Once upon a time, a long, long time ago… I made a horrible mistake and ordered 5 wheels from USA6x6 with a “6 week delivery.” Together with that was supposed to be 5 Michelin XZL 20″ tires. This was back in the days before I Googled every supplier I work with to see if there are lots of Internet postings warning what thieves they are. (like this!)They switched the tires to much lower rated military tires, and then said “oops, well we can’t get the XZL’s anymore anyhow”

So I went out and bought my own Continental MPT81 20″x14.5″ tires (5 of them – which are now sitting gathering dust (NEW!) in Michigan)

6 MONTHS LATER my wheels finally show up. We mounted the Continental tires on them, filled them up with air and within 24hrs all 5 are flat because the welds on the wheels all leaked. We tried to break apart the bolt-togethers and discovered that some idiot in their shop put silicone sealant between the bolt-togethers rather than a rubber o-ring so it took a forklift to break them.

I sent those back and told USA6x6 I wanted my money back rather than having them fix them. Daniel insisted that he had just got a ‘new set in’ and these were much better and he’d do all the shipping both ways for free. I knew I wasn’t going to get my money, and I still needed wheels, so I stupidly said “ok”.

6 weeks later the next set of wheels show up. Except this time there are only 4 wheels (not 5) and 1 of the 4 of them are different from the other 3.

My guys in Michigan told me that these wheels have some strange internal bead locks (i.e. – not usual beadlocks) on them and they couldn’t get my tires mounted on them.

Also, They were hub-centric, not stud-piloted, which means the hole pattern matched, but the stud sizes were different. We toyed with the idea of changing my studs, or putting sleeves on them, or something stupid like that, but then gave up bothering to even pursue these. Especially since I’d still need 2 more for the spares.

Then USA 6×6 went bankrupt, and the whole world is hunting down Daniel, so I gave up on the money I’ve obviously lost with those jokers, and stopped trying to fix the wheels to start looking for others.

I have talked to the guys at Stockton Wheels, but theirs won’t support the load of the EcoRoamer. (about 27,000 pounds over 4 wheels = 6,750 lbs per wheel/tire)

I have tried sourcing bolt-togethers from Hutchinson, (who makes the EarthRoamer wheels) but have had no luck reaching anyone there who knows what I’m talking about.

I found a great set of wheels from Accuride (called the 40082) that they make for OshKosh Military trucks, but they won’t make small volumes of them for me, and OshKosh will sell me some of theirs through their Parts counter at $1,500 a piece, with 4 months delivery time. -sigh-