One the reasons that I took such a close interest and “hands on involvement” regarding tyres was an unfortunate episode that occurred in 1971 and it was caused by Ondura remoulds. This bloke had called two or three times in a van hawking tyres and batteries and other bits of workshop consumables like rags etc. I had never bought 'owt off him until this fateful day when he had on board 6 Ondura 1100 X 22:5 ZZpattern remoulds. The price he was asking was IIRC a bit less than what a Mich Remix was at the time and as they “looked” OK so I had deal with him and he threw in a bag of rags for “luck” ( which turned out to be OK at the top of the bagful but were from there on down they was F------ non absorbent nylon stuff !). Well we fitted 4 of the aforesaid Onduras to a trailer axle and two blew off on the way to London and a third "gave up the ghost on the return trip. So this 40 footer returned to Milnthorpe with three new Mich X cases fitted at the breakdowns . I had put them on the front axle so we had got away with no damage but had they been on the back axle I could imagine there would have been some lumber caused to the back lights etc.
So from that disaster I vowed from then on to avoid spurious remoulds which apart from Bandags and Remix I stuck religiously to for the next 25 years plus ! Funny thing was though I never clapped eyes on “The Wandering Minstrel” again I wonder why !
PS The only other “Itinerant” that I ever dealt with again was a Bloke called Conboy ( That was his real name!) from Blackpool who used to call in at the yard a couple of times a year hawking random bundles of Keruing planks which was ideal for repairing our trailer floors so I was always pleased to see him as his prices were way cheaper than if I bought flooring from our Trailer suppliers. Cheers Dennis.