To truck owners and transporters, tyre rorting is one of those commonplace nationwide problems yet an issue which most fail to address adequately and some refuse to admit to themselves it actually exists.
Lack of tyre tracking and supervision has allowed unscrupulous drivers to run illegal sideline businesses in tyre trade, costing the owners an immense amount of money which until now was thought to be unrecoverable.
Independent truck tyre dealer and fitting expert, Mr Brad Bearman of Bear’s Tyres, says the problem is very much a national plague and contrary to widespread belief there are ways to address it.
“I have been in the industry for many years, and from what I see a large quota of fleet operators and truck managers have all but that given up hope in being able to keep their own tyres on their own trucks,” said Mr Bearman.
“After all, how is a human being supposed to tell one tyre from the other without putting a lot of time into it?
“And, even if someone did put the time into it, if tyres have been illegally substituted can you identify which driver is responsible and where exactly this may have happened?
“The only way to do this is to take much of the manual component out of the equation and use expedient modern technology to police this very serious and potentially costly issue.”
Mr Bearman developed his own tyre management technology to counteract various tyre related problems plaguing truck fleet operators.
And high on the agenda was the issue of rorting and how to stop it. Bear’s Tyre Tracker uses powerful software that provides tracking and analysis to not only provide better cost efficiencies through tyre rotation, it also allows operators to know exactly where each tyre should be on which truck axle.
This is arguably a world first to stop the frequent act of tyre rorting, where drivers are organising the removal of perfectly good tyres from their vehicles only for these tyres to disappear from inventory. Inferior quality tyres, or older tyres, are then put on the truck.
“This rort is the absolute scourge of our industry and what the Tyre Tracker offers is a very good way of maintaining situations where good tyres are being illegally swapped for poor ones,” said Mr Bearman.
“As business operators, these fleet managers have to ask themselves the following question: how much extra per year does it cost through lost mileage from tyres that go missing?”
Bear’s Tyre Tracker is a software base system that logs every single tyre owned by a fleet operator and allows these tyres to be properly tracked, right down to the axle on which they are fitted, and ensures optimised rotation and rebalancing to extract every bit possible from the expected lifespan of a tyre.
The high level of traceability is arguably the world’s first opportunity to eradicate blatant tyre rorting that is occurring.
Bearing in mind that many tyres are illegally swapped with as much as half their lifespan in tread, it can technically safe fleet operators at least 50% of the money that is already appropriated to their tyre needs.
“Tyre rorting is one of those taboo subjects in the truck and transport sector. Everyone knows it is happening, but very few speak out against it – it is almost as if they had admitted defeat on the issue,” said Mr Bearman.
“And now there is technology to track and quantify what until now has been a very mysterious issue and with just a little attention it can wipe tyre rorting right off the map in this country.
“And regardless of the brand of tyre you are using, managing tyres is also good for the environment, good for operator and road safety and definitely good for your bottom line.
“The Tyre Tracker can actually gauge the cost per kilometre of each individual truck tyre on every single vehicle a company runs.
“That is information that has never been available for companies that have large numbers of vehicles on their books, and now they can make sure their tyres don’t disappear either.”
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