Tires remain a significant cost for fleets, but few
proactively manage those assets effectively. Goodyear is taking a digital
approach to tire management in the hopes that fleets can reduce tire costs,
prevent roadside breakdowns, and get more out of their assets.
The company announced its new Tire Management
service on Feb. 3 at its annual dealer event and is showing the new program
this week at the Technology and Maintenance Council’s annual meeting in Atlanta.
The program features digital tools and real-time active management technology
to help fleets get a better grasp on the cost of their tire assets.
Johnny McIntosh, director of integrated solutions and tire
management, said the total package is about making it easy for fleets to manage
their tire assets, but still providing a comprehensive solution.
“We tried to put together, in very simple terms, Goodyear’s
view of tire management,” he told FreightWaves. That comes down to three keys:
- Monitoring of tires
- Collecting and analyzing data
- Providing actionable insights
To illustrate his point, McIntosh pointed to a tire
inspection. Traditionally, that means someone measuring tread depth and pressure
with tools, inputting that information into a report for someone to then
analyze before action can be taken. In addition to the time it takes to
complete these manual steps, it also opens up the opportunity to miss trends
that might indicate a coming problem.
“Inspection of a tire is a point in time data capture [today],”
McIntosh said. “So you are either inspecting the tire at a point in time, or
you are actively monitoring the tire.”
Goodyear Tire Management is attempting to move fleets to
that active monitoring of tires.
Goodyear’s Tire Optix is one tool in this toolbox. The digital
inspection tool helps fleets quickly and accurately detect critical tire data,
such as tire pressure, tread depth and tire wear conditions. It produces
real-time alerts and detailed inspection reports.
Goodyear Tire Management also includes TPMS Plus, which is
an active monitoring system that evaluates tire conditions in real time. The
system can detect leaks, temperature and thermal events, GPS location and can
be geofenced.
The geofencing technology, McIntosh explained, can alert a
fleet when a vehicle with a pending tire problem arrives at a location so it
can be properly repaired.
All of the data is uploaded through a cloud system and is
historically checked for trends. A truck tire that measures 100 PSI and loses
one PSI each day may not generate concern until it reaches 60 PSI for some
fleets, but Tire Management may detect this slow leak problem so the fleet can
proactively repair the tire before too much damage occurs.
“We’re really trying to build an ecosystem for tires,” McIntosh
said of the approach.
The data can be viewed through the Goodyear Tire Management
dashboard, on an app, or exported to fleet systems.
One of the new tools in the program is Checkpoint. Checkpoint
is an inground system that trucks slowly drive over. The system conducts automated
inspections of tire pressure and tread depth. Positioned at a fleet yard
entrance, this device triggers alerts to fleet maintenance if there are any
immediate tire concerns that require attention
Collecting all the data and analyzing it is part of the
solution, the final part of the program is acting upon it.
“We’re capturing the data, we’re identifying what needs to be
done, and we can service it,” McIntosh said.
That service aspect is part of the TireReady program. A tire
subscription program custom-designed to meet the specific needs of an
individual fleet, the program manages and optimizes the entire lifecycle of a
tire – from new tire choices to retreads, monitoring, service, analytics and
more.
The service component is handled through Goodyear’s FleetHQ nationwide
network of providers.
What Goodyear has introduced is only the beginning, McIntosh
said.
“When we think of Goodyear Tire Management, this is
something we are going to build upon for a long time,” he said.
