Special to Transport Topics
By Mindy Long
The locations trucks operate in can influence tire purchasing decisions as much as their vocation.
“In the northern tier, you see more tires that have a good traction in order to handle the changing weather conditions,” said Don Baldwin, product marketing manager for commercial truck tires for Michelin North America. “In Texas, you’ll see the tires with less traction.”
Kevin Rohlwing, senior vice president of training for the Tire Industry Association, said winter weather drive tires “have evolved into some pretty complicated snow patterns.”
Pat Martindale, vice president of field maintenance for Penske Leasing Co.’s south-central region, said the company gets requests for particular tread designs from customers who operate in snow.
“Tire manufacturers tend to manufacture a tire that has an open shoulder design that is good for snow and has good tread,” he said. Open-shoulder tread designs have more tread blocks, which allow the snow to disperse better.
Jim Miske, director of fleet maintenance for A. Duie Pyle, explained, “Open-shoulder tread pattern is going to give you more traction. Closed shoulder won’t give you as good of traction, but you’ll get longer use.”
A. Duie Pyle is currently testing a new tire that is supposed to provide good tread wear and continued gripping ability on wet and snowy surfaces even as the tire wears down.
Praxair Inc. uses two different tread designs on its tires — one for Southern states and one for those in the north. “One is better for fuel economy and one is better for traction,” said Perry Krieger, Praxair’s fleet equipment specialist.
Aaron Murphy, vice president of the China Manufacturers Alliance, which makes and markets Double Coin Tires, told Transport Topics some location-specific tires come into play “when you look at large urban areas” such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Highly scrub-resistant tread compounds become more important for a driver who is trying to make deliveries in downtown areas where there is a lot of turning and backing up. “That is a location and vocation application where you need to have a product that meets that specific application,” Murphy said.
Location also factors in when a particular industry is prevalent in an area, such as logging in the U.S. Northwest and in Canada. “The RLB800 on/off-road tire is used in those regions on vehicles that spend significant time off road but also are required to run on road,” Murphy said.
Fleets running in the South tend to go through tires faster than their northern counterparts because of higher road temperatures. “Heat is what kills tires, whether it is destroying the tread or wearing the casing,” said Tommy Davis, vice president of service centers for AMBEST, a network of more than 120 independent truck stops and service centers.
Unfortunately for fleets, the consensus among experts is that there is very little they can do about the heat problem. “The further you go south, the mean temperature rises,” Martindale said. “It is just the environment that you run in."