Fleet Series - Truck Tires feat. ROI Rob

In this episode of Around the Bead, Joseph and Big John are joined by Rob Bulldock, a strategic account manager at East Bay Tire, for an in-depth discussion about trucking fleets and tire performance. This episode is the inaugural recording of a multi-part series focused on helping fleet managers understand how to optimize their tire choices and improve overall fleet performance. Rob shares his expertise on assessing fleets, the importance of tire application, and how technology is changing the way tires are monitored. Whether you're managing a small fleet or a national one, this episode offers valuable insights into making informed tire decisions.

🔧 Topics Covered:
- Understanding ROI in Fleet Management — How Rob educates fleet managers on optimizing tire investments
- The Importance of Proper Tire Application — How to choose the right tire for each application (line haul, dirt haulers, etc.)
- Data-Driven Decisions — Using technology to track tire performance and maximize fleet efficiency
- Fleet Tire Assessments — Rob’s process for analyzing fleets and making tailored recommendations
- Mileage Differences — Comparing mileage expectations for line haul vs. dirt hauler fleets
- Tire Monitoring Technology — The latest in tech that helps fleets track air pressure and improve fuel economy
- Retreading — What it is, how it works, and why it remains relevant for big fleets
- Super Singles — A discussion on their benefits and limitations in the modern fleet
- Emergency Breakdown & Downtime — How to minimize downtime through better tire management

Show Notes:

Episode: Fleet Series - Truck Tires feat. ROI Rob
Host: Joseph and John (feat. ROI Rob)
Runtime: 33.66 minutes
Summary: Joseph and Big John sit down with Rob Bulldock to discuss the intricacies of managing tire performance for fleets. Rob, with years of experience in commercial tire management, explains how he helps fleet managers understand the value of the right tire choices and how to make decisions based on data rather than just price.

The conversation dives into the technical aspects of tire wear and tear, particularly how it differs for various applications like line haul versus dirt haulers. Rob explains how the use of advanced technology, like Bluetooth tread depth gauges and air pressure monitors, is transforming fleet assessments and making it easier to track performance and generate reports.

Rob also talks about his role as a consultant, helping fleet managers identify areas for improvement and ensuring they’re using the most efficient tires for their needs. They discuss how technology is now playing a larger role in the industry, such as tire pressure monitoring systems in trucks and trailers, which can help prevent breakdowns and improve fuel economy.

The episode also touches on the importance of retreading for larger fleets, as well as the use of super singles, with Rob providing a balanced view on their pros and cons. Lastly, Rob shares his passion for the tire industry and how his job continues to evolve, emphasizing the importance of building relationships and staying informed.

What You'll Learn:
- How to assess tire performance — Learn Rob's process for fleet tire assessments and the importance of application-specific tires
- Mileage expectations — Understand how mileage varies between line haul and dirt hauler fleets and what impacts it
- Technology's role in tire management — How Bluetooth and air pressure monitoring systems help optimize fleet performance
- The importance of retreading — What it is, how it benefits large fleets, and why it's still a valuable practice today
- Super singles: pros and cons — Learn about the impact of super singles on weight, fuel economy, and breakdowns
- Preventing breakdowns and emergency calls — Strategies for reducing downtime and preventing preventable tire issues in fleets
- Data-driven decisions — How Rob educates fleet managers to make informed tire decisions based on data rather than just price

Links:
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Transcript (Excerpt)

00:01 - 0-:32

[Music] Around the bead podcast, tire talk for trucking, mining, agriculture, and more. Your home for fleet solutions. Aiming to inform, pioneer, and entertain the tire world in connected industries. Sponsored by East Bay Tire, keeping essential industries moving forward. Welcome to Around the Bead.

0:33 - 0:50

Good day and welcome back to Around the Beat podcast, tire talk for trucking, mining, ag, and more. I'm your host, Joseph, and I'm joined by my co-host Big John and Rob Bulldock, who I'm trying to nickname ROI Rob. Gs, welcome to the show.

