Desert Tortoise Rehab Project – Using Low Profile Casters

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It’s not every day you see a tortoise on wheels, but that’s what Reaper is! Several years ago, Service Caster got a call for help from the adoption team at the SF Valley Chapter of California Turtle & Tortoise Club. This tortoise, once named Speedy (now Reaper) was unfortunate enough to spend nearly 9 months trapped under a crawl space. Amazingly he survived, but was extremely malnourished, dehydrated, and barely able to move when he finally freed himself. In order to rehabilitate Reaper, the Tortoise club designed a turtle skateboard. Not only did Service Caster provide the wheels for this skateboard, but fabricated the entire project for Reaper. This donation has enabled Reaper to become more easily mobile and provided an opportunity to aid in facilitating a full recovery.

What Are Kingpinless Casters?

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Kingpinless casters, as the name suggests, are casters that lack a kingpin. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? What is the purpose of the kingpin, and why would you remove it? Read on to find out.

The kingpin is a feature found in most light to heavy duty swivel casters, though it is generally not used in ultra-light duty casters such as chair casters. It is essentially a rivet, and its job is to hold the top plate and the fork of the caster together, allowing for a ball bearing housing between the two units that in turn allows the caster to swivel properly. The kingpin also tends to be a weak point in situations that put heavy stress on the caster, such as shock loading. In these cases, the kingpin can bend or even break, allowing the ball bearings to fall out and causing caster failure.

The answer to this caster failure is the kingpinless caster. Kingpinless casters are precisely engineered and machined to allow swiveling without a kingpin. The lack of the kingpin removes the casters’ typical weakest link, and provides a casters that can handle shock loading and heavy stress without failure.

Most kingpinless casters are only available at the heavy and extra heavy duty levels of casters, since the easier-to-produce a king pinned casters  can handle light and medium duty jobs with ease.

Need help choosing a kingpinless caster?  Give us a call at 800-215-8220 today.

How to Choose a Replacement Chair Caster

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Did you know you’re not stuck with the cheap plastic casters that come with every office chair ever made? There are many options for replacing the casters, and, below we’re going to give a quick rundown on what information you’ll need to make an informed decision.

The first thing you will need to know is the stem size of your current casters. To find this out, you will have to remove the stem from the chair. From there, check out of our How to Measure Caster Stems page for more information. This is a very important step as casters may have several styles of stem as well as use either imperial or metric standards.

After that, determine the primary location of use. Will it be on a low pile carpet? Plastic or glass chair mat? Hardwood or tile floor? This information is critical for determining the right wheel material. On carpet, nylon or metal wheels are acceptable. On hard surfaces, especially damaging surfaces like hardwood, you want to get a soft wheel like neoprene, thermoplastic elastomer (synthetic rubber), or urethane. Soft rubber is also an option, but it may leave unsightly black marks on flooring where other soft treads will not.

From this point on, the choices are primarily aesthetic. Hooded or unhooded? If hooded, perhaps a color other than black, such as the windsor antique or bright brass? These choices won’t affect the functionality, but may be far more pleasing to the eye than the original casters.

Take a look at our online selection of casters online or give us a call at 1-800-215-8220 to speak with a sales person about all the available options.

New Product Alert!

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5 Inch Threaded Stem Stainless Steel Casters Solid Polyurethane Wheel

We are happy to announce the addition of Service Caster #20 Series swivel casters with a solid polyurethane wheel to our online shop. These casters are ideal for light and medium duty material handling requiring regular wash down or in wet areas. All stainless steel components are resistant to water, steam, cleaning agents, corrosive agents, and other rust causing agents.

The polyurethane wheel performs well on most surfaces, and excels on hard surfaces like concrete, tile, and wood. They will not mark or mar floor surfaces.

You can learn more about these products and order them on our website. Keep checking our new product board on Pinterest for all our new online products.

Durometer Measurements Explained

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While looking at caster wheels, you may come across the term “Durometer” and an associated number and letter. What do they mean?

Well, here’s the skinny: Durometer is both a measurement and a tool for measuring.

“But what exactly is a durometer measuring?” You wonder.

Well, it measures the hardness of an item.

