Tire management savings in the fleet

Did you know that tire management savings can go beyond reducing costs in this area of the fleet? They can also affect fuel and maintenance, provided the operation regularly keeps track of pressure, tread depth, wear and useful life.

This happens because tires are directly linked to the vehicle's overall functioning and can affect how fuel is burned or cause more wear on some vehicle structure components.

Both cases can lead to increased fleet costs, which can be avoided by adopting fleet tire management. Learn more below:

• What savings does tire management generate?;
• How to generate these fleet savings;
• How to calculate tire management savings.

What savings does tire management generate?

The main fleet areas where tire management generates savings are fuel consumption, mechanical failures and vehicle maintenance problems, as well as the tires themselves and their durability.

For fuel consumption, correctly inflated tires can improve vehicle efficiency. According to FuelEconomy.gov, keeping tires at the correct pressure improves efficiency by 0.6% on average and can reach 3% in some cases; tires below the recommended pressure can reduce efficiency by around 0.2% for each 1 psi drop in the average pressure of all tires.

There are also gains linked to operational control itself. Looking only at fuel consumption, one company using a tire management system reduced its spending by 4% every month.

Take a closer look at each factor in tire management savings:

Savings in fleet fuel consumption

For a vehicle to have efficient fuel consumption and avoid waste, its tires must be correctly inflated and in good usable condition — that is, they cannot be worn, bald or show clear signs of damage.

These precautions reduce tire rolling resistance and ensure appropriate fuel use for moving the vehicle.

When tires are not in these conditions, on the other hand, the engine needs to work harder to move the vehicle and achieve proper rolling. This increases fuel consumption inefficiently.

This is where one way tire management generates savings comes in: a broad view of each tire's condition in the operation and monitoring its data to know exactly when to carry out a service or remove it from the vehicle.

Management should also involve measuring, assessing and correcting tire pressure to its ideal level to further optimize operations in terms of asset performance and durability. Checking pressure with a suitable gauge helps avoid tires running below the recommended pressure and maintain a more reliable inspection standard.

Reducing maintenance costs

Tires are the vehicle's direct contact with the road surface and are responsible for cushioning and softening impacts felt by the rest of the vehicle. To fulfill this function, however, they must be in ideal running condition — with calibration kept up to date and no irregular or excessive wear.

Otherwise, the vehicle can become unstable and unbalanced, also affecting other parts and components. These items start receiving more impacts and may wear excessively, break or crack.

In some cases, parts may shift, causing mechanical failures.

In other words, the consequences of driving with tires in poor condition are substantial. Tires below the recommended pressure can also cause excessive heat, structural stress, irregular wear and internal damage, reinforcing the importance of keeping inspections and corrections in the routine.

This gives us another area where tire management generates fleet savings: vehicle maintenance.

Greater tire performance and durability

Although tire management savings affect your fleet's tire costs, it is important to understand the specific ways this happens.

By regularly adopting tire inspection and maintenance routines, whether a simple activity such as regular asset calibration or a more significant task such as retreading, you ensure an extension of tire useful life.

For example, inspecting tread depth allows you to identify irregular wear and when the tread depth has reached its defined limit for retreading, avoiding rejection for retreading.

This single activity helps tires deliver more lives, meaning one to two more years running in your operation. Each tire that delivers more lives represents significant savings, reducing the need to buy new tires during that period.

Besides tread depth inspection, regular rotation helps tires wear more evenly and extend their useful life. When these routines become part of the management process, the fleet gains a better view of which brands, models, axles and applications deliver better results throughout the life cycle.

How to generate these fleet savings

The two main ways to achieve tire management savings are constantly monitoring tire data and making use of existing technologies for this purpose.

Periodic inspections allow analysis of patterns and variations in pressure and tread depth that lead to valuable insights.

Using this information, you can identify the best brands and models of tires for your fleet, understand the average durability of each one and find out each asset's Cost per Kilometer (CPK), among other conclusions.

Technologies complement this work, making it faster, more standardized and more practical. An electronic measuring device, for example, facilitates pressure and tread depth collection during inspections and sends the records to the tire control system, reducing rework and typing errors.

The system itself automates several other features, such as generating reports and calculating CPK and tire replacement forecasts for each vehicle.

How to calculate fleet tire management savings

You can make this calculation by keeping control of all fleet areas and identifying the actions carried out in each period, comparing fleet results before and after implementing each activity.

Survey all your costs and main problems that may be related to errors in fleet tire care. If you have performance indicators to include in this analysis, even better.

After starting your fleet's tire management, continue monitoring the data to understand whether costs have actually fallen in each of the different areas this management can affect.

To better understand how operating cost reduction happens and what results you can expect, make an accurate calculation that considers your company's situation using Prolog's savings calculator — access is completely free.