0:50 - 0:52

Thanks for having us. Thank you for having me.Are you guys ready to kick the tires today? Let's get to kicking. Let's roll.

0:56 - 1:15

So today is the inaugural recording of a multi-part potentially endless series focusing on trucking fleets and their tire performance. Rob, our expert in house, you're currently the strategic account manager at East Bay Tire. What does that entail?

1:15 - 1:46

So it really entails trying to, to manage some of these larger national fleets or, or regional fleets and really help them understand their return on investment and what makes their fleet roll and, and how to make decisions. sometimes I, I, I feel a little bit like, like an educator of sorts for fleet managers, right? And helping them make these big decisions and which could greatly impact their their budget. So, almost like a consultant.

1:46 - 1:57

You go in and somebody's got a, a great experience in trucking and how to manage that, that fleet, that business, but you're educating them on what's the best return they can get on their tires.

1:57 - 2:05

Absolutely. OK. And you work with small and and big fleets or medium sized fleet. What what's the usual fleet for you?

2:05 -2:19

Any size, usually I, I've got some local customers who are, who are a couple of trucks all the way up to, you know, thousands of, of truck fleets and then anywhere in between, construction fleets, you name it across the board.

2:19 - 2:33

Very cool, very cool. So I want to hear how that process goes, but could you tell us a little bit of history about you? I mean, you didn't just show up as a strategic account manager. You've been in the industry for decades. Where did you start? Where have you been?

2:33 - 3:24

So I started as a commercial sales manager, back in 2007, with no tire experience, learning the business, tire by tire, brand by brand, just trying to make relationships with customers. That was a 10 year position that ultimately led me to, to take a position with a manufacturing company. So, where I was a territory manager covering for Western US states, which ultimately led to a Western US sales manager for that company covering like 9 Western US states. So a lot of background in tires, how they were manufactured and how to market to dealers and end users and ultimately landed with East Bay Tire as a strategic account manager.

3:24 - 3:48

Very cool. The, one of the things I love about the tire industry is it always feels like the American dream to me. I have, I've yet to run across somebody who says, yeah, I wanted to start in the tire business since I was 10. Yeah, you know, and there are a lot of successful people in the tire industry that grew up from learning it, on a ground level just like yourself.

3:48 - 4:41

Yeah, absolutely. I, I mean, you know, with a, with a four year degree and sights on probably, life in a big city and making it this, you know, awful amounts of money, I never expected to be in a tire industry, but. And I found a home when I landed and just like you said, the American dream and the people we communicate with on a daily basis, it's just been fun and it's, I can't see getting away from it now. Well, I wanna hear more about that passion, but for the fleets watching the show, let's say you're a, a fleet manager, you've called in, you've got a hold of Rob Bulldock, you're like, hey, my fleet's just not performing the way I want it to, right? I, I maybe I've got some issues with maintenance, maybe I've got some issues with wear or breakdown. You go in, what is that first process? What is that, what does that look like? What do you start with?

4:41 -5:05

I'd like to start with some questions. we wanna understand what they've been doing what, what types of tires are they purchasing? Maybe why are they purchasing, and then we really wanna get involved in looking at the fleet. We have to understand what the tires are doing in the fleet. Are they getting a regular wear? Are they getting rapid wear? What kind of conditions are they seeing that maybe isn't working for them?

So we'll, we'll go ahead and do what we call a fleet survey and we'll start inspecting tires for, for tread that wear pressure, where we'll track mileage in that fleet.There's so much that goes on into, consulting with the fleet and assessing. What they're actually doing and what they're getting out of their their product is, is it something that you can walk into a fleet and you can make assessments or suggestions right away, or is it, is it a longer process?

5:33 - 6:13

I mean, at what point do you come back to the fleet and say, these are my suggestions and this is what I think you can, you can operate better with? You know, there's There's some general opinions you can formulate based on just knowing what their fleet does, but what you really want to do is it's a much longer process because you want to truly understand every fleet is different. You can take, you can take two dirt haulers, that are 2 miles apart and they may have different contracts and run completely different routes, and they're gonna get completely different wear out of their tires. So it's a longer process of truly seeing their tires in their fleet and what they do for them.

