A recent shortage of large-diameter tires for aggregate hauling equipment might actually be a blessing in disguise, according to several experts in the tire-manufacturing industry. That's because the shortage is creating a new awareness of the wisdom of preventive maintenance to maximize tire life. Some aggregate companies also are looking at alternatives to purchasing new pneumatic tires for replacement of old ones.

A demand-supply imbalance has adversely affected the availability of 49-inch and larger tires used on mining equipment since 2004. The impact on mining has trickled down to the aggregate production industry, too; even supplies of 25- to 35-inch tires — prevalent on loaders and haul trucks for moving aggregates — are reported to be tight as well.

As with rising petroleum prices, the tire market has been impacted by increased global demand. Developing nations such as China have provided tremendous demand for iron ore and their emerging economies demand precious minerals. An April 2006 article in the New York Times cites several reasons for the shortage, ranging from increased demand by the U.S. military fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to reconstruction of the hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast to the rapid industrialization of China, India and other developing countries.

“A lot of it has to do with the minerals that are being purchased that are in high demand, like steel and iron ore,” explains Tim Good, manager of global customer accounts, off-the-road tires for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Akron, Ohio. “You've also got gold; India is one of the largest producers of gold. As the dollar gets weaker, gold gets stronger, so there's a lot of demand in other parts of the world.”

Meanwhile, federal highway funding is keeping most North American aggregate producers busy enough and producers who export product for use in concrete and cement have as much work as they can handle, Good adds. The result is tight supplies of tires used in the aggregate industry.

“When you get to quarry and aggregate, you've got smaller loaders, so you're looking at the very high end of the 25-inch tire,” says Good. “A lot of your 33-inch tires for loaders are very, very backlogged and your 35-inch haulage tires are still very tight.”

The tight tire market is forcing many aggregate producers to take strong medicine in order to maximize equipment uptime: preventive tire maintenance.

Whether they are referring to new pneumatics that replace old tires, retreads or solid tires, tire industry experts stress that equipment operators and fleet managers can take several simple measures to extend tire life. Obviously, keeping tires properly inflated might be the most important one. “Watch your tire pressure, maintenance on tires — that kind of stuff we're always looking out for,” points out Noah Hickman, who co-owns H & H Retreading, Oak Hill, Ohio, with his father.

A task that falls outside the domain of the equipment is maintaining roads to minimize tire damage. “That's where new-tire manufacturers and retread manufacturers are speaking the same language because we're all preaching, ‘Maintain your roads,’” Hickman continues. “Road debris is a killer for any tire; pick up loose rocks, watch your grades — just typical things like that.”

Good echoes the sentiment. “If there is something in the haul road or something in the loadout area, move it — don't drive over it,” he says. “Also, keep the haul roads and the loading areas relatively dry; keep water from puddling up because if you ever tried to cut a tire and you take a knife — I don't care how sharp it is, you can't do it — but spray a little water on there and it's like paper. You want proper drainage of the haul roads, and also drainage down in the dumps and loadout areas. Seventy-four percent of your tires come out for one reason and that's basically impacts and cuts. The loading route is where you want to focus.”

John Sparks, who oversees a tire maintenance program for family-owned Sparks Commercial Tire in Findlay, Ohio, stresses that each operation is different and should be treated as such. “On haul trucks, having superelevated turns reduces the amount of deflection on the outside tires,” Sparks notes. “There are so many different facets of this and it's all site-specific; there isn't one particular thing that's going to work out for you,” he adds. “There's a grouping of things we have to do at each specific site.”

Good adds that successful life-cycle tire maintenance requires consciousness of the issue to filter down to the operator level. “More of what we call awareness training is definitely going on out there,” Good says. “If the operator continuously runs over something and ruins a tire (and it's obvious that it's the way they ran over it), there's got to be some discipline and that's starting to take place as well. They've got to have some strength behind what we keep telling them.”

T. Shawn Rasey, executive director of North American sales for Bridgestone/Firestone Off-Road Tire Co., Nashville, Tenn., adds that making improvements to quarry roads is something that quarry operators should be doing anyway. “Some customers have re-examined their haul profiles and either lightened their loads, reduced speeds or decreased the grades in order to improve tire life.”

In many cases, the customers have not only reduced the number of new tires required for their operations but they also have found a resulting improvement in the wear and tear on their equipment without giving up productivity, according to Rasey. This issue alone is a great takeaway for Bridgestone end-user customers who have been bold enough to break away from conventional thinking that faster and heavier is better. “In smaller sizes, solid tires can be an alternative worth considering,” he adds. “It simply is a matter of economics as to whether the application can support the higher upfront cost of a solid tire.

“Really, retreads and repairs should be considered together. Many of our dealers provide repair options that can be a really good option to saving an injured tire. Retreading, on the other hand, is a bit more site- and application-specific. In some cases, retreading is a good option, but the users should always consult with their local servicing tire dealer to make sure it is a good application.”

Producers can increasingly rely on their local dealers for assistance in maximizing tire life. Good argues that resources provided by dealers are one part of a successful tire maintenance management program; managerial vigilance is the other.

“Recordkeeping is huge,” he says. “We've come out with a recordkeeping program that we call the EM Track program and there are others out there. A lot of our dealers use it religiously. They have rotation cycles set up and track air pressure maintenance over time. It shows you by truck, by wheel position, what's happening with your tires. A lot of companies also use it to reward operators,” Good says, adding that some actually reward driver groups for reaching targets for tonnage hauled or revenue generated on tires. “As tire manufacturers, yes, we're here to sell tires, but we've always taught this. If we lower the price of a tire, that's short term; that doesn't help. It's the long term of making sure that everything is done right for continuous cost savings. Now people can see the results of it.”