There are many durometer scales represented by a letter (in the caster and wheel industry we use Shore A and Shore D) ranging in numerical value from 0-100. The higher the number, the harder the item is. For instance, a rubber band has a durometer of 25 A. Skateboard wheels (or many of the polyurethane wheels we sell) might be between 85-95 A. This doesn’t mean that they are extremely hard, just that they are one of the hardest materials the Shore A scale can measure.

The durometer of a wheel can help the user figure out how the wheel will react to its environment and the floor it is on.

What happens when an item is harder than the Shore A Scale can measure? We move on to the Shore D scale. Any of our harder wheels, such as a phenolic resin wheel, will be measured on the D scale. A phenolic resin wheel has a durometer of 90 D. Another example of an item on the D scale would be a hard hat, which has a durometer of around 75 D.

Still have questions? Give us a call at 1-800-215-8220.

A Tyler of All Trades

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We love to highlight empoloyees for their contributions to the team. Today the spotlight goes to Tyler, one of our sales representatives and our marketplace coordinator. In these roles, Tyler assists customers with finding the proper casters and wheels for their needs, handles all customer service items with our marketplaces, and assists our marketplace team with listing new products.

Tyler has been at Service Caster, which is a family-owned business, all of his life, but he officially became an employee in March of 2010. There are so many things he loves about working at Service Caster, but he is especially fond of his coworkers who he says are “all one big happy family and we all work together so well. This is especially important as our great relationships allow us to work together to locate the best casters and wheels for our customers”.

When Tyler isn’t at work he enjoys spending time with his fiancé Jen and son Brayden. He also enjoys playing golf because it enables him to have a great time being outside with friends and family.

Tyler’s favorite Service Caster memory is when the Service Caster team had their own softball team. He said, “Although I was very young at the time, I had a blast going and watching all of them stink it up on the field. They may have not been very good at softball, but they sure are good when it comes to casters and wheels! We all can’t be good at everything right!? LOL.”

Need casters or wheels? Give us a call at 800-215-8220. Who knows, you might get Tyler on the phone!

Toolbox Casters

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One of our most popular products is our sets toolbox casters.  Customers in many industries, from DIY and “garage shop” users to mechanics and other technicians, have found our toolbox casters especially useful for their light and medium duty toolboxes, as the polyurethane wheels will not develop flat spots from periods of inactivity.

The wheels roll smoothly with integrated ball bearing design. And the polyurethane wheel will not mark or mar floors, performing well on most surfaces and excelling on hard surfaces like concrete, tile, and wood. 

Alternate uses for these wheels also include material handling, carts, equipment, and shop projects. 

Ready to order some for yourself?  Call 800-215-8220 or order online.

What kind of grease should I grease my casters with?

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This is a pretty popular question posted to our customer service team at Service Caster and, unfortunately, we don’t have a simple answer for it.

All caster bearings need to be lubricated with a high-quality multi-purpose grease. The grease should have good extreme pressure, anti-wear characteristics, and should be able to withstand the temperature range that fits the application requirements.

Everyone uses their casters and wheels differently, so some may be required to grease their casters and wheels more often than others. Wheel and swivel bearings last longer if they are regularly lubricated. We recommend applying grease to friction points on the wheel hub, washer, and leg surfaces. This will reduce drag and improve rollability. Normal conditions may require lubrication every six months where extreme conditions may require lubrication monthly.  Extreme conditions include corrosive or exceptionally dirty environments. Finally, if the application experiences wash downs, lubrication may be needed after each wash. 

Using the correct grease for your casters and wheels is vital to their lifespan and performance.   Have questions? Give us a call at 1-800-215-8220 and we’ll help you out.

Three Tips to Make Lawn Maintenance a Breeze

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It’s summer.  The grass is growing.  And growing. And growing.  It grows so fast that you barely have time to enjoy the fruits of your lawn mowing labor before you’re back at it again.  And that cute little flowerbed you planted in the spring? Well, now it’s a bed of weeds interspersed with flowers.  

Lawn care is serious business.  And, apparently, also a competitive one. Who hasn’t looked over at their neighbor’s lawn and gotten a case of comparisonitis?  When your lawn looks better, there’s an added swag to your step. When it looks worse, well, you make a beeline to wherever you store your lawnmower and fire it up.  