6:13 -6:42

OK. And that brings me to something I've always wondered, you know, drivers, especially owner operators, will talk a lot about mileage, and, and many people in the industry will talk about mileage. What kind of variation is there in mileage on say a line haul steer tire and a line haul fleet versus a dirt hauler? I mean, I hear, I hear people talk, well, I'm happy with 75,000 miles. Others say they're not happy unless they get 200,000 miles or more out of a steer tire.

6:42 - 7:25

Absolutely, the condition, the, the rigor of the tire is put through completely determines what you're gonna get. take for instance a line haul steer tire. That guy may be running from, you know, from Modesto, California to South Texas and back or across the US and back, that tire spends 90% of its time just going in a straight line at 60 to 70 miles an hour on the highway versus your, your local, grocery fleet is twisting and turning in parking lots all day long and the amount of scrub that puts on the tire just eating away at the rubber, yeah, you're gonna see significant differences in your overall mileage performance.

7:25 - 7:34

Wow. So can you look at a tire and see how, how it's worn and say this is the right tire, not the right tire?

7:34 - 7:58

Yeah, absolutely. You can take a, you can take a quick look at a lot of tires and understand. Whether it's the right tire or wrong tire based on, it's called application specific tires, right? Is it got, and we can dive into this later if you want, but you know, closed shoulder for over the road, open shoulder for local regional de couple grooves to fight off a regular wear. There's so much that goes into it.

7:58 - 8:08

Well, let's dive into that, but let's clarify it for our listeners. Drive, when you say close shoulder, open shoulder, you're referring mostly to drive tires, right? On the drive axle of a truck.

8:08 - 8:09

Absolutely.

8:09 - 8:31

And are there certain types of tires or designs that perform better in certain applications? How do you go about that? So it's really the manufacturers, there's so much engineering that's gone into it. I mean, from, you know, long before I was in the industry, a tire was a tire, right? And size was a size, but.

8:31 - 9:10

We've gone so far, advanced into application specific tires. If you're looking at an over the road tire, you really wanna look at something with a closed shoulder it's gonna handle the heat build up of that over the road long haul those max revolutions, And it's gonna create optimal wear for that. Now if you're doing regional and that scrub creates a different level of heat and you need it to escape, that helps with the open shoulder plus also whether you're on off road, you want extra grip versus over the road, you want less rolling resistance and the tired to turn easier.

9:10 - 9:38

So there's, there's a lot of facets that go into it right there. OK. So steer tires, drive tires, trailer tires, those are, those are the components that you're looking at. You go in and assess a fleet. What is, what does that look like? I mean, you're, you're tracking data on pen and paper, you're, you're measuring tread depth, I mean, it's, it's been done a lot of different ways over the years. How do you handle it? How does, strategic account manager at East Bay Tire tackle that?

9:38 - 10:22

When I started back in 2007, yeah, it was, it was pen and paper with a tread depth and air pressure gauge in hand and switching back and forth, Now in 2025 as a strategic account manager for East Bay, we're utilizing some great technology. We're utilizing Bluetooth, tread depth gauges and air pressure gauges. it's mostly done on a phone. We can create reports instantly and email them to customers, fleet managers, our service managers letting them know what needs to be done in a fleet. we can generate mileage reports out of it. There's so much, it's, it's come so far, since when I started.

10:22 - 10:24

John, you remember when you did your first fleet check?

10:24 - 10:48

Yeah, pen and paper, yeah, it was, quite, quite different. Yeah, took all day, hope that you had the right vehicle numbers on it and you didn't mess it up, but yeah, you take away for somebody along with you to sit in the truck in case it was raining out and do. There might have been a time or two. I might have done that, yes, yes, I mean it still works. It still works, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, very, very cool.

