Magazine for the professional tire industry
Issue link: https://mtd.epubxp.com/i/328077
MTD June 2014 Truck tires toward the 19.5 sizes because they are opting for a heavier-duty light truck vehicle for their commercial business; it holds up beter for them." Langerak says another trend he is seeing is the infux of Chinese-made tires. Some of his feet customers now ask for them. "Tey tend to be customers that do their own tire service, so they're more independent of what we might recommend. Some of these guys even band together and buy them direct from China by the container load." Maine Commercial's McCurdy has seen not only an increase in demand for Chinese and other low-priced tires, but also improvement in their quality. "Over the last three or four years, the low-priced tires have evolved and they are much beter now than they were. We started selling more of these tires because some of them are as much as $100 cheaper per tire than some of the name-brand truck tires." McCurdy says that when it comes to retreadability, many new Tier Tree tires now are similar to Tier Two tires. "Tat $100 per tire diference means the second tier tires are losing sales. We wind up selling more third tier tires than we'd like to, but if we're not going to sell lower-priced tires, we're not going to sell tires." Belle Tire's Bowman sees a similar trend. "Te biggest change I'm seeing this year versus 2013 is the infux of the Tier Four product, the majority coming from China." Bowman says these lines usually have steer, drive and trailer tires in four to fve sizes. Very few are wide-base or trash hauler application type tires. "Te lines are prety stripped down and dirt cheap with no programs; they are all purchased by the container. Te thing that concerns commercial dealers like me is that if a feet is retreading, Tier Four products from China are right in the price range of retreads." Bowman says Belle Tire does stock these tires so that they don't lose a sale when a customer requests them, and then they "sell them up from that point." He says Tier Four is defned strictly by price and has been around for about a year. "Te last four or fve months of 2013, we started seeing more Tier Four tires. We had never even heard of a lot of this stuf coming out." Bowman says he is also seeing some of Belle Tire's feet customers making the switch to wide-base tires. With that comes another sales opportunity. "In the last six to seven months, we've been seeing more wide-base tires, the 445/50R22.5s, the 455s and the 55R22.5s. We are converting a number of feets over. Tey're doing it for the simple fact that it's more fuel efcient buying one tire instead of two tires. Te nice thing about it is they have to buy a wheel to go along with it, and that's where you can make some money." Another extra sell opportunity is refnishing of the wheels. "We've been doing wheel restoration for some time now, and we have a new process in place that has helped us increase our production," says Bowman. ■ Quik-Link: 800-687-1557 ext. 17125 42