You don’t buy tires nearly as often as fuel, but tires are one of your highest variable costs. When new tires cost between $300-$600 each, adopting cost-cutting tire practices really pays. Here are some tips to making your tire purchases and maintenance pay off.
- Spec for your application. Since longer tire life means lower costs, the effort put into carefully spec’ing will pay off. The four main tire applications are long haul, regional, on/off road, and urban. The application means very different tire lives, from as little as 20,000 miles for urban to more than 200,000 miles for a long-haul team. Specific steer, drive, and trailer tires are available for each application. If you’re spec’ing a new truck, you can pick any tire size suitable to your application. A new truck’s drivetrain and ECM (electronic control module) are set according to the spec’d tire size. Different size replacement tires may require drivetrain and ECM adjustments. Changing tire sizes may also cause clearance issues.
- Shop for the best value. Once you know the type tire best suited to your application, judge the tires’ value: getting the most for your money, whether you spend a little or a lot. Making an informed choice means keeping written and dated records of purchase dates, fuel mileage and tread depth, then comparing records between models you’ve used.
- Get a warranty. Most standard new-tire and retread warranties are about the same: coverage limited to normal-use defects in workmanship, product, and material. Warranties are based on time or wear, not mileage. Most new tires come with a warranty and this will fully cover the tire’s lifespan, or until the tires wear to 2/32nd inch. Others provide full coverage for specified time periods or wear amounts, and then coverage is prorated using remaining tread depth and current market price.
- Perform routine maintenance. Proper maintenance of tires, wheels, axles, and steering will also help keep your tire costs to a minimum. Wheels naturally lose alignment and balance. Bushings, shocks, bearings, suspension, and steering components wear out.
- Check wheel alignment periodically and check for heavy or flat spots on the tread of the tire. When this happens the tire has either ceased to be centered on the hub and is bounding out of round, or it is out of balance.
- The plungers inside shock absorbers create friction, and friction creates heat, so if the shock (not the outer dust barrel covering the top half of the shock) is hot to the touch after driving, it’s working. If it’s cool to the touch, its not working and should be replaced.
- Make sure the bushings at the top and bottom of the shocks are inspected and replaced whenever worn. If you can grab the shock absorber and rattle it, the bushings have pounded themselves out, and the shock isn’t working as designed.
- Whenever you need to scrap a tire, inspect it to determine the cause of the failure, and keep records.
- Maintain proper inflation. Maintaining proper inflation is free, relatively easy, and the highest-saving maintenance you can perform on your truck. Improper inflation is the greatest reason why tires fail or wear out prematurely. It also wastes fuel and weakens performance. Perform a daily pre and post trip inspection to check pressures, look for leaks, punctures, broken valve stems or embedded objects such as nails. Even absent damage, truck tires typically lose one to two pounds of pressure a month from normal use.
- MICHELIN Advantage Program. Michelin Americas Truck Tires offers the MICHELIN Advantage Program, a competitive tire-pricing program for members at home or on the road. There is no cost to join the program for truck operators between 1 and 99 trucks. The program can be used on all types of MICHELIN® tires from light truck, earthmover, compact line, retreads and commercial truck tires, which is ideal for operations with a variety of equipment types. Program members also have access to MICHELIN® ONCall™ Emergency Road Service with no dispatch fee. Members can use the service anytime, any day, to get back on the road quickly, saving critical time and money. Click here to apply or for more information.
Keep tire costs to a minimum by using these tips to make your purchases and your maintenance pay off.