10:48 - 11:11

So you go and do assessment. What's, what's something, if I'm a fleet, what's something you think is true before you even step into that fleet? I've got issues. I've got irregular wear. I'm not happy with my fuel economy. I may not even know what my fuel economy impact is on my tires. I've had a program, I've had a tire guy for a bit, but I'm disconnected from it.

11:11 - 11:28

I need your help. What do you think you're gonna find? I'm betting you're buying a tire based on price rather than data and research. You bought a price point rather than somebody actually spending the time to find out what would work best in your fleet, OK.

11:28 - 11:42

I got one for you, Rob. How do you have the conversation with the customer who thinks that his fleet is top notch and they're running exactly the right tire when your research shows you something different? How's that conversation go?

11:42 - 12:16

It's always fun, right? You wanna be, you, you wanna be delicate because that's their, they made a personal decision. So you don't wanna immediately walk in and say, yeah, you're buying the wrong tire. I, I don't know who made this decision. You wanna be a little delicate with that and, and have a nice conversation with them, but you absolutely do your research on that and show them the data of what they're doing versus what you know to be true to what they could be doing, And, and I'll be honest, sometimes we, we do the research and, and some of those guys are right they are buying the right tire and they are doing a good job, right?

12:16 - 12:38

So that's where we have to help them understand that knowledge and find out where they can make a few tweaks to get better fuel economy or longer wear, so on and so forth. So the, the right tire's an interesting one and we're gonna kinda delve into that at least a little bit. There are better tires out there, right?

12:38 -12:57

You could, you could find potentially a a a better tire that performs better in that application, but at the end of the day it is the fleet's choice. I mean, aren't aren't we supposed to be consultants? We're supposed to be experts we're supposed to say, all right, you've chosen this tire and you're getting 150,000 miles out of it. And that's great.

12:57 - 13:18

We'll support you with that tire, we'll sell you that tire, we'll, we'll, we'll check it, we'll give you your data on it, but you are missing out on 50,000 more miles per tire if you could go over here. Absolutely. Yeah, we're really trying to show them what the potential of their tire return could be versus maybe what they're doing today.

13:18 - 13:38

OK, now are you seeing fleets come to you with technology? Are they tracking their tires Are any of the tech in the trucks or trailers or scales impacting tire performance impacting maybe emergency road calls. How have you seen tech evolve on the transportation side?

13:38 - 15:00

Yeah, you'll see, there's a couple of things going on, A lot of trucks all have tablets in them now, with different tech programs on there for breakdown services where rather than a driver simply calling back to a dispatch office and saying, I've got an issue. They're filling it out on a tablet and it's sending a reporting that'll go live to a to a headquarters essential dispatch for that trucking company where they'll relay it to whoever their breakdown provider is, right? there's also, in cabin air pressure monitor systems that are they're leading to the tires in the trucks where drivers can see their air pressure, as they're going down the road if they have an issue, they know about it pretty quickly, And those are, those are like Bluetooth sensors in the tires or they're the, the pressure sensors you see outside the, the wheel.

14:30There's a couple of different options. They can have Bluetooth pressures inside the tires. They can have a system that basically goes on the valve stem and reads the air pressure. There's also monitoring systems that will air the tire up should it go low. There's so much other stuff going on now that didn't exist 30 years ago. Are fleets asking you for that or are they finding that elsewhere through their, their truck provider through PAA, through, through other channels?

15:00 - 15:27

A lot of them, if they're already a lot of them have found it through PACA is offering it in different trucking companies, right, or, or truck manufacturers are offering some of that as they come, but it is obviously an a huge added expense to them. And it doesn't necessarily incorporate to their trailer tires. so some are starting to request and ask for more information in the aftermarket world, so.

15:27 - 15:48

OK. All right, I have one we haven't talked about in a bit, Super singles, right? So, for our listeners, super singles are taking a dual application where you have two tires and replacing it with one tire. Who came up with that? Does it still exist? What's, what's the application for it?

