t remember just what we ran on the rears at Tilcon. Obviously the new tyres plus spare were removed from the rear of eight wheelers when they came from the factory and placed in stock and then replaced with retreads but I’m not sure what we used? Bandags does ring a bell though, but I’m guessing that Harry our tyre man had the final say in what was on offer from the various reps.
Pete.
One the reasons that I took such a close interest and “hands on involvement” regarding tyres was an unfortunate episode that occurred in 1971 and it was caused by Ondura remoulds. This bloke had called two or three times in a van hawking tyres and batteries and other bits of workshop consumables like rags etc. I had never bought 'owt off him until this fateful day when he had on board 6 Ondura 1100 X 22:5 ZZpattern remoulds. The price he was asking was IIRC a bit less than what a Mich Remix was at the time and as they “looked” OK so I had deal with him and he threw in a bag of rags for “luck” ( which turned out to be OK at the top of the bagful but were from there on down they was F------ non absorbent nylon stuff !). Well we fitted 4 of the aforesaid Onduras to a trailer axle and two blew off on the way to London and a third "gave up the ghost on the return trip. So this 40 footer returned to Milnthorpe with three new Mich X cases fitted at the breakdowns . I had put them on the front axle so we had got away with no damage but had they been on the back axle I could imagine there would have been some lumber caused to the back lights etc.
So from that disaster I vowed from then on to avoid spurious remoulds which apart from Bandags and Remix I stuck religiously to for the next 25 years plus ! Funny thing was though I never clapped eyes on “The Wandering Minstrel” again I wonder why !
PS The only other “Itinerant” that I ever dealt with again was a Bloke called Conboy ( That was his real name!) from Blackpool who used to call in at the yard a couple of times a year hawking random bundles of Keruing planks which was ideal for repairing our trailer floors so I was always pleased to see him as his prices were way cheaper than if I bought flooring from our Trailer suppliers. Cheers Dennis.
Sorry Dennis,… very amusing post, but that wandering minstrel bit really cracked me up. I still can’t stop laughing at the mental image that I have of you mopping up an oil spillage using nowt but a handful of ladies nylon undergarments…tt.chh.pff…pfft…pfftwhoarr.harr harr.
I was driving a Commer TS3 and had a thumping on the steering. It was a bandag on the steering and about a foot of tread had come unstuck from the casing and stretched a bit which meant I could put my hand under the tread and out the other side. Other tyre complaints I can remember from the seventies were Dunlops that cracked around the bead, Uniroyal that came out in a bulge like an egg in the sidewall and Michelin that had a raised ridge from the bead to the tread.
pete smith:
How about Vacu-lug or John Bull remoulds?
I was just going to mention Vacu-lug and Colway Tyres. Colway remoulded racing and rally tyres which kept the boy racers happy.
Vacu-lug tended to specialise in off road tyres, like forktrucks, tractors and plant machinery. A friend of mine operates a remoulding business and can remould more or less any size and type, lots are used on agriculture, port services and construction, but as mentioned it all starts with a good case and is quite labour intensive, stripping, examining, preparing and cooking a tyre.
Bewick:
One the reasons that I took such a close interest and “hands on involvement” regarding tyres was an unfortunate episode that occurred in 1971 and it was caused by Ondura remoulds. This bloke had called two or three times in a van hawking tyres and batteries and other bits of workshop consumables like rags etc. I had never bought 'owt off him until this fateful day when he had on board 6 Ondura 1100 X 22:5 ZZpattern remoulds. The price he was asking was IIRC a bit less than what a Mich Remix was at the time and as they “looked” OK so I had deal with him and he threw in a bag of rags for “luck” ( which turned out to be OK at the top of the bagful but were from there on down they was F------ non absorbent nylon stuff !). Well we fitted 4 of the aforesaid Onduras to a trailer axle and two blew off on the way to London and a third "gave up the ghost on the return trip. So this 40 footer returned to Milnthorpe with three new Mich X cases fitted at the breakdowns . I had put them on the front axle so we had got away with no damage but had they been on the back axle I could imagine there would have been some lumber caused to the back lights etc.
So from that disaster I vowed from then on to avoid spurious remoulds which apart from Bandags and Remix I stuck religiously to for the next 25 years plus ! Funny thing was though I never clapped eyes on “The Wandering Minstrel” again I wonder why !
PS The only other “Itinerant” that I ever dealt with again was a Bloke called Conboy ( That was his real name!) from Blackpool who used to call in at the yard a couple of times a year hawking random bundles of Keruing planks which was ideal for repairing our trailer floors so I was always pleased to see him as his prices were way cheaper than if I bought flooring from our Trailer suppliers. Cheers Dennis.
That’s what you get for dealing with “Pykies” Dennis!
David
I used Bandags on my Atkinson for years without a problem, kept them up to pressure and stayed around the 60mph and never had a blowout. Same on my 2800 DAF, 12.00 s on it and eventually all Bandag. Trailer tyres were replaced with Bandag as well as they wore out, I can honestly say I never had any tyre problems and Bandags also outlasted everything else, very hard wearing but not renowned for grip if that’s what you were after.
Alans of Manchester had them fitted to the steers of their Scania 111’s as everything else wore off at he shoulders with the new fangled power steering that was getting quite popular at the time.
Greetings,All.
Ref.Bandags,the SA 401 with a Spirit trailer I drove on Shell at Wandsworth Terminal and all of the other artics (Leyland,ERF etc.) had them fitted on all drive axles
and were never any trouble.Regards,stay safe,900x20.
Well we never used Bandags, We used to get ours done by a fellow called Trevor Brewis, Who did a great job with Ringtread a similar sort of Rubber , We never had any problems with them, Plus they were a cheaper than Bandags, Of course its up to ones choice of these products which ones they prefer, Regards Larry.
I remember a Co. Called Autotread who did tyres I tried a couple of them as they were cheap as chips, But the were very poor IMO, So I never got anymore, The first motorways were littered with them when they failed, Im sure other hauliers on here will remember them, Regards Larry.
In 1976 I was driving this Nissan U.G. 780 around Southern Africa for an engineering company based in Windhoek, South West Africa. Bandag had just opened their first depot in Windhoek and my boss had arranged to have two new Bandag’s fitted on the front axle. We were building an army base at a place called Katima Mulilo on the banks of the Zambezi River at the time which was about 1,200 kilometers away and on the way back the complete tread of one the Bandag’s peeled off. That wasn’t a problem as I just fitted the spare wheel and threw the tread on to the back of the truck.
About two hundred kilometers from home the other Bandag started to peel off and I limped home with three wheels on the back axle.
You can imagine which song I was singing to myself for the next few hours.
youtube.com/watch?v=r1pFTSQfmhU
In the eighties we used to have Bandags on the trailers running down to the Middle East, never on the units and I can’t remember having any problems with them then. I don’t think that Bandags were ever fitted to the step frame garment trailers that we used to have.
I should of thought that Suedehead would of had some thoughts about Bandags.
carrier bag from a 1980s tipcon show.
I believe that Bandag was an American import and IMHO was the very best of the remoulds and re-caps that were available during the 70’s, other former Operators may hold differing opinions to mine. 
Cheers Bewick.
hade to pose for a photo to be used in a Bandag brochure
and I also had a second opinion , the guard dogs I kept over the years and even the most placid one could quickly weigh a ■■■■■ up and turn vicious baring it’s teeth. The last two dogs I had would have torn the ■■■■■■■■ apart in the blink of an eye ! Cheers Dennis.
