Safety Alert!! Corporate Liability?? Walmart..........

I got some Michelin 265/75/16 (E) tires at Walmart, after all, they have the best price. After a couple of months, I happened to go to a real tire dealer getting my heavy trailer on new 3750# rims. He took one look at the trucks rear tires and said "you carrying that 16k trailer on those tires?" I said I was going to, and he said well you have low pressure valve stems in the rims, and he had seen the low pressure valve stems blow out under 80 psi and a heavy load. I of course went Whaaaaaaaa.... He showed me the difference between the low pressure and high pressure valve stems. It seems the low pressure stems handle up to 65 psi, and the high pressure stems up to 120 psi.
I went to the Walmart that installed the tires and complained....they had no clue..... they said "thats the only valve stems we stock"(TR413)....I wander around in a daze looking at the stacks of E rated tires with 80psi and 95 psi and just wondering about the liability of it all, (now that I informed them)...

Anyway, I got some high pressure valve stems (TR600HP) on Walmarts' dollar and they mounted and balanced them again for me, putting the HP valve stems in.

Seems like it's happened all over as the following article describes..

Many "calls have come into the International Tire & Rubber Association (ITRA) from commercial light truck owners complaining of a sudden loss of air in their tires, sometimes at high speeds. One major problem we found is that these individuals were using the wrong valve stems."

Above from Tire Review...
Link to Tire Review Article



TR413, all rubber/EDPM stem. Marked on the bottom/inside part of valve stem.






TR600HP, metal tire stem/EDPM base

TR800HP-TR802HP are longer tire stems, or bent longer stems for dually trucks.