This particular day, I had just pulled in to the side of the road close to the depot entrance, when there was an almighty bang and the front of the roof of the tyre retail premises was lifted off the brick cladding over the main front doors.
The dust and mess was considerable, covering much of the surrounding area.

I moved to go inside with caution, not knowing what I would be looking at.

Were there any bodies laying around? Was that the final bang or were there to be more?

In fact it was the only one but that initial bang had been followed by a tremendous amount of clattering as various pieces of metal and rubber gradually fell to earth after their being propelled into the air with great force.

The force was compressed air and I had been fortunate that I had not arrived a few minutes earlier!

Morris the very convivial manager at this particular depot was out, calling on clients. His tyre fitting staff had been taking a few short cuts in their endeavours.

When removing commercial tyres from wheels there are safety instructions that should be followed. The lads in the depot that day had their own ideas.

They had removed the locking ring and one side of the split wheel and turned the wheel and tyre over on a metal stand to knock the tyre off with a breaker tool.

Evidently, so the story was told to me, the tyre would not budge. After lots of tyre lubricant and more hammering and jumping around, no difference, it was fixed solid.

This often happened when the tyre had been on that wheel for a long time and had not had to be removed for any reason.

In these instances, the tyre and wheel has to be placed in a safety cage and slowly inflated to encourage some movement.

Compressed air is very very dangerous, everyone engaged in the tyre trade has received instruction regarding this at some stage in their early career.

Even me!
The lads at National Tyres, Stamford were fed up with this particular wheel.

The boss was out and they decided to take the short cut. 

They attached the air line and began to blow the tyre off the wheel, without any safety cage. It was still laying there in the middle of the floor of the workshop, on its metal stand.

Its the amount of compressed air in a restricted place, contained and under increasing pressure that is dangerous.

Our lads that day had a very lucky escape.

Quite suddenly, the wheel and tyre began to part company and jointly were launched into the air vertically at very high speed. 

Within a second or so, the wheel hit the steel girders supporting the roof of the building. The whole roof was lifted off its brick supports at the front and then the tyre and wheel separated and fell to earth almost as quickly as they had been launched.

Those commercial tyres weigh over a hundredweight or 200 kilos. The wheel probably weighs more than that, so all together there was getting on for a quarter of a ton of rubber and metal flying around the building at high speed and out of control.

Both bits landed not far from a clients car that was having new tyres fitted. He very nearly needed a new car!

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