I heard a loud explosion yesterday

The explosion was very loud. Not like a shotgun, louder.

I knew it came from the fertilizer truck because I could see a cloud of dust coming from the rear of the truck.
I had to investigate. My first thought was the truck was overloaded and blew a tire. Looking at the rear tire, it looked like it needed air. I was half right, the fertilizer truck blew an airbag. Do you think the truck may be overloaded to blow an airbag?

I asked the driver of the spreader how fast it could go?
28 mpg. He said the spreader has airbags too and it is a smooth ride.


There is a lot of real estate flying when he is spreading fertilizer. The wind was out of the south yesterday.
I had to wait for the cloud of dust to pass when I was doing my 4 mile trike ride.

This fertilizer company put fertilizer on all the fields around my place in the south.
They also applied anhydrous ammonia. It's been dry for about 8 days. Some fields are planted. May get showers in the next few days.

It's great when one of those blow while you are cranking the legs on a trailer. You are only about 6 feet away when that happens. Ears ring for a couple hours after that. Been there twice. Not fun. They develop cracks after time, get fatigued or dry rotted. In dirty conditions like that one is in, the dirt and sand will wear it thin too. If the metal it sits on is corroded it will also wear it thin as it inflates and deflates. I've probably had 5 or six blow in 38 yrs, but only 2 while I was standing there. Definitely gets your attention!

I was about 200 ft away when the airbag went off, it was loud.
I can't imagine being 6 ft from it.
Did you need a change of knickers the first time?

When I was around 8 or 9 I was in the basement when I heard a huge boom and a few seconds later the door to the outside blew closed. Later I found out that someone dropped a length of rubber hose into a mixing tank at the arsenal some 12 miles away. Won't forget that one.

Overloaded truck?

Couldn't happen.

No one does that....

With 4 trucks 3 trailer and 30 years later I've only had maybe 1 bag blow out. Most will go to leaking so you can hear a his or your air pressure keeps going down while setting some place. I have all but one or two of the original air bags on my 2000 Pete with a million 200,000 on it. My step deck trailer has had a couple changed. My detach has probably had some or all of them changed over the years, though that was before my time with it. The cab air bags are the ones that chafe and go to leaking so air is hard to keep up. I just keep a couple on hand and change them as needed. I suppose over loading does shorten the life of them over several years, though I'm over loaded on the drives most of the time going from the field. When they load those gravel trains. I suppose some of them are over loaded on the air bags some of the time. Then 20,000 per axle is permissible on spread axles so 3000 more than a tandem is not that much really. And if there is ore than 2 axles together we can only put 13,000 per axle so a lot of variation to what is considered over loaded and how much.

I was on a check ride with our safety guy when I blew a bag on the front tandem. WE found a shop to cap the airline and went home. I couldn't have had more than 10,000# on the load.

Oh yea them pesty air bags do make a really loud KEEERRRRR BOOM . Just ask the WEIGH MASTER that pulled ME over for and over load many years back . Back in the seventy's and into the early eighty's i ran a Coal bucket . When you drove one of them you had a huge target on your back for the Portable scales . Now according to there standards we were OUTLAW, Criminals what have ya . They thought we always overloaded , We just FILLED the wagon and went hated having empty space in the trailer . The day in question the one concrete plant i hauled to needed 57 Lime stone for the first pour the next morning to start the day off and two more truck were going to also be hauling Lime stone to keep up , they wanted a BIG load . Ok fine it's AFTER 3 PM so i should be good as the Portables ALWAYS went home around 3 ish . So i run over to Carbon Lime stone just across the state line and we LOAD the wagon and make it look like a Dairy QUEEN the trailer i am pulling is one of the larger ones at 32 foot box with 72 inch side. I come out of Carbon lime stone and cross the state line and there is this HILL that will plum suck the life out of any truck and i am down in third gear and the next thing i know i have a buckeye bear on my back door with the lights on , Crap , so the only place to pull over is at the junk yard so i pull over and the scale wagon is waiting . Now in the trailer i have a tri axle set up but the lead axle is on air and is a lift axle . back then we had ways of beating the portables by usen a 15x22.5 floater tire and a dummy rim they could not get the old gooseneck scales under that so they had to BLOCK that tire and we would throw all the air we could to that axle . As the air pressure was building they could not get the other scales to read as it kept changing . i could then HIDE 23000lbs off the drives and 41500 off the trailer with a 125 psi in the air bags . The trailer is creeking and popping as the air pressure builds and the CHICKEN INSPECTOR sticks his head under the bed over top the tires between the lead axle and middle axle when the air bag BLOWS with lots of dirt and dust flyen everywhere and him reacting to it hitting his head on the bottom of the trailer knocking himself out cold along with a nasty gash in his head . They lost interest in me and told me to get out of there . That was the last time R J ( his C B handle ) ever stuck his head under a dump trailer again and the last time he ever wanted to stop me . As many times i would here him talking with the bears and the bear might say hey there is this two tone Yellowish internation six axle coming that looks hevy and R J would say Nah leave him alone i don't want to weigh him on the scanner . And if you really want to hear a BOOM that is more BOMB like let one of them 15x22.5 radials BLOW that happened on vary warm summer day on the east side of Youngstown heading for the steel mill , there were a lot of people of color out setting on there ft. porches and when it blew people were RUNNING for all they were worth . Back then it was NOT uncommon for a BOMB to go off on the south and east side of Youngstown .

Air bags are the only way to go change in less than an hour and you are on the road again . And sometimes they will pop but usually just develop a slow leak

place i took corn to was picky about weight. my trailer had a load o matic scale that was pretty accurate but that day first load was tad heavy . they complaied. anyhow secod load i came i was even heavier.
the place had a 4 inch ridge by the door to keep water out anf a very tall building too overhead feed bis to load their trucks out on scales.
ray the grain inspector walked out on the catwalk to probe me ,ray is a junpy goosy guy too.
as i eased over the hump 1 airbag exploded ray sent his bucket to the top of the feed bis,stayed up there exited the building very fast. when he came back was shaking but calmed down. we all looked the bag was expanding under load throwing scale off. ray never moved fast but that day he did

Thats a great story, and you were 1000% in the wrong for doing what you did, from running overweight to playing games with the scales.

A lot of our little tender trucks that size have a 3rd axle nobody uses. A lot of times the bags blow when the weight is taken off and the leveler doesnt work quite right tender trucks usually sit for half the year often comboed between liquid and dry with dry being the less heavy setup than a tanker of 32.
My green r4045 machine actually also has 4 bags and is much more difficult to change one when they go. Machine has to be jacked up instead of just putting a cap on the line and raising it with its own air enough to slip the bag in.