Chinese Tire Debate
Naysayers claim Chinese tires are of sub-standard quality. Others say they are not all bad – in fact, there's been a marked improvement in quality.
Evan Lockridge
Contributing Editor
As the wheels of change keep rolling this nation's trucking industry further into the global marketplace, so too are the tires they roll on. Globalization has brought a new breed of tires into this country, but some in the industry are questioning their quality and reliability.
They're not talking about tires made abroad from names you recognize – Goodyear, Bridgestone and Michelin. These critics are also not talking about those tire manufacturers with less famous names, like Cooper, Marangoni and Yokohama. Their target, it seems, are tires coming from Asia with names that you've likely never heard of.
Naysayers claim these tires are of sub-standard quality and can't even be retreaded. Others, however, say they're not all bad, especially for certain applications, and that there's been a marked improvement in their quality.
The interest in these tires is being driven by one major factor, and that, of course, is price. These imports, mainly from China, are simply less expensive than major name brand tires.
The influx of cheap Asian tires coming into the United States isn't new, says Joel Fitzer, owner of Interstate Tire Service, a tire retreader in Savannah, Ga., who has been in the tire business for three decades. He primarily serves port trucking operations, which still rely heavily on bias ply tires.
He first started seeing Asian tires being used in the United States about 10 years ago, when container chassis owners were looking for new and inexpensive tires to put on their equipment. When ocean shipping lines started making the big change from break bulk shipments to containers about 25 years ago, there was a huge demand for tires to put on container chassis. Initial experiences with retreads were disappointing – due, some say, to poor quality and poor tire maintenance on chassis owners' part. So the tire dealers who supply shipping lines turned to China.
Today, Fitzer says, this Chinese tire market has exploded beyond its initial niche in-port trucking, into the over-the-road trucking industry.
That's no surprise to Peggy Fisher. Recognized as one of the leading truck tire authorities in North America and now president of TireStamp, a tire monitoring and tire asset management system supplier, she says there are now about 300 tire manufacturers in China.
"You have to realize that the Chinese didn't create the technology," she explains. "[Major] tire companies have been over there working with the Chinese for the last 20 years as joint ventures initially, and now [the Chinese] are building their own plants."
These plants are becoming more prevalent not only to sell tires into the North American market, but also with an eye toward China's own growing automotive market, which she says will be even bigger than the North American market at some point.
The North American market for these tires may grow, as well. If you're old enough to remember the 1950s and 1960s, you may recall American consumer resentment against products made in Japan. But that's just not the case today with China. Chinese-made products are everywhere, and consumers are buying them as fast as they can be placed on store shelves. So, the thinking goes with many truck owners, why not Chinese truck tires?
Harvey Brodsky, managing director of the Tire Retread Information Bureau, puts these tires into two different classes. "The first is what I call no-name throw-away tires. These are used a lot in intermodal and used once, then thrown away. The other class, which is smaller, are some pretty fair tires."
Fisher says the same thing. "They are not all of questionable quality. I understand the largest companies have come a long way," wryly noting that one brand even manages not to implode on contact with the pavement.
While no Chinese tire is as good as a premium truck tire from a major tire maker, Fisher says, they are getting better. You have to be a careful buyer, asking a lot of questions about warranties and support. Also, she says, most of these tires are not retreadable. Even if you don't retread, the casings are typically worthless when it comes to getting exchange tire credits when you buy new tires.
Purchasing these tires may seem appealing, because they are significantly cheaper, says Michael Burroughes, product manager for Michelin Americas truck tires, which has been active in fighting against cheap imitations of its products. However, he says, the payback on investment in terms of performance, durability and the ability to harvest multiple lives out of a tire is much smaller.
"Many of these manufacturers copy existing tread designs, so from outward appearances … people tend to assume they are all the same," he says. "[But] the underlying elements that make up such tires are nowhere near the same – from the chemistry and engineering in the rubber compounds, the uniformity of the tires, how well they are manufactured and certainly the steel and metallic components in the tire, are not up to the same quality standards."
To make his point, Burroughes notes, "These imports have been around for decades and we continue to flourish as a premium tire manufacturer … if these were truly a good buy, we'd be history."
Whatever the quality, these tires are likely to be available here for the foreseeable future. Fisher notes that U.S. tire makers have been unable to meet the demand in recent years, because of the large number of new truck orders. When U.S. tire makers didn't invest enough in new tire plants to meet that demand, she says, "they basically opened the door for the Chinese to come in, and you can't close that door."
While there's no doubt that Chinese tires have a way to go before they catch up in quality to ones more widely used in this country, that could eventually change. After all, not that long ago Americans turned up their noses at Japanese products, but today they are the undisputed leader in producing electronics and other products.
