Tire — or TNT ?

Remember your old wind-up alarm clock? Every time you wound it, you were storing energy in the mainspring. That energy was slowly released as the spring unwound. But if you were a curious kid, and decided to take your clock apart, you may have been startled — or even injured — if that same mainspring released its stored-up energy all at once.

When you compress air into a truck tire, you're doing about the same thing as winding that old clock. And if that tire bursts apart, you can be seriously injured.

How much energy is stored in a tire? An ordinary 11R22.5 radial tire at about 100 psi contains almost 72,000 ft-lb of bottled-up energy.

What can that much energy do? Well, if you weigh 180 lb and were standing alongside the tire, the force of that explosion could lift you, the tire, and the wheel nearly 200 feet into the air. And then, of course, you'd have to come back down.

Always follow all RMA & OSHA safety regulations.

An inflated tire is not to be trifled with. You don't want to take any unplanned space flights.