Forestry & grounds care tyres

Cut-to-length machines work on brash, stumps and rock while carrying a full load of timber on tandem bogies. Crown and sidewall protection are key considerations alongside tread life and load capacity.

Forestry casings use steel belts under the tread, much thicker sidewall rubber than an agricultural tyre of the same size, and cut-resistant compounds. The low-aspect flotation sections — 710/45-26.5 and 700/50-26.5 — exist to spread a heavy load over soft forest floor and to give the tracks something to sit on.

Tell us if the machine runs tracks. Bogie tracks change everything: they abrade the shoulder continuously, they need a tyre profile and section width they will actually fit, and the two tyres in a bogie pair must be closely matched in diameter or the track will run unevenly and pull. A casing suitable for bare running is not automatically suitable for track work.

Skidders drag timber, which means the tyre is under tractive load and lateral load at the same time, on unprepared ground, usually on a slope. The L in sizes such as 30.5L-32 denotes the flotation-width log skidder series.

Skidder tyres are catalogued in the TRA log skidder service class, and the deeper-tread variants carry more rubber for cut and impact protection in the same way an L-4 earthmover tread does over an L-3. Deeper is not automatically better: the extra rubber runs hotter and costs traction efficiency, and a machine on a long forest road will suffer for it.

Chains are routine on skidder work and they change the wear pattern completely. A tyre that will spend its life in chains needs the casing strength to take the point loading where the cross-links sit, and the customer should expect shoulder damage rather than crown wear.

Timber trailers, forwarding trailers, chippers and firewood processors, usually towed behind a tractor or an ATV. 480/45-17 and 550/45-22.5 are wide, low-aspect flotation sizes chosen so a loaded trailer can be dragged out of a wood without cutting a rut through it.

These are bias tyres carrying a ply rating rather than a load index, and they are frequently overloaded — a timber trailer with a crane on the drawbar puts far more through the tyres than its nominal capacity suggests. Work from the load-at-pressure table for the ply rating rather than from the trailer’s rating plate.

Check the speed symbol before anything is towed on the road. Many flotation and implement-series tyres are rated well below normal tractor road speed, and heat, not load, is what finishes them.

Ride-on and out-front mowers, compact machines and general estate work. Turf tyres use a shallow, wide-footprint R-3 tread with rounded shoulders and closely spaced ribs, run at very low pressures so the machine floats rather than compacts.

Imperial turf sizes are read as diameter by section width by rim: 26×12.00-12 is 26 inches tall, 12 inches wide, on a 12 inch rim. They do not follow the metric convention and there is no aspect ratio in the number.

The failure mode here is not wear, it is surface damage. A lugged tread, or a turf tread at too high a pressure, tears the sward on every turn. If a customer is complaining about marking, check the pressures before you change the tyre — over-inflation is the single most common cause and it costs nothing to fix.

Greens mowers, triples, fairway units, sports pitch equipment and top dressers. This is the most demanding surface in the sector, because the customer is judged on the appearance of the ground rather than on the machine.

355/55D625 is worth decoding: 355 mm section, 55 per cent aspect ratio, diagonal (bias) construction, on a rim of 625 mm. The D is the construction letter, not a load rating, and the rim diameter is given in millimetres rather than inches — a convention specific to this class of turf and trailer fitment.

Smooth and rib treads are common here in place of a turf block pattern, sometimes with a foam or solid fill on greens equipment to remove the puncture risk. Pressures are lower than anywhere else on this page, often in single figures in psi, and are set to a ground pressure target rather than to a load table.

Sweepers, gully machines, small municipal chassis and the compact tractors that do council and estate grounds work. Road sweepers spend their working life within a few inches of a kerb, at walking pace, with the steering on full lock. Kerb contact makes sidewall and shoulder protection particularly valuable.

Specify for kerb resistance — a raised kerbing rib on the outer shoulder and a robust sidewall — rather than for mileage or rolling resistance. Removals on this work are almost entirely sidewall damage with legal tread still on the tyre.

Compact tractors used on grass need a decision made explicitly. An agricultural lug will pull on a wet bank and mark the surface; a turf tread will protect the surface and slip. A second wheel set may be worth considering where a machine regularly switches between traction work and sensitive turf.

Quads, side-by-sides, gators and small site transport used on estates, farms, golf courses and forestry blocks. The same machine may need a turf tread on grass and an aggressive lug on a wet hillside, and no single tyre does both well.

Pressures are very low — typically well under one bar — and require an accurate low-pressure gauge. Over-inflating an ATV tyre to what feels right by hand removes the footprint the machine depends on, hardens the ride and makes it less stable, not more.

Ply rating matters more than tread on forestry and estate work, where the ground is full of cut stems and stumps. Match casing protection to the puncture hazards and the machine’s approved specification.