Returning Idled Tires to Service
Truck tires, unlike many automobile and light truck tires, are all about performance and life-cycle costs. In fact, if truck tires are used within their engineered parameters of load/inflation/speed and are properly maintained, near continuous use would not be out of the question. In fact, they are not designed to require recesses or idle periods.
Consider All Aspects of a Fleet Tire Program
"Iridescent" is a word you probably haven’t associated with your tire program. However, it may describe a concept fleet managers should be thinking about when considering outsourcing and maintenance. Iridescent is defined as "displaying a variety of different colors that change when viewed from different angles." With different "angles" impacting our industry today, here are
Tire Fires: A Modern Version
The best thing about truck tire fires is thatthey hardly ever happen anymore. There are good reasons for that. One is thatsteel radials simply don’t fail in this manner. Older, bias-ply tires werebuilt with multiple layers of crossed body plies that flexed as the tire rolledunder load. Increased loads, decreased inflation and higher speeds all
Grade Your Tire Program
Not many years ago, the success of a fleet tire program was defined by the frequency and costs of crises or problems. These were culled out of periodic expense reports, or perhaps a tire-cost-per-mile figure. This type of management by exception simply won’t cut it in today’s cost competitive business environment. Several important points are
Truck Tires and Fuel, a Complex Relationship
With the price of diesel persistently hovering at or above $4 per gallon, any reasonable new product, service or practice that can help mitigate overall fuel usage deserves exploring. The real life fuel efficiency of new truck tires is typically quantified by rolling resistance, the amount of power/energy required to push the tire down the
Cost per Mile Defined
Determining cost per mile is a useful analytic tool many fleets use to compare alternative tire program choices, from new tire brands/types and retread suppliers to service providers and other competing selections. There is, however, a very important issue to keep in mind to avoid misleading conclusions when comparing alternatives using cost per mile specifics.
Protecting a Fleet’s Tire Investment
When it comes to tires, what do you need to consider to improve profitability? A main factor is the price of new tires. Most suppliers of tier 1 and 2 radials have implemented no fewer than seven price hikes in the past 30 months, raising tire prices approximately 35% to 45%. Tires, traditionally the second
Time is Money for Fleet Tire Programs
We’ve all heard the expression “time is money.” A textbook example recently surfaced when a well-run fleet was debating the payback for spec’ing a tire pressure monitoring system on some new equipment. All tire engineers agree that maintaining proper inflation is the primary lifeline of tire performance, so the traditional cost savings—extending casing life, improving
TPMS: Take Time to Know the Options
At the recent Technology and Maintenance Council meeting, the beliefs and long-offered advice of the most experienced tire engineers were confirmed and documented: specifically that maintaining proper tire inflation consistently saves fuel.
Exploring the future of pneumatic truck tires
What will the commercial over-the-road truck tire (or its worthy replacement) look like in 10 to 20 years? Although we can’t evaluate currently unknown innovations, we can look at developments in other tiretypes: race, passenger car, aircraft, military and other niche market applications. We now have run-flat passenger car tires that have successfully obsoleted spare
Rolling Resistance: Just One Part of Fuel Consumption
Not too many years ago, there were three primary criteria for truck tire selection: treadwear, durability, and price. Consolidation of the tire manufacturing industry and advances in materials and process technology have brought the first and second of these much closer together among tire brands, and at much higher levels of overall performance. Some might
Tires: Assets or Expense?
The life-cycle cost approach to tire management isn’t new to commercial trucking fleets. Manufacturers have been preaching this for years as a way to quantify the benefits of purchasing premium tires – with premium casings – as justification for the higher initial expense of top quality tires. Mostly, this scenario is built around retreading as