Anyone who works with off-the-road vehicles knows that OTR tyres can be massive. Earthmover tyres can weigh many tonnes, dwarfing the drivers of the vehicles they bear. Just how big can a tyre get though?
We decided to look at the runners and riders in the competition for the world’s biggest tyre…
The biggest tyre you can buy
The biggest tyre on sale to the public is an earthmover tyre of truly immense proportions. Bridgestone’s 59/80R63 weighs in at 5.2 tonnes and is 4.02 metres high – more than twice the height of a full-grown man. That sounds big, but it’s nothing compared to what’s to come!
The biggest tyre in production
You can’t buy it, but the largest tyre currently in production is made by the aptly named Titan Tires in Canada. Like many of the largest tyres, including the one above, it’s produced for large dump trucks. Appropriately, these record breakers are destined for the largest earth-moving operation in the world, the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada.
These tyres are titans in every sense of the word, tipping the scales at 5.67 tonnes with a 4.27 metre diameter.
And the winner is …
The two tyres above are big, but they don’t come close to the world’s biggest. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we need to look to the US for the record breaker, which stands at a mind-blowing 24.4 meters in diameter. That’s as wide as a blue whale is long or an 8-storey building is high. It was originally made by U.S. Royal Tyres (now Uniroyal) for the New York World Fair in 1964/65. There, it stood as a Ferris wheel with little carriages around its circumference to promote US tyre production.
The promotions didn’t end there though, the 12-tonne mega-tyre went on tour, having to be cut into 180 pieces to be moved. It was later pierced with an 11-foot nail to promote the company’s tyre sealant. The nail itself holds the world record for the largest nail ever produced, too.
Now, the world’s largest tyre stands by interstate 94 near Detroit. Perhaps it’s fate that the world’s largest tyre came around full circle to rest at the spiritual home of the motor vehicle.
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