15:48 - 16:35

I see those down the, down the highway all the time. Back in the I'm gonna call it the 2010-ish, you don't have to be in the show, so you can you can ballpark it for ballpark it back back then it was, it was kind of on the rage. It was the new thing. they were super popular. it started with. It's, it really started with, like fuel haulers and being able to add more weight, right? And then, and then it turned into fuel efficiency and being able to get a better rolling resistant tire. So going back to the weight piece, what you're saying is, is you take two wheels out and you put one wheel in and that allows more weight carrying capacity on the trailer.

16:35 - 16:48

Absolutely. OK, how much on average per axle? If I remember correctly, it's 2 is it 200 per axle? That's about right. I don't know. Do you remember?

16:48 - 17:30

I wanna say, I wanna say it's 200 per axle. My don't, don't quote me on it, Because I, and I'll refer back to the second part of your question, the popularity, where it was the biggest thing ever, then it's, it's, it's kind of falling off a little bit, right? We've debunked a little bit of that as far as, how much you can save in, in weight savings and fuel savings. A lot of it's negated by a flat. Or buy a blown tire because with a dual a driver could technically limp along a little bit to get to the next stop, whereas with a super single only one tire on that axle they're done they're they're parked.

17:30 - 17:51

I would think some of it has to do with compliance too somebody was showing me from the Northeast, I say Northeast Michigan area where they can carry as much as they can carry. So it's just axles on axles and axles. Now I'm based in California, we're based in California. We don't see that. You can only carry so much weight.

17:51 - 18:07

So if you can reduce, increase your weight by reducing the, the, the tire weight or the wheel weight, there's some value there, but you don't, I don't think you see a lot of super singles in Michigan if you can just put on as many axles as you want, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK.

18:07 - 18:31

So, you mentioned emergency calls, you mentioned, hey, you have, you have a dual set up and what happens if one goes down, you can still ride on the other. How often are fleets talking about emergency breaks, breakdown downtime? Is that something John and Rob, was there more you think 20 years ago than there is today? Do we have any gauge? Do we know?

18:31 - 19:04

Well, I think the feel would be there was definitely more, you know, 1020 years ago, are we measuring it? Probably not. I mean it's, I, I think some of your larger fleets probably have budgets that they, they analyze and this is how much we're spending on our emergency road calls but the average fleet don't do that yeah you you get into your, your very large, You know, national type fleets that that span across the US, have thousands of trucks, thousands of trailers, it's a huge concern for them.

19:04 - 19:30

They're definitely monitoring it. They understand, when you have your monthly quarterly calls with them what their ERS of emergency breakdown events are versus. You know, doing, doing, fleet services in their yard and preventative maintenance, is a huge focus for them. They're starting to really understand the downtime of a driver and what all those costs are associated with it.

19:30 -20:08

I'd be really curious how much of how many breakdowns are preventable, right? So the numbers I looked at a couple weeks ago where there's roughly 4 million Class 8 trucks in the United States. And ballpark, you're gonna get one breakdown every 2 years. So we're just throw some some basic numbers out there. There's 2 million Class A breakdowns a year. and that sounds about right to me, maybe about a million of those through, major manufacturer network channels and then another a million elsewhere, and that does include mechanical breakdowns which are smaller.

20:08 - 20:39

But I'm curious of the 2 million, how many are you hit something over the road versus was running low air pressure, you know, had mismatched tools, wore tire out, you know, things, was already leaking from a valve stem, things that could have been avoided. Yeah, we do,, we do scrap tire analysis with a lot of fleets where we're looking at whatever tires are removed from their fleets.

20:39 - 20:41

So what does scrap tire mean?

20:41 - 21:21

So if a tire is no longer usable, it's, it's now scrap, right? And it, and it's, and it's goes wherever it goes to be recycled to landfill, whatever happens to them these days, there's a few different things we can get into that later. But as we do these scrap tire analysis and really start looking at them. There's less and less that are what we would call an impact break or an immediate loss of air pressure and more of it seems to be focused on the, tire had a puncture in it and was run underinflated which caused it to fail, curb damage, side wall damage.

