FARGO, N.D. – There’s a sticky, yet refreshing innovation in liquid tire ballast.
Rim Guard is an organic liquid ballast formulated with desugared molasses left over from processing sugar beets. And it is sticky.
For half a century, calcium chloride has been the only viable liquid ballast for tractor tires in northern climates. It was cheap, heavy and didn’t freeze. Other liquids might work in Texas or Florida, but freeze protection is essential in the northern latitudes.
The down side of calcium chloride is that it’s highly corrosive. That wasn’t a big deal when all tractor tires had tubes, but if the tube suffered a puncture, the rim started to corrode from the inside out. Some tractor rims will rust through in as few as eight years because of calcium chloride ballast.
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As long as there was no puncture, there was no problem. And there really was no alternative to calcium chloride.
In the mid-1990s when tractor tires became tubeless, calcium chloride became more expensive because farmers had to buy tubes and pay to have them installed.
Iron weights now became a viable alternative, but they were expensive, says Phil Globig, owner of Rim Guard Tire Ballast.
“We’re now paying $1 to $1.20 per pound for slab weights,” Globig said.
“Custom wheel weights are close to $2 per pound. You can spend a lot of money to ballast your tires to the required weight.”
A Michigan farmer solved the tire ballast problem in 1998. Globig said it’s an interesting story.
“This fellow farmed, but he was also a trained chemist. He was using desugared molasses from sugar beets as a food supplement for his cattle,” Globig said.
“One day in the middle of the winter, it was -5 F (-21 C) and he noticed that molasses still flowed just fine out of the tank at that temperature.
“That same winter, he had to replace two rims on his John Deere due to corrosion from calcium chloride. So, the light bulb went on. He tried desugared molasses in the two rims. He found that it worked fine even in the coldest weather.”
Globig said the farmer worked on the chemical formulation and the patent for the next two years. In 2001, he began selling Rim Guard, but only in the United States. Globig bought the company in 2005.
He said traditional liquid ballast formulated for -40 C freeze protection weighs between 11 and 11.5 pounds per gallon and costs slightly less than 28 cents per lb.
Rim Guard formulated for the same freeze protection weighs between 10.7 and 11 lb. per gallon and costs $3 per gallon or 28 cents per lb.
“So, Rim Guard is slightly lighter and slightly more expensive than calcium chloride,” Globig said.
“But when you factor in the cost of buying the new inner tubes and having them installed, the two liquids work out to be about equal in cost. And the tube with calcium chloride can develop a leak and wheel corrosion any time.
“Then look at iron wheel weights costing $1 to $2 per lb., and suddenly the organic liquid looks like a pretty good buy.”
Globig said Rim Guard is guaranteed to be noncorrosive and biodegradable, so it’s safe for animals, plants and people.
“Here’s what happens if you get a spill on the ground. The plants in the spill area actually grow better because the desugared molasses still contains nutrients.”
Globig said Rim Guard is not yet available in Canada because he can only access a limited amount of the desugared molasses. If he could find a Canadian source, he would make the product available in Canada.
He said the Canadian sugar beet processing industry is not designed to render the product to the necessary chemical stage he requires.
For more information, contact Phil Globig at 616-866-3718 or visit www.rimguard.biz.
