5. Buy The Right Tires
No matter how well you take care of your tires, if you're not running the right kind for your application, the process becomes far more difficult.
"Selecting top quality tires, fortified with the latest technology, is essential to optimizing tire mileage," says Goodyear's Richards. The old saying, "you get what you pay for," definitely holds true with tires. Major manufacturers, he says, produce tires with materials, reinforcements and tread designs to optimize performance. This includes tire casings that support multiple retreadings, which helps increase a tire's cradle-to-grave value.
In addition, more and more tires are being developed for specific applications, or for specific goals such as longer tread life or better fuel mileage. Work with your tire dealer to determine which is best for your operation.
6. Watch
Driving Habits
For any fleet, one of the hardest things to control is driving habits.
"Driving style has a major impact on tread wear, just as it does on overall fuel economy, Richards says. "An experienced driver, following good driving and maintenance practices, could achieve up to twice the removal miles of an inexperienced driver."
Michelin's Jones adds that aggressive driving, speeding, and harsh braking, which can result in flat spotting and curbing, will adversely affect the performance and life of a tire.
While it's difficult to know exactly how a driver handles his or her truck on the road, the key is education. Get them involved in doing a pre-trip inspection of their rig before they head anywhere. Not only is it a federal regulation, but it also allows them to take a walk around and spot a tire issue that could be addressed before it leads a serious problem.
One recent study indicated drivers have an enormous impact on maximizing tire mileage, says Al Cohn, director of new market development and engineering support for the tire inflation system maker Pressure Systems International. "Ten drivers were assigned to specific tractors married to specific trailers, and the 10 vehicles had similar payloads and similar routes," he says. "Tires had the fastest tread wear rates on vehicles assigned to drivers who drove fast, made sharp turns and were hard on their brakes."
An increasing number of high-tech systems are able to flag events such as hard braking, and alert fleet managers via telematics or onsite downloads. While the safety department may be most interested in identifying these drivers for additional training, doing this has benefits for tire life, as well.
7. Keep Wheels Aligned
Proper wheel alignment is as critical to keeping a tire in top shape as proper inflation. Total vehicle alignment is important to prevent handling and ride issues, as well as preventing irregular wear from developing on the tires, says Bridgestone Firestone's McDonald.
"A good alignment requires several things: good equipment, a highly trained technician who knows how to 'read the tires,' and a good maintenance program that assures alignments are done in a timely manner," he says. "A good maintenance program will make sure that all axles are checked for alignment, not just a 'set the toe and let her go' program, and it will include the trailers in the fleet, not just the tractors."
A good alignment technician will want to see the tires that have been operating on the vehicle he is to align. If they have been changed, the removed tires should be made available to the technician so he can analyze them. Always get a "before" and "after" record or printout of the vehicle's alignment settings, and keep them in the maintenance file for future reference in case the vehicle continues to have unsatisfactory tire wear.
8. Analyze Scrap Tires
Scrap tire analysis is an excellent way for fleets to understand why tires are failing or have to be removed from service prematurely.
"By evaluating each tire when it is removed from service, reoccurring problems or wear patterns that can be fixed can be detected, minimizing overall downtime," says Michelin's Jones.
He says this will also educate the fleet as to whether they have the right tire for the application, whether or not they are running the correct pressure, or whether drivers are destroying the tires due to lack of training.
9. Keep Good Records
Tire recordkeeping is very important to determine tire cost per mile and to make good tire purchasing decisions. The system used (paper or computer) is only going to be as good as the person or persons recording and tracking the data and information.
Goodyear's Miller notes a good recordkeeping system will store the all the data you need to determine the actual costs associated with your tires. The big question is, how do you start one?
He recommends a Recommended Practice developed by the American Trucking Associations' Technology and Maintenance Council, "which details all of the essential parameters to measure in order to accurately analyze tire related costs. It's something we highly recommend fleets follow."
One way you can make this recordkeeping easier is by using tire-tracking software. While there are several to choose from, one of the newest was introduced recently by Arsenault Associates. The Dossier Tire Management System includes a handheld tread depth and air pressure device that communicates wirelessly with a PDA. Each tire in a fleet is identified by attaching a bar-coded tag that can incorporate an RFID chip. To check tires anywhere, the technician scans the vehicle bar code to display data about the truck and its tires. Then the Dossier Tire Probe is used to electronically measure air pressure and tread depth, which is wirelessly transmitted to the PDA, worn on the technician's belt. It transmits all the tire data wirelessly in real time to the computer housed in the shop and running the full Dossier software system. It also automatically alerts the technician of low tire pressure, tread depth or other issues.
10. Consider Tire Telematics
For years there have been tire pressure monitoring systems, but telematics takes things a step further. Instead of just sending an alert to the driver in the cab, these systems alert fleet management in real time via the truck's mobile communication systems.
There are a wide range of capabilities in tire pressure monitoring systems that incorporate telematics. Some systems simply provide the tire pressure. Others send just alerts. Still-more-sophisticated systems analyze the data and provide a wealth of information that the fleet can use to improve its tire maintenance and manage its tire assets.
As a result, fleets can greatly reduce emergency breakdowns and improve their fuel economy, tread wear and tire life - all of which are negatively impacted by running underinflated. Not only can they improve their tire maintenance, but they can also do this with less labor since you "see" what the tire problems are on a vehicle without using a tire gauge.
"The neat thing about telematics is that it enables the fleet operator to know what a vehicle's tires are doing at any time, no matter how far away it is," says Peggy Fisher, president of TireStamp. "It takes the tire decision-making and maintenance responsibility away from the driver - who in most cases doesn't want the job of maintaining tires - and puts it back in the hands of the fleet maintenance and management personnel, who do care about their tires."
