Retreading, especially for truck tires, should make excellent sense for one compelling reason: a well-made tire carcass performs well for much longer that a tire tread. In fact, in many cases the carcass may remain in good working order 3, 4, 5 times longer than a tire tread. If you can replace the tread you should save money, while cutting unnecessary wastage. In the haulage and logistics market, where margins are low and price really matters, retreading should be the norm. Yet it’s not always that simple.
Is retreading on the way out?
Despite the long history of retreading for haulage fleets, we can see a steady decline in use of retreads in recent years, as very low cost new tires become a viable alternative. So what’s the problem and why is the move away from retreading not good news for the logistics industry, the tire market and, most important, the environment?
It leads to an increase in wastage.
Perfectly serviceable tire carcasses, instead of being reused, are increasingly just dumped. They are a major source of pollution within the environment, and that’s not good for anyone.
Costs still rise.
Efficient retreading, with reuse of quality carcasses, will always be more cost-efficient than using even very low cost new tires- as long as the retread process is truly efficient.
Quality goes down.
If a fleet operator is committed to retreading, they can afford to invest in the best quality, high performance tires, which saves on fuel costs and enhances safety on the roads. Use of new tires instead of retreads only works financially if you cut costs by opting for “cheap” products. In the long term, that’s a false economy.
What are the issues?
Retreading in the past has always been a “dirty” and laborious process. It is seen as somehow inevitable that retread specialists will need to employ a lot of people to carry out the different process stages, and these skilled personnel will need to work in difficult and polluted conditions.
Finding the right staff to do this work is becoming very difficult and also very costly. The level of pollution involved (removing old treads, cleaning and repairing carcasses, fixing new treads, testing…) is also high. The economics are not as simple as they once were. And yet the original argument- why throw away a tire carcass at 100,000 kilometres when it could potentially operate for 3 to 5 times as long- is still valid.
What is the VMI solution?
VMI has helped to transform many aspects of conventional tire building through applying automation technology to different production stages. The VMI approach has demonstrated clearly that human touch points can be progressively removed through use of automated systems, while advanced vision technology, with the growing use of AI and machine learning, improves quality and speed continuously.
The question is: can we apply the same kind of strategy to retread and drive a similar revolution in this sector, as well?
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