It’s no surprise that the U.S. replacement tire market took it on the chin in 2012, but now we have some concrete numbers to put in place.
Last week, the RMA released its preliminary tire market report for 2012, which shows increases in OE tire shipments and drop-offs in replacement shipments.
In P-metric tires, OE shipments came in at 40 million tires, up 12.1% year-over-year. Replacement shipments, though, fell 1.5% to 191.4 million tires. LT-metric OE shipments were up 1.5% to 4.2 million tires, and again replacement shipments were off – down 2.1% to 28 million tires.
OE medium truck tire shipments grew 2.4% YoY, while replacement medium truck tire shipments fell off 3.9% to 15.9 million tires.
Of all tires shipped – OE and replacement – imported tires totaled 126.0 million P-metric tires (up 5.7%), 21.0 million LT-metric tires (up 2.7%), and 10.5 medium truck tires (up 2.3%).
In terms of what was shipped, manufacturer brands made up 80.5% of all consumer tires shipped, while associate brands took 9.5% and private brands accounted for 10%.
P-metric tires were most often sold by independent tire dealers with 65% share, followed by mass merchants at 15%, company-owned stores at 14% and “Other” at 6%. Dealers held a 79% share of LT-metric sales, followed by company-owned stores at 13%, mass merchants at 4%, and “Other” at 4%.
More details from the 2012 tire year will be presented in the September 2013 edition of Tire Review’s Sourcebook.
