At various events, I get presented with the same query: What do you do? I’ve responded in several different ways: “I am employed by a company that sells mining tyres internationally.” or “We provide tyres for construction.”
What I desire to tell them, is that I sell OTR Tyres, but as a general rule, no one knows what they are.So, I usually just frame the conversation this way: ” I sell huge tyres for construction equipment. Some tyres are as big as 12.5 feet tall (3.81m, for those outside of the US).” It sounds bragadocious, but it is needful to broaden their thoughts to accept something with a rim size that execeeds twenty inches.Now, the fact is, most of the my company sells are far less than .
In fact, many of them are merely 4 feet in height.So, what is an OTR Tyre? The definitions vary greatly, but we will with the acronym “OTR”. It stands for “Off the Road”, or in minuscule cases “Over the Road”. Generally, the following types of equipment use it, and I won’t admit every type here, because you would be reading all day.
The primary types of equipment that use these tires are: loaders(skid steer, front end, and wheel-), haul trucks (rigid and articulated dump, crash trucks, cranes(the tires are stocked in both on and off-road flavors), scrapers & road graders.Now, some purists may say I am disregarding tractors & combines, but those are generally separated as “agricultural use”, and don’t fall under the category of “OTR”, per se. Others will pronounce that the category is much broader. This is correct. However, I am giving you the basic principles you need to understand, not a collegiate dissertation on the tyres.The tires are obtainable in bias and radial stock, just like passenger tyres are. The fundamental difference is in the size of the rims(20-63 inches for the greater part), and the heavy duty nature of the lugs, and rubber formulations. These are tyres that can take the abuse that gravel, large rocks, and mud throw at them.
As to roles, these tires can be found operating in the most severe weather, from the granite quarries of Brazil, to the underground mines of Novosibirsk. So, what is an OTR Tyre? Very simply explained, it is a tyre for mining or construction functions, that maneuvers in extreme, off-road conditions, on very heavy equipment. That’s an oversimplification, but it may have to do, for now.