Tire Management Tips
Professional tire management is all about using the numerous important tips to help you save money, increase safety and preserve the environment. In this section we hope to enlighten you with some very useful tips that we consider could apply to any fleet. Some of these you may already know, and others may be useful or not. In any case feel free to contact us if you have any additional tips you'd like us to share with others, we'll be happy to add them here and share this valuable information with the entire world. Our goal is always the same, reduce costs, increase safety and preserve the environment!
Tip #2 - Keep your own Casings
Tip #3 - Link retreading services
Tip #4 - Learn from your own numbers
Tip #5 - Think BIG, put numbers into YOUR perspective.
Tip #6 - Get help from the experts
Tip #1 - Calculating Cost
In tire terms, value is calculated by measuring cost performance.
Depending on the application or the region, different units of performance are used, such as Miles, Kilometers or Hours.
So some common industry terms also adopted by Budini are the following:
- Cost-per-Mile (CPM),
- Cost-per-Kilometer (CPK)
- Cost-per-Hour (CPH).
It is a common mistake to make a calculation for a single life cycle. Tires usually run more than a single life cycle, new plus each retread.
There is only one true formula for calculating tire value:
CPU = Total Investment / Total Performance
We're using the term CPU here to represent Cost-per-Unit. A Unit can be Miles, Kilometers or Hours. In your case you can replace the U for the appropriate measurement device.
The Total Investment is the entire amount of money spent in a given tire.
The Total Performance is the amount of miles, kilometers or hours a tire ran during its entire life, until it was removed from service for any reason such as scrapped, disposed or sold.
Lets see an example using Miles as the measurement unit:
| Life Cycle | Cost | Performance |
| New Tire | US$300 | 100,000 miles |
| 1st Retread + Repairs | US$130 | 90,000 miles |
| 2nd Retread + Repairs | US$120 | 70,000 miles |
| TOTAL | US$550 | 260,000 miles |
Using the above formula: US$550 / 260,000 miles = US$ 0.002115 per mile (CPM)
Tire cost is an ongoing calculation, it changes with every mile run, so the only way to make an accurate calculation is at the when the tire life is finalized.
Tip #2 - Keep your own casings!
Keep your own casings, avoid casings from an unknown origin.
This practice is so important that if you're not doing it, just this one tip could make a tremendous positive impact in the future safety of your fleet, its drivers and everyone else on the road!
In some countries, it is a common practice to trade your tire in for another. In other countries it is a common practice the casing is serviced (Retreads and/or Repairs) and returned to its original owner.
There are plenty of reasons why you should not accept casings from an unknown origin in your fleet, and if you are a client of Budini you probably know these, but for this tip's sake, lets just use one reason: Maintenance History.
Maintaining a tire includes, repairing and retreading it properly when needed, maintaining the correct pressure at all times, matching it with other tires throughout its life, not overloading it, and many other practices you may or may not adopt in your situation.
The better you maintain a tire, will make it run longer, safer, and cheaper!
So now imagine the following situation. You are the proud owner or maintenance manager in a given fleet. You take extreme care with your maintenance, properly inflate your tires at all times, and use only more expensive quality products. Once your new tire finishes its life, you trade it in for a retreaded tire. You'll get a credit for your beautiful, perfectly maintained casing and receive.... ....ANOTHER casing?... one that you have no clue about the maintenance, pressure, running history?
You can start to see the picture here! By accepting tires from unknown origin as a trade to your perfectly maintained casings, you're trading in all the effort and investment made in the care and future safety of your assets for an unknown risk. Why not just ask for your casings back? This is actually a simple tip, but it may not be so simple if you have no control or management in place. Of course, Budini will be glad to help you with that. If you've learned something from this tip, you may find it interesting that it is directly linked to the next one...
Tip #3 - Link retreading services
A very common problem in the tire industry is to blame the wrong retreading companies for the poor quality of product or service provided. Yes, sounds strange, but it is absolutely true and you may be doing it too!
Not many people really know much about the technical aspects of the retreading process. Nevertheless the retreading process is absolutely key in determining the future outcome of your tire in terms of safety, performance and cost!
In a very simple description of what happens in a precured retread process: Retreader picks-up or receives your casing, the casing is inspected, buffed, skived, cemented, repaired, filled, receives a new tread, gets vulcanized, goes through a final inspection and is returned to you or sold to another customer (if you're not following tip # 2)
Many assume that the above process is a standard procedure; and also assume that all retread suppliers are the same, like a commodity. Others don't go as far but still assume that within the same retread brand, the final product is also the same. Unfortunately these are "assumptions" and may be far from the truth.
