Commercial Carrier Journal 1120

EQUIPMENT: TIRE TESTING

KEEPING THEM

ROLLING Know how, why, when to test your fleet’s tires

BY TOM QUIMBY

I

mplementing a tire test can help fleets save money over the long haul, but there’s plenty of work to be done to do it properly. If there’s consistency with testing and data-gathering practices, a fleet might just reach a “eureka” moment.

That was the case for The PIT Group, a brand-neutral testing group in Canada that helps manufacturers and fleets hone-in on the best-performing truck products such as tires, which rank as the second-highest expense for fleets behind fuel. Tire tests at PIT have become popular, especially where fuel economy is concerned.

“We have reached up to 5% fuel economy difference between two brands of the same type of tire,” said Marc Trudeau, senior member relation and business development specialist for PIT Group. “The price difference between these two tires was only roughly 10%. If you’re going to pay $8,000 to put tires all around on your tractor and trailer that will save $15,000 in fuel, it makes no sense to get the cheapest tire.”

Improved fuel economy and tread life can motivate fleets to pursue tire tests of their own, but it’s far from easy and will require plenty of thought, the right equipment, cooperation and cost.

“Tire tests cost time and money to run, and they are not easy to do 38

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Digital tire monitoring solutions, such as Continental’s ContiConnect platform shown above, “offers fleets access to all their tire data at a glance and helps track several variables for an accurate comparison,” said Marco Rabe, Continental Tire’s head of R&D for truck tires in the Americas. “But visual inspection of the tires is still important, especially during the testing phase, to check for irregular wear, stone drilling and other concerns.”

correctly,” said TireStamp President Peggy Fisher. “It requires a great deal of concerted effort for many fleets simply to find the vehicles with the test tires.

Then it demands considerable labor to take tire tread depth measurements and to record the findings.”

Fisher cautions that tire data collecting and recording requires careful consistency that may prove too tedious for the average technician. Next comes critical number crunching, which reveals the tires that rank better over others in the test.

“Someone has to analyze the data and compute the results,” Fisher said.

“Fleets have to determine if they have the

| november 2020

personnel, commitment and determination to set up a tire test correctly, will have access to the test tires at regular intervals and can conduct tire tests properly for what could be a year or more.”

Team commitment is vital, but it won’t get far without the right equipment. “Tire wear rates can vary greatly with vehicle type, make and model,” said Roger Best, market insights and product applications engineer for Bridgestone Americas. “It is imperative that a fleet have adequate equipment for in-house testing.”

Best recommends the following guidelines when testing equipment: Use the same vehicles for all testing groups