There are lots of advantages using Solid Tyres given your operating conditions. You will get as much as 50% or more service life although you will pay up slightly more.

And a 4.00 Ton forklift pneumatic tyre would be hard to find. And Solids would be plenty. It is all the same.. Super-elastic or Solid Resilient or Solid Cushion or Solid-pneumatics.

the only 'down side' consideration to the 'solid-pneumatic' style tire comes in if your operation does a lot of tight turns where the inside drive tire may twist in the turn. this can build up heat in the side-wall area of a 'solid-pneumatic'. side-shifter equipped forklift will experience less of this turning and twisting, and the quality/cost of the tire makes a huge difference in this concern, too, with better tires being less susceptible to the heat-buildup caused damage. (usually though, a properly specified truck/operation would have a cushion tire unit with a side shifter if your operation required careful placement of a load, and would use the pneumatic unit where space was less of a concern)

i am going to assume this truck is a pneumatic tire truck?
you are considering going to solid tires because of constant flat tires? or possibly a stability issue?

how am i doing so far?

well going to solid tires is definitely an advantage when having to deal with these situations. They do cost a bit more but in the long run you don't have to deal with the flats or instability.

IMO all pneumatic trucks should have solid tires on them ;o)
as far as how long they last? well if taken care of and the operator watches where he goes and takes care not to run over objects these tires can last twice as long as regular tires.
on a normal concrete warehouse floor the wear factor is minimal, now if it goes outside on pavement or rougher concrete they will wear out faster.

i have several customers that run solid tire pneumatic trucks and the ones that run in warehouse do not have to replace tires very often. But the other customers that run outside generally have to put a set on about once a year.

just my.02 worth :o)

Dear Karait,

Thank you for your valuable feed back.

But i did not find any SE tyres locally, but only found Solid - Reseline type tyres. is this the same ?


Thanking you,

I prefer SE (superelastic) tyres.
IMHO the only two advantages of pneumatic tyres are: easy replacement and a bit better cushioning.
To replace SE tyre you need a press, although some manufacturers offer already easy exchangeable SE stuff (like Continental - the Easy Line).
The SE advantages are significant.
Longer lifetime is true, specially, when you can easily and with very low expenses renew the tyre, cuting the new tread.
SE are more robust, nearly service free (you must remember to keep the proper pressure in pneumatic tyres).

We sell Continental and Trelleborg tyres - SE and pneumatic.
From our experience, good quality SE tyre lives about 20% longer than pneumatic. Obviously - we compare the one-brand product.

I think, that most important issue is the quality of the tyres.
In our service contracts we calculate the tyres replacement every 3000 hours (SE), 2500 hours (pneumatic) for the aplication you described.
Some products, present on the market, last only 1500 - 2000 hours. These are mainly "no-name" tyres manufactured somwhere in Asia.