If you haven't had a chance to visit a tire retreading plant, I strongly suggest you do. Budini suggests you get to know all of your suppliers well and use a shared effort to improve your tire management practices.
If you visit two retread facilities you will notice that they are different. They will look different, they may use different machines, certainly different workers, different way the equipment is organized and so on. These are the most obvious. The more knowledgeable you become about the retreading process will enable you to detect more and more differences between one retreader and another.
In my personal opinion, saying that retreading companies are all the same would be similar to saying all dentists are the same.
The retread process relies partly on skilled labor, especially in the inspection and the skiving stations. The more knowledgeable, experienced, skilled and dedicated the worker is with your tire, the less chance of avoidable problems you'll have with that tire.
Here goes another important piece of information. It is mainly the 1st retread that determines the outcome of your tire, not the others!
The reason is that the first time a new tire is buffed the retreading company has a unique window of opportunity to perform all the necessary work to your tire. This work takes more time for some tires than others, depending on what needs to be repaired. At the end of the process tires look generally the same, but the steps that were taken between the beginning and end of the retreading process that involved skilled labor can be quite different among retreaders.
The problem is that in tire terms, it doesn't mean that a missed repair will actually cause a failure - it may or it may not. And to make it a little more complicated it doesn't mean that the problem will occur in the same retread life. The problem from a missed repair from the 1st retread may only show up after the 2nd retread process. An if you're mixing retreaders you'll end-up "possibly" blaming the wrong one.
That is why Tip #3 is key for you to know where good quality and bad quality come from. You should always use the same retreader with a given tire, so if a retread related problem occurs with your tire, you'll know exactly where to go.
This tip is only possible if you are following Tip #2. If you don't know your casings are yours, you won't know if someone else retreaded them before.
If you feel these tips were useful, or not, please share your comments with us. We appreciate receiving emails with constructive criticism or complements.
Tip #4 - Learn from your own numbers
If there is a sure thing we've learned in the last 25+ years, managing tires in over 40 countries is one thing: Tip #5 - Think BIG, put numbers into your perspective
CPM, CPK and CPH seem like small numbers, many times with too many decimals, such as US$ 0.002115. This is not even 1 penny per tire. People don't even like to use such small numbers. BIG mistake! You should put that number in your perspective!
So lets build a generic perspective of a fleet.
How many vehicles? (250 18-wheelers = 4500 wheel positions)How many miles on average does each vehicle run per year? (120,000)
So in this fleet US$ 0.002115 x 4500 x 120,000 = US$1,142,100 (one million four hundred ten thousand dollars).
So in this fleet if I can save 0.0001 per mile = US$54,000 at the end of the year.
0.002115 vs 0.001815 may seem like a small figure, but it in this case it represents US$162,000 in a year.
What is your fleet's perspective?
The point is that very small numbers compared can result in a very big difference when put into a fleet's perspective. 0.0001 may not mean much on a small fleet of buses, but it may mean millions on a large long-haul operation. How big is 0.0001 or even 0.001 in your fleet's perspective?
Tip #6 - Get help from the experts
There is so much information, so many free services offered by tire manufacturers, vehicles manufacturers, tire and retread suppliers, yet the focus is many times on price. After the initial purchase, tires require maintenance to run at their lowest cost, and this maintenance can be greatly improved with a better relationship with your suppliers, that can help you or teach you what to do. Work smart, use your suppliers instead of squeezing their prices. If you've navigated around this website you've probably learned that the benefits in making your tires last longer, be safer and preserve the environment are much greater than a few bucks discount on the purchase price.
Remember, there is no free lunch! In fact, suppliers have absolutely nothing to gain from helping your fleet make your tires last longer, they will only sell you less. Yet in this competitive environment many will help you anyway in hopes to gain your loyalty to their business. They should be compensated for that and not squeezed by a few bucks difference (if you are seeing results!). Value their services and quality more than their products.
Contact us!
We hope these tips are useful. They are the tip of the iceberg, but come from experience. Budini can guide you every step of the way, being the tire management coach, solution supplier and consultant for your company, going from unpredictability to unimaginable savings (while increasing safety and preserving the environment!)