Taking Tires for a Test Drive
Tires operate in all kinds of conditions. Be sure your testing reflects the environment in which the tires will serve. Photo: Jim Park
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Tires operate in all kinds of conditions. Be sure your testing reflects the environment in which the tires will serve. Photo: Jim Park
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If you want to test drive some new tires before you buy — and who wouldn’t — be prepared to invest significant time and energy in the project.
You need patience to produce a successful tire evaluation. Diligent record keeping and careful observation will help, but it can take two years or more to get an accurate picture of how tires will perform in a specific application.
It takes time and miles for tread rubber to scrub away and for any irregular wear problems to appear. All the while, the test tires will be at the mercy of the mechanical condition of the truck, road hazards, ambivalent or unknowing technicians, and the habits of the drivers piloting the test trucks. That’s a lot of variables from which to draw hard conclusions about tire performance.
Peggy Fisher, president of Tire Stamp Inc. and expert-at-large on the ATA’s Technology & Maintenance Council’s S.2 Tire and Wheel Task Force, orchestrated many such tire evaluations during her days as a fleet tire manager with Roadway Express back in the ’80s. She managed nearly 200,000 tires on 30,000 pieces of equipment — and tested many thousands of tires.
“Because tire testing for tread wear and durability can take years, the biggest issue in running these tests is keeping maintenance personnel aware that the test is still ongoing,” she says. “This becomes harder to do the larger the fleet and the more people touching the test tires.”
Fisher points to TMC recommended practice 230B as the ideal template for tire durability and tread wear evaluation. One of the TMC’s longer RP documents at 20 pages, it’s very comprehensive and includes tools for recording data and making evaluations.
Among the …Read the rest of this story
