DOT regulations state that tires must be checked every 100 miles, or 2 hours, whichever is less. Almost all drivers use a thumper stick to hit the tires and listen for a nice solid sound. A low tire is easy to detect, but you have no idea of what the pressure is inside the tire. Using a tire pressure gauge on 18 tires is a slow, dirty, time consuming process. Frankly, I seldom used one and neither did the other drivers in the company. There are pressure monitoring systems for heavy trucks, but I have never seen or used one.

The other issue is tire quality. Most truck tires these days are imported, just like car tires. Used tires are also exported to foreign countries to be recapped, with no government oversight, and then imported back into the U.S.A.