“Heavy Duty” normally isn’t subjective. Advance Tires makes it subjective, by making Heavier-Duty tires for already heavy duty vehicles. Most of this company’s tires do not even fit on standard road vehicles. Advance’s specialty are the solid rubber tires used for construction vehicles and heavy equipment in harsher than standard environments.
The kinds of environments that entail driving over nails, spikes, jagged metal, and other evil stuff on an hourly basis for years on end. These tires can be speared with a knife, shot clean through with a high powered rifle, and just keep going with nary a shrug. This is because of their solid nature. It’s impossible to have a flat tire if there was no air in the tire to begin with. Now there are drawbacks to a virtually indestructible tire: namely extremely high weight, reduced grip, and lack of ride comfort. But for those specific heaviest-duty applications, nothing else quite does the job like a solid tire from Advanced.
Company Information & Background
Advance Tire was founded in 1987, and is family owned and operated. They are a big deal in the American heavy duty tire industry, and are one of the largest players in that arena. While solid tires are their claim to fame, they also produce a large quantity of foam filled heavy duty tires. A larger quantity than anyone else in the country, to be precise. In addition to this Advance makes a small selection of standard air-filled, pneumatic tires. Not many tire companies can claim to not need air, but Advance Tire has that as part of their core identity.
Cost & Pricing
Prices for Advance Tire’s products vary about as widely as the machines they apply to. Advance supplies solid and other tire options for everything from small skidsteers to enormous haul trucks used in mines, and quite a bit in between. Prices range from 285 dollars per tire/wheel assembly to 1,650 dollars per tire. Keep in mind that the 1,650 dollar tire just described not only costs as much as a used car by itself, but weighs the same as said used car. In any case, the tires cost so much partly because so much more material is used, and partly because they are incredibly tough. A set of these will last as long as the machine they adorn.
Warranties
Perhaps because a warranty claim is hard to fathom on virtually indestructible tires, no warranty information was readily available for Advance Tire.
Options
The range of tires available really is quite something, considering that they are manufactured completely differently from one another. Solid tires cannot even be built with the same process as pneumatic tires. Advance Tire offers both, though with an obvious lean towards solids. Even for skidsteers, they have several potential options available for use on different surfaces and situations. From the equivalent to off-road tires to the skidsteer equivalent of slicks, and several steps in between. This same pattern is repeated with mini loader and loader tires, as well as their haul truck lineup. Advance has a super heavy duty or heavy duty product for just about every application one could dream up.
Technologies & Features
For what appears to be a very simple and straightforward design, where the tire and wheel are essentially a single piece and bolted to a hub, Advance Tire has put a lot of thought into their solid tires. They often have carefully placed recesses and openings in the solid rubber to allow for flex and cushioning that would otherwise not exist, providing some of a pneumatic tire’s properties to the solid tires. Advance Tire use their own tire compounds and construction methods, all of which are optimized to produce shockingly tough solid tires. These tires might be a sign of what’s to come with airless passenger car tires increasingly on the radar for future car use, just made out of materials that provide more give than solid rubber.
Durability & Longevity
What solid rubber is best at is being ridiculously hardy. If a standard passenger car tire is an SUV, and a run flat passenger car tire is an armored car, a solid tire is like a tank, or an MRAP. They are literally bulletproof in many cases, and have the heft one would expect of something that could shrug off heavy artillery. Practically speaking, these tires can’t really be harmed or damaged in normal use. They are similar to the Terminator in that the best way to kill them is to melt them down. Failing that, they’re basically invincible.
Solid tires are completely flat proof, as they have no air, and are of generally homogeneous construction, so even if a chunk gets lopped off somehow the tire isn’t any worse for wear. As long as it’s still somewhat round. These tires will often last longer than the vehicle they are attached to. It isn’t fair to compare them to standard passenger car tires, as they are a completely different beast, from their surprisingly advanced design, to the heavy duty compounds used, to their solid construction.
Summary & Overall Thoughts
Advance Tire is a different kind of tire company. They build tires for vehicles already designed to be tough, and make them even tougher. And for a reasonable price, depending on how valuable what you’re doing is. That a family owned and operated company is producing these monsters for public consumption is a heartwarming thing, to be certain. While the Bridgestones, Hankooks, and Dunlops of the world duke it out over global market share, Advance is just trucking along building tires that can take more punishment than some bulletproof vests. The worldwide tire market has a large number of players, and the game is always changing. Companies jostle for position in attempts to be the king of the hill, welding tire technology as their weapon. Meanwhile, Advance Tire is happy enough to just make the toughest tires of all.
