Eye on Possibility: Out-of-the-Box Thinking Can Transform Your Image, Sell the Experience
Buying new tires has been called one of the most negative purchases a consumer can make. Did you ever invite the neighbors over to see your new washer-dryer combo? Unlikely. Same holds true for tires. While independent tire dealers can do little to polish the image of tires, they can do an awful lot to
Wanted: One Gorilla: Tiremakers Working Toward TPMS Solution, But Standardization Would Help
As a kid, I would regularly tote a sack of vacuum tubes to the local Gray’s Drug Store so my dad could perform search-and-replace repairs on our faithful black-and-white Zenith. If every tube in the bag tested good, it meant dad had to choose between repair or replacement – costly options in the late 1960s.
From All Sides: Consumers, Raw Materials Push Tiremakers to be ‘Aggressive’ in Cutting Costs
As corporate executive and COO of a tire unit, Jean-Michel Guillon has a unique perspective of the entire tire industry. COO of Michelin Americas Small Tires (MAST) and executive vice president of Michelin North America (MNA), Guillon has to consider both the operational and sales/marketing sides of the tire business. Guillon started with Groupe Michelin
Money Maker: Tracking Margin Dollars Shows Tire Sales Beat Service
Last month, we started taking a look at finding the right mix of tire and service sales. In that column, I stated that tire sales drop higher margin dollars than service sales, which raises the obvious question: Why are tires more profitable than service? First, thanks to all the Tire Review readers who responded to
Information Overload?: New Data Collection Tools Can Help Dealers – But at a Price
When a telephone installer in Canton, Ohio, leaves his service truck, his boss back at headquarters knows. If the installer moves more than 100 yards from his truck, the boss knows that, too. If that installer checks out his son’s baseball game, the boss can ‘see’ the company’s service truck parked at the ball field,
Price of Progress: Emerging Trends Heating Up Commercial Tire/Wheel Assemblies
All good tire people know that proper inflation is the lifeblood of tire durability. It’s often taken for granted that modern radials, when properly maintained, perform admirably in demanding high-speed, line-haul service. That hasn’t always been the case, however, as some of the more experienced (read: older) maintenance managers might recall. In the latter days
Two of a Kind: Mixing Sizes, Construction Leads to Trailer, Dually Disasters
Why do people seem to lose their ability to reason when selecting tires for trailers and dually trucks? Since tire manufacturers build a specific tire designated as ST – Special Trailer – it is reasonable to assume that they did so for a purpose. Maybe to keep the scene depicted below from happening? Take a
Anatomy of a Steer Tire and Ways to Improve Mileage
Steer tires typically receive a lot of attention from fleets and drivers. Certainly, these tires have a huge impact when it comes to driver comfort and road noise, but their weight-bearing abilities are more of a concern. These tires usually carry more load than any other tire on the vehicle. An individual drive or trailer
Stretching Those Tire Dollars
The best way for any fleet to keep operating costs down is to manage tires. After fuel, tires are a fleet’s largest expenditure. Yet so many fleets tend to under-budget and under-manage this cost center. In fact, many fleets still treat tire management as an entry-level position and appoint the newest, least-experienced technicians to handle