But these three tips can help make lawn maintenance a little easier on you.  Of course, all our tips involve the use of wheels. But, hey, we’re a caster company, so some shameless self stealth promotion is to be expected.

Hack Your Weed Wacker

A few weeks ago we had an elderly customer call into us to order wheels for his weed wacker.  It seems that due to some physical issues, he was no longer able to hold it up for long periods of time.  So, he thought, “Why not put some wheels on it?” Then he could push it around like a lawnmower. Pretty cool, huh? 

Make Your Garden Tools Mobile

So, that flowerbed we mentioned that’s overgrown with weeds?  Well, you probably won’t want to use a weed wacker on that because the flowers you so painstakingly planted will become collateral damage.  And you definitely don’t want to use one on that garden you planted lest your hard work cultivating those fruits and veggies will be for naught.  We can’t make pulling the weeds by hand any less painless for your lower back, but sharing our hack for keeping your tools close at hand will at least make the process a little easier and save you the inconvenience of having to travel to the shed or garage for the one garden tool you need at that moment.

Use a Utility Cart

Utility carts and wagons are great for hauling away those freshly-pulled weeds to your trash can or another area of the yard.  Coincidentally, they’re also useful for transporting the flowers from your car to the flowerbed in the first place. (Got kids toys strewn all over the yard?  You can go through the yard, pick them up, and put them in the cart instead of running them back to your toy storage one by one.)

Check out our Pinterest board for visuals of each one of our tips and then let us know which one you think will be most useful for you.  

Need some wheels?  Give us a call at 800-215-8220 and we’ll hook you up.

Five Motivational Quotes We’re Living By Right Now

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“Great things never come from comfort zones.”

We’ve been in business for 25 years and are thriving, but are we stopping?  Nope. We have a well-oiled sales funnel in place to sell our casters and wheels; however, we know that there is room to grow, so we’ve been focusing on building brand awareness on social media in both our business-to-consumer and business-to-business markets.  It’s the one piece of the marketing puzzle that we haven’t leveraged to date and we’re super excited to see how we can utilize it to grow.

“Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”

Most people don’t think about their casters.  “But my office chair came with wheels. Why should I buy new ones when these are totally fine?”  Sure, they’re fine, but why settle? Manufacturers put casters on the bottom of a lot of products, however, they don’t put the BEST casters on for the application because it doesn’t make sense for them to lose profit-margin over something so small, literally and figuratively.  You’d be surprised by the difference an upgraded set of casters makes on the bottom of your product.  

“A satisfied customer is the best strategy of all.”

We strive to provide our customers with superior customer service throughout the sales process.  There is nothing more frustrating than having a question about a product or an issue with a product and being unable to get a live human being on the phone work through it with.  Our customer service representatives are all located in our West Reading, PA headquarters and are available to walk our customers through the sales process, answer questions, and resolve complaints five days a week during business hours. 

“Surround yourself with people who are only going to lift you higher.”

We’re very proud of our collaborative staff here at Service Caster.  Our staff members are quick to step outside of their designated roles to pitch in on projects that will grow our brand awareness and increase sales.  Our customer service team has been working closely with the social media team to produce behind-the-scenes photos for our Instagram feed. The website store team is helping the social media team, too, by coordinating the back end of our new soon-to-be-launched facebook shop.  And the marketplace and web store teams constantly have their heads together on one project or another. We absolutely love it.

“Success doesn’t come from what you do occasionally, it comes from what you do consistently.”

Consistency is what matters in the end.  Being consistently visible on social media, in Google searchers, and through other marketing channels.  Having staff available to handle customer inquiries, sales, and complaints. And selling quality products.  If we lack in any one of those three areas we will miss out on providing the best customer experience possible, which threatens our ability to obtain new customers and keep existing customers buying from us over and over.  But all three together, well, they’re pretty powerful tools for ensuring we’re here to serve you for another 25 (or more) years.

Like this post?  Share it with your friends on social media.  Then, let us know your favorite motivational quote below.

Oh, and if you need some casters or wheels, our customer service team would be happy to help you find the perfect set  for your application or project. Just give us a call at 800-215-8220. #shamelessselfpromotion #wehaveacasterforthat