Urging greater government consideration and use of retreaded tires, the Retread Tire Association has issued an open letter to President Obama and the incoming 112th Congress.
The letter was signed by Harvey Brodsky, RTA managing director, and reads:
“As the managing director of the Retread Tire Association I want to bring to your attention the economic and environmental benefits that can be achieved by promoting the use of retreaded tires by the motoring public and on all government fleet vehicles.
Our industry has come a very long way since the old days and although the word ‘retread’ is often used pejoratively (Seen the sports or entertainment pages in your local newspaper lately?), there are retreads and then there are retreads.
Retreaded tires produced by today’s top quality retreaders look like new tires and perform beautifully, with a safety record as good as the very best new tires, and at a far lower cost. We hope you will take steps to aggressively promote the use of retreads on government vehicles as a smart way to help reduce the deficit, without sacrificing safety, performance or handling of the vehicles.
Retreads are also extremely environmentally friendly, with one of the highest post-consumer contents of any recycled product. Thanks to the retread industry in America hundreds of millions of gallons of oil are saved every year.
As you may know, there is a Federal Executive Order (13149) mandating the use of retreaded tires on certain federal government fleet vehicles.
What you may not know is that retreads are also safely used on school and municipal buses, fire engines and other emergency vehicles, small package delivery vehicles such as FedEx, UPS and even the U.S. Postal Service, along with taxis and millions of other vehicles in the U.S and the rest of the world.
We will be happy to be contacted by any government fleet manager who has an interest in learning more about how retreads can – and should – become a part of the tire program for their fleet.
We offer this as a way for our industry to help save taxpayers’ money, and we hope you will take us up on our offer to help, especially since we are all taxpayers.”
