Tractor Tires
Tractors are truly powerful, versatile machines. Fortunately for horses and animal lovers, tractors substituted them as the force to pull heavy plows in agriculture. However, as engineers devised new applications for tractors, they became more and more versatile, being the vehicles that supplied power and strength by excellence in several fields.
Nowadays, tractors are not only used in agriculture, but also in construction, trenching, landscaping, mowing, etc. If you need something heavy to be pulled, pushed, lifted, or excavated, then a tractor is what you need. If for some reason, your tractor wasn’t designed to do the job you want, you can always get an implement that will allow it to do it. In fact, that’s another advantage of tractors: they’re very versatile and can be customized fairly easily.
Nevertheless, in order to do all these tasks, a tractor needs good traction and leverage. And for these, it needs really good tires that will get a good grip on the ground. In fact, tractor tires are one of the most important parts of a tractor, and getting good ones will improve the tractor’s performance and reduce fuel consumption.
As you can imagine, tractor tires are very different from their cousins; car tires. Because they have different or specific applications, and they are used in several types of terrain, they need specific characteristics.
For example, radial tractor tires’ characteristics give them less rolling resistance and improved performance at high speeds (for tractor standards, that is). This is due to the ply cords being placed at a 90 degrees angle from the vertical/horizontal axis of the tire.
Cross-ply tractor tires are another type of tractor tires that are very common. They’re specially good for harsh terrain and areas that are uneven. The ply cord layers are also designed at an angle from the centerline of the tire, but unlike the radial tractor tires, the angles are less than 90 degrees.
If you want the best of both cross-ply and radial, you may get biasbelt tractor tires. They have a combination of both features. The main advantage is their stability and their strong sidewall and carcass.
Implement tractor tires are perhaps the closest thing to car tires. They are low ground pressure tires. They are sometimes used for tractor when they are taken on the road on their own, but they are also used for trailers or other equipment that the tractor tows.
Finally, there are those tractor tires that are used in very specific vehicles and for very specific purposes. These tractor tires tend to be a bit more expensive and rare, and it’s usually best to get them from the supplier who sold you the tractor in the first place.