Tire waste: 5 ways fleets lose money

Most fleets do not lose money on tires all at once. They lose it little by little, through avoidable disposals, retreading that never happened, calibration that no one performed and emergency purchases that cost more than they should.

The issue is that this waste in tire management rarely appears as such. It blends into day-to-day operations: a tire that was “already due” for replacement, a casing that “didn't pass” at the retreader, a refueling event that was “a little above” normal.

Each event seems isolated. But when the annual accounts are closed, the difference between what the fleet spent and what it should have spent… It adds up.

Before thinking about a solution, the first step is to see where the money is going. Here are the sources of financial waste in tire management:

• Early loss of fleet tires due to a lack of calibration
• Premature scrapping of fleet tires
• Retreading rejection due to operational carelessness
• Emergency purchasing instead of planning
• Invisible fuel costs
• What leads to all this waste in tire management

Early tire loss due to a lack of calibration

Of all the factors that reduce a tire's useful life, inadequate calibration has the greatest impact (and is the most avoidable).

According to ANIP (Brazil's National Tire Industry Association), tires running below the specified pressure can have a significantly reduced useful life, as well as increase fuel consumption by up to 10%.

The mechanics are simple: a tire with low pressure flexes more, generates more heat and causes irregular truck tire wear at an accelerated and uneven rate. A tire with pressure above the recommendation, on the other hand, concentrates contact in the center of the tread, reducing the contact area and accelerating wear in the center.

In both cases, a tire that should last 100,000 km lasts 70,000 or 80,000, and the fleet replaces it prematurely, buys sooner than necessary and discards something that would still have useful life left.

The most relevant point is that calibration is a routine action rather than an investment. The cost of maintaining the proper pressure is minimal compared with the cost of failing to do so. But without a standardized process and a defined frequency, calibration ends up being performed when someone remembers rather than when the tire needs it.

Premature tire scrapping

It is estimated that around 40% of tires discarded prematurely by fleets would still be fit to continue running or be sent for retreading. This figure alone shows the scale of the waste: for every 10 tires removed from the fleet, 4 could have stayed.

The causes vary:

• no standardized criteria for deciding whether to keep, retread or discard a tire;
• a lack of periodic inspection to identify the tire before damage becomes irreversible;
• the practice of replacing a tire at the driver's first complaint without assessing its actual condition.

For a fleet of 50 vehicles in Brazil with 500 active tires and an average cost of R$2,200 per unit, discarding 40% of tires prematurely means that around 200 tires left operation too early.

This is equivalent to more than R$400 thousand lost in assets that still had useful life remaining. This money does not appear as “waste” in any report because it is counted as “normal replacement”.

Retreading rejection due to operational carelessness

A well-managed tire casing can go through up to three retreading cycles. Each retreading costs a fraction of a new tire and delivers performance close to the original in terms of mileage.

It is probably the best financial return a tire can give the fleet.

But for a casing to reach the retreader in a condition to be approved, it must have been cared for throughout its life: correct calibration, no running at critically low pressure, no structural damage caused by misuse and no poorly performed repairs.

Without well-established tire management, the retreading rejection rate rises. This is because the casing arrives with bead damage, ply separation or deformation from running with insufficient pressure.

Every additional percentage point in the retreading rejection rate is money lost. And, in most cases, rejection does not happen because the casing was poor from the factory; it happens because use and maintenance processes compromised the asset's integrity.

Emergency purchasing instead of planning

When a fleet has no visibility into tire wear and remaining useful life, purchasing happens “when needed”. In many cases, managers discover they need tires when inventory runs out or a vehicle stops, and buy under time pressure.

This can generate a higher cost, both through premature disposal and because urgency leaves less room for negotiation with suppliers, less choice between makes and models, and the risk of paying for express shipping or accepting unfavorable commercial terms.

Beyond the direct cost, urgency eliminates the possibility of planning purchase batches based on projected wear and historical CPK.

Invisible fuel costs

This is the waste that almost no one counts as tire waste, but should.

Incorrectly inflated tires increase rolling resistance, forcing the engine to work harder to maintain the same speed, and the result is increased fuel consumption.

The issue is that this increase does not appear in isolation. It blends into refueling control as extra cents per kilometer. It ends up being imperceptible when looking at individual vehicles, but in a fleet with dozens or hundreds of trucks on the road, it extends over thousands of kilometers per month and turns into tens of thousands of Brazilian reais per year.

It is a cost that exists but is rarely attributed to its actual cause. The fuel manager sees consumption rise and attributes it to the route, the driver or the cargo type.

Tire calibration almost never becomes part of the investigation because its connection is less direct than other factors affecting vehicle fuel consumption, such as driving habits, maintenance issues and excess cargo weight.

When the fleet cross-references calibration data with fuel consumption data, the correlation appears. But both sets of data need to exist, and it is precisely the absence of calibration records that makes this waste difficult to identify.

What leads to all this waste in tire management

The five sources of waste above differ from each other, but share a common cause: the operation reacts to issues instead of anticipating them.

It replaces a tire when it fails rather than when data indicate that it is nearing its limit. It buys when inventory reaches zero rather than when projections indicate a need. It discards when the retreader rejects a casing rather than when internal inspection detects the damage in time.

Reactive management is not necessarily lazy or negligent. In many cases, it is the consequence of a lack of reliable data, standardized processes and tools that reveal what is happening before it becomes an issue.

Managers do not anticipate because they have no basis for doing so. And without a structured diagnosis of tire waste, issues keep recurring cycle after cycle.

Each source of waste listed is avoidable, and knowing how to avoid tire waste in the fleet starts there: with more visibility rather than more effort. A fleet that can see wear before replacement, calibration before failure and cost before disposal spends less because it spends at the right time.

If the tire management waste described here sounds familiar, the next step is to measure how much it is costing your operation. Use the Prolog Calculator and find out how much your fleet could be saving on tires.