Getting ready for
the long drive.

Queensland summer and a loaded car are a hard combination for tyres. Heat, weight and long distances at highway speed all add up, and a tyre that was fine for the school run can be working a lot harder with a full boot, a roof pod and a van on the back. A few minutes before you leave saves a very bad afternoon on the shoulder of the Warrego. Here is the check we run.

Pressures, set for the load and set cold

This is the single most important one, and the one most people get wrong for a trip. A loaded touring car needs more air than the same car running around town empty. Underinflated tyres build heat, and heat plus load plus a hot road is exactly how a tyre lets go on the highway.

Check and set pressures cold, before you have driven far, because a warm tyre reads higher and will fool you. Look on the placard, usually inside the driver door or on the fuel flap, and use the higher, fully loaded figure it lists. If you are near the top of the vehicle weight with people and gear, run the loaded pressure, not the everyday one.

Do not forget the spare

The spare is the tyre nobody looks at until the worst possible moment. It loses pressure sitting there and it ages like any other tyre. Before a big trip, check it actually holds air, and make sure the jack and the wheel brace are in the car and that you know where they live. If your spare is a space saver, remember it is a get-to-the-next-town tyre, not a keep-driving-for-a-week tyre.

Towing a van or a camper? These numbers matter

Van and trailer tyres are the ones that most often catch people out, because they sit for months between trips and then get asked to do a thousand kilometres in the heat, fully loaded.

• Age over tread. Caravan tyres usually have loads of tread because they do so little distance, but the rubber still ages. A van tyre more than five or six years old can look brand new and still be unsafe. Check the date on the sidewall.
• Load rating for the loaded weight. A van packed for a family holiday can be near its limit. The tyres have to carry that weight at highway speed in summer, so the load rating has to be right, not just close.
• Pressures to suit the load, set cold, the same as the car. Underinflated van tyres are a very common cause of blowouts.

The forgotten hour: get it looked at before, not after

Everything above you can do in the driveway, and it is worth doing. The one thing we would add is that if anything looks marginal, the tread is getting low, a tyre is a few years old, the van has not moved since last winter, it is far cheaper and far less stressful to sort it here than on the road. We would much rather see you the week before than get the call from the roadside.

Book a pre-trip check

Drop in before you head off and we will go right over it. Tread, pressures, load ratings, the spare, and a look at anything that will not last the distance. If you need fresh rubber before a big one, we carry the full range and can have you sorted the same day. Heading somewhere with dirt in the plan? Have a read of our guide on all terrain versus mud terrain tyres first.