Decades into this, and TOKAI Solid Tire has been supplying solid pneumatics (and more) for decades, there are now a ton of companies pushing solid resilient tires at you. Some of those tires and great and some are junk. The worst part is figuring out which is which before you buy them.
For that reason, we thought we would put together a quick FAQ explaining the advantages of the TOKAI EP Solid Pneumatic. Just tap each blue heading to learn more about why the TOKAI Solid Pneumatic is the right solid resilient forklift tire for almost any application.
When we tell customers that our standard black tread layer is, other than additives needed to make a tire, pretty much made of all-natural rubber they almost don't believe it, until they take a look at the finish
when the tire rolls out of the container.
See, over time, one way a lot of tires have become cheaper (or more profitable for factories) is by taking out natural rubber and putting in other stuff.
Sometimes, in some applications that's a good thing - and we do that too, where it makes sense for our customers - but our basic tread layer hasn't been touched in many. many years, except to make minor improvements
in the oils and additives that go into any part of a tire.
Thailand produces more natural rubber than any country in the world, look it up, and that's why we can afford to make such a high quality tire
with all-natural rubber. It's also why when oil prices skyrocket, we don't need to worry about raising the cost of our tires the way some factories who rely heavily on synthetic rubber might.
Natural
rubber, among other things, provides greater rebound resilience, meaning that every time that lug rolls down under pressure and then rolls back up, the natural rubber takes less of a beating than synthetic rubber
would. Additionally, natural rubber holds together better after getting gashed or ripped on. When you see cracks or tears in a synthetic tire you can start the clock on it, while a natural rubber tire taking
a beating from cuts and rips is more likely to hold together and not fail.
You just can't beat all-natural Thai rubber, and that's why we use it - you should too.
The first sign that you're dealing with a BS tire is when the factory salesman tells you, "Oh yeah, it'll beat the crap outta the SC18 or the Elite XP." At TOKAI our policy is we don't trash other people's product
and, in fact, our engineers and designers think very highly of the SC18, which the TOKAI EP has competed directly against in national markets - and outperformed on a quality at cost-per-hour basis in enough
applications to hold entire markets.
Our standard construction, all-purpose compound 3-layer EP runs very well in most applications, and wears better in certain applications than some of the most well-known
tires, at a price that's considerably more affordable. The EP is not a budget tire, though, it's a value-priced premium tire. If the top tires are the Maybachs of the solid industrial forklift tire world, the
TOKAI EP is the Audi that pleasantly surprises you. Give it a shot, you'll be glad you did.
(If you don't like Audis. oops. Just sub in your favorite performance workhorse.)
At Mouldmate, we have our own R&D, compounding and testing departments - and a number of mixers, large and small. We even have testing mixers about the size of a full size pickup so our compounding nerds can
spit out sample after sample in small batches to develop compounds more quickly and accurately. Once developed, we have small batch mixers and really huge mixers, several stories tall all in, which means we're
one of the few factories that has no trouble compounding small batches of tires for you. If you're used to being told you need to order a large volume to get a mix of compounds in your container, well, you're
dealing with a one-size-fits-all supplier. We very much are not that.
And that's why our list of speciifc compounds and constructions for different situations is so comprehensive that we gave up even
publishing it for people. Our tires run, every day, in some of the largest (and hottest) ports and airports in the world, for example, so when a port serviced by a huge customer was having trouble with
chewing up tires, our engineers flew out and looked at things in person, like they often do, and realized that the port was running the big old forklifts through water channels between runs to cool the tires
- sometimes they were even cracking the rim! Our engineers studied everything in person, took measurements and notes, then came back and solved the problem.
Airports require highly tested and certified
compounds so that the GSE tires don't chunk, end up in an engine and bring down a plane, so we have a special compound for that. It's not just ports and airports, though, it's everything.
Running over
sharp odds and ends in a hotter-than-hell foundry? Carrying long steel beams that bow and flex as you ride? Using an oversized truck to carry big, light loads of lumber on rough surfaces? Running in a refrigerated
environment? The list of situations we have specifically tested and compoudned for is really, really long and comprehensive.
One visitor to our factory from a very large company commented that he had
never seen this level of capability in a factory short of the major international brands. He was surprised, but we weren't. We love what we do, and we take it seriously. If you don't control every aspect of
the design and engineering and compounding and production and testing processes then you don't really know what you're making and when problems arise you don't know how to fix the black box you're running. If
you can't fix your own problems, how can you fix your customers' problems?
That's never a problem at Mouldmate, maker of TOKAI Solid Tires and tracks (and run-flat inserts and poly wheels and and and...).
Imagine
a company with nearly thirty years of constantly traveling to extreme - and sometimes just odd - applications around the world, solving them one by one, and you'll understand why when no one else can, or even
cares to solve your problem, TOKAI Solid Tire is not only happy to, but excited to.
Our engineers love solving problems, so if you've got one, get in touch with us at [email protected].
One questions we get asked a lot, especially by dealer-distributor customers, is whether our tires are difficult to press, or if they can only be pressed from one side. Do they tear easily? Require a lot of pressure?
Good
news: Our tires are designed with easy pressing in mind. The inner heel layer isn't made of cheap junk that can't take pressure, because cutting costs to make a tire as cheap as possible results in a cheap piece
of junk tire. When you're pressing a TOKAI, you won't need to cross your fingers and close your eyes and hope. It just works, like the rest of the tire.
People often ask us, "What's your warranty?" and the answer is one of those answers that's so simple that it flummoxes a lot of folks:
If we broke it, we'll fix it. Period.
Just like
any other company, large or small, we've turned out a bad product here and there over several decades, and when we have - you can ask our customers - we've studied the situation, put our engineers on it, looked
up every detail of production for that tire (we keep extensive records on every single tire, what goes into it, how it got made and who made it) and if we did something wrong then we've warrantied the tire.
Done deal.
We know in a world of 12 page warranties citing everything from act of God to international terrorism you're used to seeing a telephone book's worth of language to explain a very simple
concept like "we stand behind our products," but we think it's best not to complicate the obvious and just say, you know, we stand behind our product.
Anyone who needs a ten page contract to tell you
how they stand behind their product, well, the other 9,000 words in there probably aren't there to explain how they stand behind their product.