The Case For Commercial Retreads
Steve Mitchell
Copy Editor
Harvey Brodsky has a standing offer to fleet operators, and it's this: Visit a retread factory, and if you don't come away agreeing retread tires on your trucks are the way to go, Harvey will buy you dinner.
Heck, bring along the spouse.
That's how confident he is about retreads as a way of life for trucking fleets.
Brodsky is the managing director of the Tire Retread Information Bureau (TRIB), and he admits he's mostly preaching to the choir.
"Anecdotally, I would say 80% of major fleets use retreads," he said.
But for those lost souls who have not seen the light, Brodsky suggests they educate themselves. "Take the time and visit a retread plant," he said. "If you've got 90 trucks in your fleet, half a day is nothing. Get educated. Get your investment back. Get into a retread factory."
Years ago, retread tires - then called recaps - were about as popular as a hitchhiker at a truckstop. "Our dads told us how unreliable they were," Brodsky said.
Not so today. "A new tire comes off the truck after 100,000 miles, and there's one thing we know for sure," Brodsky said. "It holds air."
And if properly maintained, the retread on that tire will hold air for another 100,000 miles.
Today's new tires are built to be retreaded, said Peggy Fisher, president of Fleet Tire Consultants in Rochester Hills, Mich.
"Radial tires were constructed with retread in mind - a big plus over the bias-ply tires in the '70s. The big deal was, you can retread radials."
Fisher said fleets can cut their tire costs in half by using retreads - a figure echoed by TRIB's Brodsky.
"This isn't paper clip money," Brodsky said. "If a fleet can save 30 to 50%, that's serious, serious money. To not retread is like taking your dollar bills and tossing them out the window as you drive down the highway."
Especially since tires are a fleet's third-largest cost, right after labor and fuel.
Brodsky is also a firm believer in outsourcing tire maintenance tasks to a qualified retreader. To his way of thinking, outsourcing is the smart thing to do, especially for those trucking companies that don't know they're trucking companies.
"A guy's got 45 trucks running around Chicago picking up diapers," Brodsky explained. "He thinks he's in the diaper business, and he gives little thought to his fleet. It's a necessary expense. He's better off thinking of his fleet as a profit center. And if he can reduce his costs by outsourcing, he'll suffer fewer headaches."
However, tire consultant Fisher warns against handing tire management duties entirely over to a dealer or retreader.
"The most successful plan is to outsource just a portion of the maintenance service," she said. "Ryder, for instance, removes the tire and wheel assembly, and then the tire dealer takes over - repairs the tire or retreads it, holds all of Ryder's new-tire and retread inventory, and delivers the wheel assembly back to Ryder."
She said Ryder still handles all on-vehicle tasks, such as checking tire pressure, alignment, inspections, "but once the wheel assembly is removed, the retreader takes over."
That way, she says, the fleet remains responsible for its tires. "There's a tendency for the tire maintenance program to deteriorate because there's no interest on the part of the fleet to do alignments or check their tires. And that's wrong. There's a penalty for thinking you can just wash your hands of tire maintenance."
So while you're touring the plant of a potential quality retreader, Brodsky says you should ask a lot of questions.
Ask to see where the casings are inspected. Ask if you can limit an initial purchase contract to three months. And ask for a list of customers the dealer is currently serving, preferably the names of fleets that are similar to your own.
If a retreader can't - or won't - give you references, that should be a clue to head for the door.
