Transport managers and fleet operators that have to squabble with tyre dealerships over warranties on a national basis now have a way around this problem.
The point of contention has normally been that the big multinational tyre suppliers have a tendency to wiggle out of honouring warranties on products that fail.
Their argument is normally that the client has exercised poor levels and maintenance. This is a constant reaction and the actual users of the tyres have never before had a way of quantifying their efforts in maintaining the Tyres on their trucks and vans.
Tire lifecycle management specialist and independent Tyre consultant, Mr Brad Bearman of Bear’s Tyres, says the tables are now turned on tyre dealerships.
Through Bear’s Tyre Tracker, users are returned high levels of data and can justify all warranty claims and prove what maintenance has been done and where it has been done on each wheel.
“Normally, the sticky issue with warranties affects the larger carriers — particular ones running national fleets that require service and maintenance in all parts of the country,” said Mr Bearman.
“Carriers that purchase tyres all over the country, for instance, can be assured of being able to maintain warranty of products purchased interstate.
“When targeting new business, the mainstream brand tyre dealerships often advertise they can cover your business nationally if you deal with them routinely.
“But how can you justify what the term ‘routinely’ actually means if all the agreements are made without any way of extracting data to justify just how far a tyre has travelled, how well it’s been maintained and rotated, where and when, and at what point is its life actually over.
“Therefore, it is clearly seen how simple it is to fall back on the argument of poor maintenance and for dealerships to absolve themselves of the responsibility to honour guarantees in relation to maintenance.
“This type of response from the dealerships is not necessarily a malicious one or has been in the past, it’s just the conditions have been quite nebulous and only now that the Tyre Tracker has been developed can the actual figures be revealed, turning the control of warranties away from the actual dealerships and putting them into the hands of the fleet managers and operators.”
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.
Bear’s Tyre Tracker can help with up-to-date information on every single tyre – from which dealership it was purchased, the date purchased, the time and place of every single rotation, it provides the distances each tyre has travelled, and it even individually nominates tyres that are approaching the end of their life cycle and probably do need to be replaced.
“Tyre Tracker basically helps with up-to-date examples that highlight how rampant it is the big multinationals are trying to wiggle out of warranties,” said Mr Bearman.
“A national transport fleet manager that buys a major supplier’s own brand of re-caps often has had many failures that are genuine, only to find that the warranty is not honoured.
“It is so easy for a dealership to say ‘oh well, you didn’t buy it from here mate’, so the loser is the transport company.
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