“Managing” can minimize downtime: Why trucks experience unscheduled downtime and addressing remedies
Unexpected out-of-service events, especially when they happen on the road, are always expensive—too expensive to be dismissed as being inevitable. Yet many fleets, in their busy day-to-day operations, too often fail to address how the road breakdowns that they do experience might be avoided in the future. Dick Hyatt, president of Decisiv Inc., a provider
Reducing stopping distances
In order to stop a fully-loaded vehicle in 250 ft., the torque output from the brakes needs to be 30 to 40% higher. Due to weight shift during the stop, the rear brakes are limited by ABS; so the front steer brakes have to do more work. This requires increasing the size of front brakes
Six wheel spec’ing considerations
Proper spec’ing your vehicles’ wheels can be relatively simple and straight-forward by following a manufacturer’s recommendations to achieve the longest life and performance from your wheels. The experts at Maxion Wheels, a large manufacturer of lightweight steel wheels, suggest fleet equipment specifiers can make wheels a ‘non-issue’ if they’d follow these spec’ing considerations to achieve long
Understanding retreads
With more than 85% of commercial fleets retreading their truck tires multiple times and a typical retread costing approximately one-third to one-half the price of a new tire when you supply your own casing, it is obviously in a fleet’s best bottom line interest to maximize the number of retreads for each and every tire casing. The casing is clearly a valuable asset.
Tire selection for 6X4 vs. 6X2 power units
Tire selection is about to become more complex. Commercial truck tires have evolved to be axle specific, and in nearly all Class 4 to 8 applications, have become service condition-specific.
Why do tires lose air?
When the proper air pressure is correctly set, tire removal miles, fuel economy and retreadability all are maximized.
Tire record keeping and your fleet
Keep tight control of new and retread tire costs by determining exactly what needs to be tracked.
Truck tire inflation: clearing the air
It’s common knowledge in our industry that all tire guys preach the benefits of maintaining proper truck tire inflation.
Widebase single update
Widebase tires have seen exponential growth, with sales doubling every year since they were first introduced more than 10 years ago.
Proper tire storage
What do tires and mushrooms have in common? Cool, dark and dry conditions are always preferred for storage.
Maximize fuel economy with fleet tires
Maximizing vehicle fuel economy continues to be the hot button issue for just about every line-haul and regional fleet when it comes to deciding which tires to run on steer, drive and trailer positions.
Truck tires and fuel, a complex relationship
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 road under a given load, inflation and speed conditions.