The Consequences of Wrong Tire Pressure and What You Can Do About it
11 May 2017
As a fleet manager, you can save a great deal of money down the road by ensuring your trucks’ tires are inflated properly.
Consequences of Wrong Tire Pressure
Even as little as 10 percent of tire under-inflation can lead to an almost two percent drop in fuel economy, according to the American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) in some research they conducted. Your tire life is reduced by 30 percent when tires are 20 percent under-inflated.
Furthermore, when your fleet drivers are driving on tires that aren’t inflated properly, it can damage your vehicles in many ways. Keep your fleet vehicles in better condition with the proper tire pressure education.
Implementing a preventative tire maintenance program can help you avoid these consequences. This maintenance program should include not just tire pressure, but everything else from servicing lug nuts to checking tread depths. However, tire pressure is the most important part of your maintenance program since it has a profound effect on your customer satisfaction, overhead costs, wear life, driver safety, and fuel efficiency.
Costs of these Consequences
When a tire blows out, the costs associated with it can add up fast. You have the cost of the new tire and the tow or roadside assistance charges to think about too. If your drivers replace the tire themselves, this costs you in productivity time. Blowouts can also lead to significant damage to your fleet vehicles which results in expensive repairs and insurance rates.
What You Can Do About it
Although it’s fairly simple to monitor tire pressure, it’s time-consuming as well when just one truck alone has 18 tires. Just imagine how many hours of labor it takes to check your whole fleet. You can reduce if not eliminate the time involved in monitoring tire pressure with advanced monitoring systems.
One option for keeping an eye on tire pressure is installing an automatic tire inflation system. This system takes the air from the trucks existing air supply and routes it to the control box of the system through each axle. Then the axles route the air through a rotary union assembly which maintains the tires air pressure by keeping them at optimal pressure while your drivers are driving.
Another great option is using a GPS fleet management and tracking device. GPS technology collects important information like speed and location. You can set it up to notify you when your tires need rotated or your oil needs changed.
Since you now know tire pressure can greatly influence your bottom line, you may want to invest in a GPS tracking system to automatically monitor the tire pressure for you.
More questions about how GPS tracking technology can help with your fleet maintenance? We’re here to answer those questions. Call us today at 1-888-544-0494.
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