Truck tires are a significant cost in fleet operations. Analyzing the tires themselves requires a combination of experience and technical knowledge. However, beyond this legacy skillset, the right maintenance strategy today also involves using data analytics to provide further insight into tire wear and tear, and the right replacement schedule.
Tire programs should consist of a monthly tire scrap analysis to learn valuable information on the fleet, as well as identify unnecessary expenses to subpar tire casings. Tire vendors will pull a tire casing without recapping it and replace in the event of certain factors such as sidewall damage, tread worn too far, blowouts, damages to tread that can’t be repaired, etc. However, there are certain parameters that should be set with these vendors to ensure they replace under the right circumstances with quality tires.
Tire age should be closely monitored, as an older tire will start to degrade in quality after so many years. This degradation can be costly for liability reasons, and breakdowns can occur due to tire casings that have been running for too long. In general, a tire program that removes tire casings that are more than six to seven years of age will help eliminate this tire quality issue.
In a recent analysis conducted by Fleet Advantage on tire usage for a typical regional haul operation at 100,000 MPY for a new truck and trailer reviewed in-service years one through seven with trucks running a full lifecycle without any unforeseen circumstances. The below graph is based on steer tires running a total of 100,000 miles, drive recaps running 275,000 miles and trailer tire recaps running 150,000 miles. This also includes labor of install and three tire pressure checks/corrections per year but does not account for any national discount a fleet might receive.
As you can see in the chart, excessive tire replacement costs are shown in years three and six for this scenario. However, not all tire wear is created equal, and a truck with 100,000 miles on tires may not show the same wear as a second truck, especially considering key variables such as load, logistics, environment and routing differences. Therefore, it is imperative to leverage the right utilization, maintenance and tire analysis data from software that manages a fleet’s overall total cost of ownership (TCO), including maintenance and repair (M&R) expenditures in order to make the right decision for each individual truck on optimum tire replacement periods.
Casing brand is another important component that should be addressed. Fleets that have leading brand tires can still have off-brand tires and casings applied during unforeseen service calls on the road. Third-party vendors will often replace blown tires with cheaper ones, thus resulting in a casing quality reduction within the fleet. These off-brand casings should be removed at every tire scrap analysis.
Tire analysis will provide valuable feedback on issues that would normally go unnoticed. For example, a fleet manager may begin to notice a pattern of tire failures due to improper inflation based on the characteristics of level of sidewall damage or underinflation measures. Lastly, drivers must be trained to properly conduct pre- and post-trip inspections to help monitor tire wear.
Regular tire scrap analysis will provide visibility into the proper service of tires, such as proper use of tire removal tools. Improper tire repairs can also be found during these inspections. If there is a bubble or a blown section of the sidewall and there is a repair that was made near this damage, this can be a sign of a repair failure.
This article was submitted by Fleet Advantage.
