High speed wheels

An internationally renowned manufacturer of airport, highway and walkway snow removal and de-icing vehicles requested an alternative to what was perceived to be the leading manufacturer of high speed wheels and castors for this particular application at that time.

They requested a high speed rated wheel (up to 20 kph) with a permanently bonded high speed elastic rubber tyre, cast iron painted hubs with special low temperature greased precision ball bearings. This wheel needed to be suitable for medium or large snow plough mouldboards which needed wheeled rather than using total hydraulic support.

An initial road test was carried out at Wroughton airfield in Wiltshire by our client. The first test ran for a distance of 5 miles at 20 mph to 25 mph and the wheels were then checked for signs of wear. Both the competitor and our wheel passed the initial test.

A second test was then carried out. This time the snow plough travelled for a distance of 15 miles at between 25 mph and 30 mph. The BIL wheel passed the test. The original competitor wheel failed as the tyre literally shredded.

BIL high speed wheels for low temperature applications are rated to -30°C. Today, our low temperature speed wheels are also used by another leading UK manufacturer that exports this type of equipment to the cold winter weather extremes in Russia.