My pre-departure routine includes turning on my Airstream’s tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) and checking the tire pressure.  It takes a few minutes for the monitor to make the initial connection to all the sensors, so shortly after starting my initial walk-around for a long trip to Utah, an audible alarm showed that the driver side tire on the Airstream’s front axle was low.  

A tire pressure monitoring system utilizes sensors placed inside the tire or threaded onto the valve stem to monitor tire temperature and pressure. If the parameters exceed a set threshold, an alarm will sound to alert the driver of the increasing risk of tire failure and collateral damage.

I wrote about our pre-trip discovery and fix in an article that you can find here, but here are the benefits we realized because we had the TPMS.

• We were not forced to pull over on the side of the freeway, so we avoided potential damage and/or serious injury from a secondary accident. 
• Our trip was delayed only 45 minutes because we found the issue during our pre-departure routine.
• Some trailers don’t have steel wheel wells, and a blown tire can put a hole in the floor of the camper.
• Rubber shrapnel can damage slide outs. That is not a a risk for us because our Flying Cloud does not have a slide out, but it is certainly a risk for readers who do.
• Depending on how the tire comes apart, it can also damage the exterior body of the RV, skirts, and some of the aluminum or fiberglass outer wall.
• Wires and propane lines that run near the tires can be damaged by a blowout.

This monitoring system identified the issue before it developed into a major event and our trip was delayed by less than an hour. It cost us only $27 to get the tire fixed.

As an RVer, I consider the TPMS as a piece of required equipment. Not having a working TPMS system will not keep me from making a trip, but it is an item that would require repair or replacement at the earliest opportunity. This is the one I use…

I am an affiliate for some of the products mentioned on this website.  I could be an affiliate for many products but, the links I include in my articles are for products that I actually use, like, and recommend.  By using my links, you help support this website.

We like to keep it simple while traveling and we reduce our risk at every opportunity. We can’t eliminate all risk, of course, but we add layers of tools and processes to identify issues as early as possible in order to mitigate them.

A tire’s sudden failure can cause a loss of control and collateral damage to the vehicle. A TPMS system will alert drivers to a potential safety issue that could prove to be very costly if not remediated right away.

I hope this brief review of the TPMS helps and I hope to see you down road!

NomadicNeighborhood is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. We also participate in other affiliate programs which compensate us for referring traffic.