This is a positive post about inflation, but it doesn’t come from an economist. Nor is it about the Consumer Price Index or Producer Price Index, or anything of that ilk.
It is an inflation issue way more important to you – that of truck tyres. More specifically, the extensively positive effect that proper air pressure has on your tyres.
A simple glance from the window of your vehicle during a highway drive in Australia will show a lot of rubber from blown-out truck retreads dotting the landscape.
This vision has misguided people’s thinking on the effectiveness and safety levels of retreaded truck tyres. They are often deemed ‘dangerous and unreliable’ when the complete opposite is true.
Both retreads and radial tyres perform very well when they are properly maintained, and this maintenance goes a long way to halting the hemorrhaging of unnecessary costs and therefore adds to your bottom line!
Air pressure and its clear importance
When problems do arise, these often result because an over-worked fleet operatoroverlooks simple air pressure checks that will make tyres last on hot, summer hauls on Australian highways.
Our experience tells us that on average only about 10% of fleet managers ever instigate what rates as a good tyre management program. Even the ones that physically allocate the time for this duty are often not checking air pressures regularly.
But, those that do take the company’s advice and regularly check air pressure against the optimum suggested, are ahead financially and have very few tyre failures – even with retreads!
There is nothing stopping fleets running multi-axle set-ups hauling extremely heavy loads at high speeds for many months in extreme Australian heat.
Even if a fleet of this type runs retreads at every position except the steer axles, a good tyre management system will see those retreads last easily and notcompromise safety in any way.
Our lifecycle management experience shows there are very few impact distinctions by environmental heat on professionally and responsibly retreaded truck tyres and brand new radials.
But please note the variables
There are a few variable issues on heat and tyre failure. Heat caused from brakes is one concern, but the heat generated from the simple mistake of improper tyre pressures in relation to the speeds with which they will be dealing is more crucial.
Extremely hot weather conditions are the norm in Australia for our long-haul trucks and overlooking a proper and responsible tyre pressure checking routine is costing so much money in blow outs – for radials as well as retreads.
But as the cost of new tyres is constantly being driven up, the truck fleet operators are looking more and more at retreads as a viable business solution so they need to adopt simple, commonsense maintenance and checking procedures so retreads will not blow out unnecessarily.
We sell and fit new tyres and we professionally retread existing wheels. We are in a unique market position as we delegate to fleet managers one or a combination of new ‘brand’ tyres, new generics and retreads according to our professional opinion.
Forget the negative myths, retreading is an excellent option
Retreading a casing is a way to give a tyre new life in order to reduce operating costs and promote recycling. A retreaded tyre is only as good as the retread manufacturing and tyre maintenance it receives throughout its entire life.
If tyres with low air pressure are left to run, they will generate more heat and therefore have a greater chance for down time, just as any radial would.
Extremely hot temperatures make tyre maintenance programs even more critical. In general, we find the myths about running retreads in extreme heat with no success are excuses to downplay poor tyre maintenance.
And, of course, never forget that whenever we do a re-treading of any wheel case, we are actually being very environmentally friendly and reducing from the millions of tyres disposed of unnecessarily each year.