Unraveling on the Road: Tire Debris Won't Go Away
The tire debris task force reported at The Maintenance Council’s annual conference in mid-March that it had collected 28% more pieces of tire from 13 sites across the country than in 1995.
Some drivers might shrug their shoulders and say, “Big deal!” More cars and trucks are traveling more miles on the nation’s roads than in 1995, so it’s natural one would find more tire debris.
But to the trucking, tire and retread industries, as well as several safety groups, the problem is a serious issue. Most of the tire debris collected by TMC’s task force was from retread material.
Not only would such a change increase the cost of retreads, it also could expose manufacturers and users to legal action from damage and other claims.
All this is making many in the industry nervous.
Heavy-duty truck operators are especially worried. The booming economy means there are more big trucks on the nation’s highways, and they are considered the biggest source of the problem.
Retreading is big business. Nearly 31 million retreaded tires were sold in North America in 1998, generating more than $2 billion in sales, and more than 19 million of them were for medium and heavy trucks, according to the Tire Retread Information Bureau, an agency funded in part by the tire manufacturing and retreading industries.
There is no accurate count of how many heavy-duty retread tires are on the market. But, considering the number of trucks on the road and the growth of commercial trucking over the past years, that number is somewhere between 100 million and 200 million, said Harvey Brodsky, executive director of TRIB.
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