Why Manage Tires?
- Reduce Tire Consumption (2nd largest cost, directly affects the bottom line)
- Reduce Fuel Consumption (largest cost, directly affects the bottom line)
- Increase Safety on the road – Reduce Road Calls
- Increase Safety at the fleet
- Strengthen relationships with partners, clients and suppliers
- Know the true value involved parties, products and services.
- Preserve the environment
- Retread more times with safety.
- Retreading is a form of recycling, it consumes much less oil than to produce a new tire.
- Less tire debris on the road.
- Less tires end-up in landfills because they run more miles, not because they can be recycled.
- Less pollution emitted because less fuel is consumed
Even with the tremendous benefits clearly stated above, most fleets do not manage their tires. So below you'll find some of the many reasons we've heard over the years.
Why NOT manage tires?
First of all there is a BIG difference between managing and controlling tires! If you're unaware, please see some of the key differences in the Manage or Control? page.
But if you must know the answer, below are some reasons we have heard from companies why they do not manage tires. Given all the great benefits above, and our inside knowledge of the great number of benefits professional tire management provides, it is hard to agree with any of these reasons, but at least we'd like to share our point of view why we don't agree: Keep in mind that our goal is for all fleets around the world to benefit from this information. Some information may or may not be useful in your case.
1. Tires are not our core business, they are a necessary evil to our business.
Indeed to a fleet of vehicles, they are necessary! Some fleets see tires as black, round rubber objects with a hole in the middle (shaped like a doughnut) that require maintenance and cause a series of unpredictable problems and cost a tremendous amount of money every year. They prefer to stay away from it as much as possible, control only what they believe is necessary. These fleets normally only care about how much is being spent with each of their suppliers and rely on everyone else for advice regarding tire matters.But the more you get to know your own tires, the more you get to understand them, and in truth, the ones that understand them well see it as a tremendous advantage over those who don't. There is so much tire related waste in this industry that being more informed means having more power.
2. My suppliers manage tires for me, so I don't have to worry about it.
There are fleets that pay to have their tires managed by others, and there are fleets that rely on free services from suppliers to manage their tires in exchange for their business. This is our response for the ones that are using the free services.There is a good and a bad side to this. The good is sharing of the effort of managing your valuable assets with experts in the business. Tire suppliers know many factors that can drive costs up and down in a fleet, and can help increase the longevity of the tires by providing supporting tire related services such as preventive fleet checks, vehicle alignment, balancing, air-ups, matching, rotations and so on.
The bad side is that there is a conflict of interest in the long run. The better job a fleet's tire suppliers do in helping fleets manage their assets, the less they'll sell and the less profit they'll make. The reason being that the best services will result in longer tire life. The longer the tire life, the less tires a fleet will consume. So far so good for the fleet, but for the supplier, the less tires a fleet consumes, the less tires they sell. It is inevitable to a supplier, that providing outstanding tire services for free could be like shooting themselves on the foot in the best interest of their client. There are some exceptions, of course, but this is not a win-win relationship between the fleet and the supplier. If the fleet is growing they could be sending new business to the same supplier to justify the loss of business, but the point is that the likelihood of getting "ALL" of the services your tires require for free is very unlikely to happen, and to aggravate this situation in many cases fleets squeeze their suppliers even further to reduce prices, or they'll switch to the competition by just a few dollars difference in price.
The problem with this position is that a fleet won't have enough information (due to the lack or their own tire management efforts) to make any informed decisions other than price and measure the overall level of unpredictable problems such as road calls or visible failures they can associate with a supplier. A simple mistake can cost the entire business relationship, and worse, the wrong supplier may be at blame (see Tip #2 and Tip #3 on ways to avoid this). Although it is not apparent, this position is usually bad for the fleet and bad for the supplier, as there is little awareness of the true value of their services.
Budini recommends a strategy where the fleet creates partnerships with its suppliers where both share the gains, a true win-win relationship. Through proper tire management a fleet becomes more informed about its tires and their needs and the suppliers are constantly monitored, and compensated fairly for their products and value-added services.
3. We already have a tire system, we don't need another one.
Nowadays companies are looking for a complete solution fully integrated into a single package and in compliance with the IT department's requirements. Some of these full packages include: human resources, accounting, logistics, dispatch, purchasing, billing, vehicle maintenance, fuel, tires and other functions..Lets be reasonable: No single company or system can be the best at everything. To make a long story short; because of this demand for a complete package many software companies have released complete ERP systems that have a little bit of everything; and in having a little bit of everything you give up a lot of little things that "appear" insignificant in the whole picture, like tires for example.
Every fleet knows how significant tires are to their business expenditures, but unfortunately not many know what functions of tire software make a difference, thus any tire system or module is widely accepted if it is already included in a package or as long as it can integrate with the others in place. This is more of a informational technology solution than a tire management (physical, hands-on) solution.
Nevertheless, tires are the second largest cost, in many companies only surpassed by fuel. For other companies such as leasing operations where the customer pays for the fuel tires may be the largest operating cost. Wouldn't you want a system that specializes in tires? How about a whole organization that can help you with all tire management related matters, including software?
A general physician may not know what tools are necessary to do brain surgery. Only a neurosurgeon would. The more experienced the neurosurgeon the more likely to use the appropriate tools. The more experienced a tire manager, the more likely to use the appropriate tools.