Hickman adds that another philosophical change among producers has opened the door to more retreading. “We check the tires ourselves and see if there are things we can do as far as preventive maintenance — different tread depths, different tread designs — to protect the tires more or give better mileage or hours to the end user,” he says. Instead of running tires until the cores are completely worn down, customers learn to regularly rotate the tires and contact H & H for retreading when some core life remains. “Have the foresight to see where your tire situation is heading and realize that there are a lot of dependable, qualified repair and retread providers who can help the situation, as long as they're allowed to be a participant in day-to-day activities.”

Sparks Commercial Tire uses the EM Track program as an integral part of its professional tire maintenance system (PTMS), which was developed to correlate preventive tire maintenance with financial data. The PTMS may include a site inspection, continual financial analyses of the fleet's tires, weekly air pressure checks by a trained professional, a monthly fleet tire analysis, a 30-minute awareness training presentation for drivers, and a scrap tire analysis to identify areas for tire performance improvement.

“What we try to provide for our customers is a total cost of ownership,” says John Sparks. “It's not so much the actual price of the tire; it's what did the tire provide for you in the total time that it was used and correlate that with the pricing. We back that down to cost-per-ton because, ultimately, that's what it's all about.

“One of the things that we've noticed is that this program requires hands-on actions with management, the tire vendor and everyone involved with tires,” Sparks continues. “It takes ownership with management that is willing to execute on certain actions and certain recommendations that we make. The key to the program, I would have to say, is constant communication.”

As the tire shortage has prodded many producers to start taking a hard-nosed, financially focused approach to tire maintenance, it has opened the door wider to alternatives such as retreads and solid tires. “[Producers] have done a lot more retreading than what's ever been done before, so they're managing that casing better than ever before, whereas many places (in the past) ran them to destruction,” says Good. “Now they're running them to, maybe, 20% left on the core. That was a hard mindset change.”

Along with financial awareness, Hickman adds, further education of how retread performance differs from that of new pneumatics is necessary. “A retreaded or repaired tire can't be run the same way as a new tire — that's what we really try to drive home with these guys,” he points out. “Retreads or repaired tires are application-sensitive. They have more restrictions and limitations than a brand new tire; however, if they're placed in the right applications in the right conditions, they'll run fantastic and they're cost-effective.”

Hickman stresses that retreads are not necessarily the total answer in every application. “Maybe if you've got shorter hauls, place your retreads in those applications and save the new tires for longer haul applications where retreads will not work,” he explains. “Typically, retreads are for rear use only, but if you have cores, what we try to do is retread the cases or cores for rear use and save the new tires for front-wheel positions.” Hickman adds that front tires are normally retreaded and then rotated to the rear of a vehicle and the fronts are replaced with new pneumatics.

Another alternative that can ease the impact of the pneumatics shortage — albeit not necessarily for the entire equipment fleet — is solid tires. Bob Gilkenson, owner and president of South Haven, Mich.-based SolidBoss Worldwide, points out that higher prices for pneumatics have helped make a more convincing case for solid tires, which are less prone to flats than pneumatics if cared for properly.

“Solid tires still cost more, but it makes the longevity of the solid tire more attractive now,” says Gilkenson. “For instance, if the tire previously cost three times as much and lasted two times to 3 ½ times as long, it might be a wash, but now if the tire is only 1 ½ times the price and lasts 2 ½ to three times as long, then you've really got something.” SolidBoss sells solid tires from as small as 31 inches to 80 inches and has sold units as large as 114 inches.

Gilkenson has noticed a definite mindset change regarding tires as a financial asset, which makes solid tires a more attractive alternative for the long term. “People are now looking at cost-per-hour a lot more closely,” he notes, “but we don't want to put a Band-Aid on selling solid tires in this industry for just the longevity of the tire shortage — we want to put a Band-Aid on their cost- per-hour long term and really fix their cost-per-hour issues.”

Managers and operators should be aware of some differences between solid tires and pneumatics that affect equipment operation. Full-depth solids with aperture holes provide a comparable ride to pneumatics, Gilkenson argues. “The ride is the No.1 consideration after we're talking about the longevity of the tire,” he says. “Not only is the ride about driver comfort but it's wear and tear on the machine as well.” Also, when overloaded, solid tires generate more heat than pneumatics and aggregate companies are better off confining them to short-haul applications. “On longer runs, in overload conditions, solid tires may not be the best tire for the market,” says Gilkenson.

“A lot of people run their tires through their cooling pond; they'll put a depression in the ground that comes up just below the axle and fill it with water and they'll slowly run the tire through that as they finish a run to try to bring the tire temperature down,” he continues. “You let that tire temperature build up and there could be a breakdown from the center out. We don't seem to have that problem on wheel loaders because wheel loaders are short run.”

Although solid tires are not necessarily a complete replacement for pneumatics, they have their place in some fleets, Gilkenson contends. “People have put solid tires on the front of wheel loaders and kept their pneumatics on the back because that's where they have the most wear problems,” he says.

Don Talend of Write Results, West Dundee, Ill., has reported on the mining and construction materials industry for more than 10 years.

Several manufacturers offer large-diameter tires and retreading services for the aggregate industry. Visit their Web sites, listed below, for more information.

• Bridgestone Firestone Off Road Tire Co.: www.bfor.com
• Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.: www.goodyearotr.com
• H & H Retreading: http://otrretreads.com
• Michelin Americas: www.michelintruck.com
• SolidBoss Worldwide Inc.: www.solidboss.com
• Titan Tire Corp.: www.titan-intl.com
• TY Cushion Tire: www.tycushiontire.com
• Yokohama: www.yokohamatire.com/otr.asp

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