Thursday afternoon I was airing up a 22.5” trailer tire so I could find a leak. Target psi was 100, I’d just checked and was at 70. Next thing I heard a ripping and explosion so quickly I didn’t have time to react. I was only about 3 feet from the tire and the air hit me in the abdomen and chest like it was a solid ball. It knocked me backward but not off my feet and blew my glasses off my head. I was bent double because both my stomach and chest felt like I’d been hit with a bat, and I couldn’t think straight for a minute from the blast. About a foot-long split in the sidewall had opened up, from about 12-2 o’clock on the tire and pointed generally in my direction. Other than a tiny bit of road rash on my stomach from sand or grit on the floor or in the tire I’m fine. One of the other guys was working inside a chip trailer we’d replaced the floor on and he said the walls rippled. This is in about an 80’x80’ shop.

ALWAYS use a cage, even if it’s not a split rim, and a locking air chuck.

Sounds like you found the leak.

Glad you're ok.

That was one of my first trauma alerts. A dudes spleen and liver were blown apart by a semi tire he was working on. He didn’t make it. I had no idea at the time how deadly they were. Glad you are ok!

An air cage won’t save you. It can only lower the chances of injury or death. Your PSA should state to use a dunk tank to find an air leak instead of over inflation.

Sounds like the tire should've been visibly defective.

I regularly top off my trailer tires at 80psi and my trucks at 70 but my tires aren't dry rotted, split, or have and visible damage.

No plugs only patches if needed, which right now none of my tires have needed repair.

Boss nearly killed himself puttin a 16.5 on a 16 rim. This was before i worked there. They bought a cage , but i never seen it used.

Right, because every shop has a dunk tank. I should have just said not to patch flats, either send them with your recaps for repair or just replace them with new ones. Don’t even change or inflate mounted tires that check low.
100psi isn’t overinflated. We’re not talking light truck tires here, this particular one came off a tandem axle tagalong that carries an excavator. 255/70-22.5, IIRC, with rated load at 120psi.

This one was new enough to still have pretty sharp edges on the tread blocks and nubs on the sidewalls. I didn’t see any scuffs or scrapes on the sidewalls when I checked for marks the driver/operator might have made to indicate where the leak was. Whether he ran it underinflated I can’t tell you.

Glad you're not dead. I always just spray tires with soapy water if I am looking for a leak, but I'm obviously not a professional.

It's called a "zipper failure" and it is caused by running a steel body ply tire under inflated. The steel cord is degraded in the process and fails under pressure.

Check the date codes on tires
Any tire over 5 years old is suspect to blow out

That’s what I was airing it up to do, it had completely deflated since being brought in the day before.

I think ours charges $45, but that’s for truck/trailer tires. The tire company guy comes once a week to pick up and drop off recaps, I had to patch this one because someone ordered an 80 instead of a 70 to keep on hand.

I’ve heard them popping slowly before and got the chuck off right away, then it was just a matter of gingerly pulling the valve. This one was so fast it basically went ziiipBOOM!

JFC the internet is a meca for Monday morning douchebags.

OP glad you're OK, everyone that works on tires will have an oh fuck moment. Glad yours was a learning moment and not a life altering one.

We used to have air at our terminal fuel island but the safety guy actually used some common sense and put a stop to it.

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I’d have put a regulator on it, set it to 130, and thrown the knob away. Operators just love fucking with things, when I worked at an airport our fuelers always messed with the regulators to fuel faster and the regulators, set about 4-6psi apart, would fight each other.

I have 120 psi tires on my trailer.  I used a locking chuck on a 20' house and stand 20' away off to one side when filling them.

The boss wanted me to rotate the rears on a truck last Friday.
Took the first one off..

 Nope, you're fucked, get new rubber.
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Still was at 110psi.

I worked for an uncle that had a gas station in the late 60’s. He used to repair 22.5”’s on split rims, I refused to. One of my friends worked there and had one come loose as he was inflating it. He got banged up a bit.

Know  one guy that took one to the face in the late 50’s. He survived but stills wears facial hair today to cover the scars. Knew a guy that owned a tire store, he:was a customer,of,another gas station I worked at back then (high school days). He had a sixteen year old working on a truck tire when the split ring let loose, killed him instantly.

I work for a logging company, we probably have at least 25 trucks, double that many log trailers, 8-10 chip boxes, and a couple lowbeds. If I had to guess I’d say we go through 1000 tires a year just for them. Each truck gets 2 sets of drives per year, pretty soon we’ll be busting our asses putting new winter tires on pretty much everything. We also have 8-10 log loader crane trucks, and almost as many self-propelled loader/slashers on which tires need to be BAD before we replace them. They see very little road miles, mainly staying out in the woods unless they need repairs too big to do out there. 4 or 5 graders with good to VG rubber, 8 skidders, I think, that get new tires when needed (not very often because they are THICK), and 2 processors, & a forwarder or 2 with tires that are just scary. I hate being near the things even though the sidewalls are still probably 2” thick after a huge slab of sidewall gets peeled right off by stuff in the woods. There are a couple dump trucks, some service/shop vans with woods crews and one for us in the shop, and the rest of the stuff is tracked - feller bunchers, delimbers, excavators, and dozers. In the 4 years I’ve been here I only remember 2 or 3 tires blowing out while being inflated. Some BAD ones that didn’t blow had me wondering how the hell they didn’t.