A similar analogy applies to an athlete. It is unlikely that an outstanding athlete could reach its top performance without a coach. But with tire software few are checking credentials for experience and results. Most likely there is no coach and you have to learn what is right or wrong on your own.
In tire management matters Budini is the world leader in software solutions. When you use our systems we're not just a software vendor; we will be your tire management coach. At Budini we provide strategic support, consultative support, operational support, and an entire organization only dedicated to tire management matters that can truly help you get started managing tires professionally. We'll take your company from the beginning; design an implementation strategy according to your available resources and take you all the way, step by step, as a partner.
A software by itself can accomplish nothing. A team of experts in tire management can help you implement a software in a way that your company can benefit from it to the fullest extent.
4. We have tried in the past and it didn't work
This a very honest and respectable answer. That is probably true. There are hundreds of possibilities why it didn't work. Since every fleet is unique the reasons it didn't work will differ from one company to another. The biggest problem here is the lack of information, training, skills, know-how, orientation and technology available at the time. Another problem is that the core business of a fleet is to provide logistics and transportation - not to manage tires! So trying on your own will highly increase the chance of failure.Usually there is nobody focused on tire management matters in a fleet, understandably, it is not your business; but all your vehicles require tires to provide transportation and that is your business. Chances are tires are among the company's highest operating costs.
In small fleets the owner is usually directly involved in tire matters because they can feel the "pain in the pocket" effect when something is wrong. In large fleets it is less common for the owner to be directly involved with tires or there is no single owner. In these cases the "pain in the pocket" effect is not so apparent, and management handles tires in a less direct approach.
One of the greatest problems of failure is the lack of consistency in the commitment to manage tires. Over the years, Budini has maintained contact with a great number of fleets all over the world, and one of the problems we are constantly faced with is the need to speak with someone new in the course of business because the person responsible for tires always keeps changing. One of our tasks is to train our customers to manage tires, but our trainees keep on moving to other departments, requiring training to begin all over again and the knowledge acquired and work done by the previous trainee is put at risk of total loss.
Tire management is as real as any profession, but it is not treated as one. Take the example from the general physician from the previous reason. Would you use a general physician to perform brain surgery on you? Does the person responsible for managing your tires (that may be you) have adequate tire management training?
There are many places where you can be educated about tires, and that may help a great deal, but there are very few places where you can be educated about tire management. Budini is one of these places. We hope one day to come up with a complete tire management course in order to professionalize this sector. Meanwhile, for you to learn tire management requires effort, training, commitment, organization, orientation, hardware, software and time! Budini tries to shorten the learning curve by providing our consultative support free of charge with any software subscription.
In the past these things were not available, technology was not cheap, and fleets were forced to learn on their own, in a painful sequence of trials and errors. For some transportation companies profits were so high many didn't even care about the cost of tires or fuel. Unfortunately many of the mistakes from the past were already forgotten with employee turnovers and change in management.
Nowadays competition is fierce, technology is cheap and widely available. Everyone is looking for ways to squeeze pennies in order to gain competitive advantage. What if you could squeeze pennies too?... ... for every mile run by each tire in each vehicle in your fleet? You may find interesting to check out the small numbers big results section of this site (Tip #5).
The good news is that Budini can help your company with all the tire management technology needs and more importantly be a coach in all tire management matters for the long run at a cost that represents a fraction of the savings and benefits that can be achieved.
5. Its too much work
In fact, it is more work than no work. In most cases fleets don't truly manage their tires, so any management effort results in more work than no management effort.. But one should only say its "too much" work if they don't see the benefit. There are some key reasons why one would not be able to see benefit:- 1. They are doing a poor job
- 2. They are looking for benefits in the wrong places
- 3. They are not giving it enough time to see results and quit early.
Benefits from professional tire management come in a variety of ways: more miles, more safety, less fuel, less problems, less pollution and so on. Some of these are harder to quantify than others, and some take a longer to become quantifiable than others. It all depends on the nature business of the fleet.
6. There is too much data to collect
As stated in the previous answer, most of the data is already being collected anyway. You're spending the time and effort to do it with tire change slips, invoices, and so on. Nowadays, there are electronic devices that can help speed up the data collection process, eliminate the data entry process and provide a higher degree of precision in the data that gets collected. 96% of the required data collection can be electronic. Besides that, integrating with other systems is also a possibility, as long as the data requirements are met.7. There is too much data to analyze
In fact there is A LOT of data. But in a powerful database and professional tire management application the data will be treated properly and much of the necessary analysis is done automatically for you. The Budini Tire Management System also has over two decades of experience in terms of the necessary consistency checks, analytical tools and tire management intelligence built-in. You can query the system in so many different ways and get answers for the most complex questions! If desired, our team of support professionals is available to help you with any question, and teach you how to query your own data for answers. 8. The savings don't justify the investment
Well, in order to say this you'd have to know how much you can save and how much you need to invest to achieve these savings.Ask yourself these questions:
How much do I spend a year in tires? What % do I need to save to justify an investment of US$10,000?
How much do I spend a year in fuel? What % do I need to save to justify an investment of US$10,000?
Lets do an example:
You spend $1,000,000.00 a year in tires. To justify a $10,000 investment you need to save 1% in tires.
You spend $10,000,000.00 a year in fuel. To justify a $10,000 investment you need to save 0.1% in fuel.
We strongly suggest you take a look at what real results from our customers are like, some testimonials and also check out the tips section of this site. There is a great deal of information that can help you easily exceed these sample savings here.