21:21 - 21:59

So, so it's, it's kind of hard to really gauge it, but, But a lot of it is absolutely preventable. I, I would think that would be a value to me if I'm a fleet. Like if I'm, if I brought you in to help give me some advice on how to run my fleet run it better, I would want you going through my scrap and saying, and I, I'd want the actual data. I want, hey, you have. 20% of the scrap is impact. 30% of the scrap is failure due to low air pressure. 20% is you put the wrong, the wrong tire was put on whoever's at fault for that, right?

[21:59 - 22:39]

And could have been avoided. I'd want that stat, absolutely, absolutely. In a, in a perfect world we're going into a fleet and doing a scrap tire analysis and we're finding.

[22:08 - 22:16]

We're finding tires that are completely worn out and they've reached the maximum age the fleet would allow to run.

[22:16 - 22:18]

Now that's a perfect world, right?

[22:18 - 22:20]

Yeah, it's pretty tough.

[22:22 - 22:39]

Once we get, you know, you get drivers trained and you get to a really, well thought out and planned fleet program, that's what it'll look like and and we've had some success with that in certain fleets, but, You know, there's still, there's still scrap in the road that's gonna cause issues, right?

[22:45 - 23:16]

So you, you send the tech out to do a fleet check on a large fleet. How many flats do they find during that that process on average? Gosh, it just, it just depends, It it's funny. I've, I've had customers tell me that they have a dealer doing their, their fleet service and the tech finds 4 flats every time he comes out, no matter what, right? I, I'll be honest, I, I've had a tech go out and, and check 100 trailers and, and find one flat. It just depends. I've also had to check a tech go out and check 20 trucks and find 10 flats. It just, it just depends. everybody's application is different, right? And what they're coming across on a daily basis could be different. So it's, I, I think that's a hard one. I, I remember times as a tech doing fleet surveys and you almost felt like you could never win. So if you win, if you go, you go do the survey, you come back to your boss, you know, or the fleet and say, hey, there's nothing, there's no flats, there's nothing wrong. You kind of get the look like, did you do anything? You couldn't find nothing you couldn't find nothing. You're telling me you were out there for 4 hours. I'm paying for 4 hours' worth of fleet service and you didn't find anything. These guys have the best program in the world. This is amazing. And then you come back and you're like, hey, you have 4 flats we need to fix them. You gotta be kidding me. You guys aren't doing your jobs, you know, what, what were you doing during the week? So it's a, it's a catch-22 there I feel like, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

[24:09 - 25:24]

OK, so, big fleets, a lot of our listeners probably aren't familiar with retreading and retreading is pretty much exclusively done in the Big Fleet segment. What is, what is retreading? So retreading is taking that, When that tire, that new tires on that truck trailer, and it wears out completely, then it becomes known as a casing at that point, a worn out tire, and that casing will go to a plant where it is, essentially the, the original rubber is buffed off and new rubber is applied to it, right? and it becomes a new tire, otherwise known as a retread. OK. And so these plants are, are regional plants that are, that are owned by the major manufacturers, they're owned by dealers. How does that work? the plants are, I mean, you've got some majors, right? that are. Franchised by the major manufacturers to dealers, so, most of what's happening at those plants is kind of monitored and overseen by the manufacturers but is owned by I see, but they're regional plants where you can send, send the casing. Yeah, OK, well, we'll tackle more of the details of that in a full retreading segment which I'm really excited about.

[25:30 - 25:49]

Yeah, which, which brings me to my next question. For both of you, is what is something that you've seen evolved dramatically in your time in the industry and what's something that you think hasn't evolved dramatically in the industry?

[25:49 - 26:04]

And I'm thinking of this because of retreading, right? retreading feels very much the same way that it was 40 years ago, the same process, the same procedures, arguably higher pricing, but something that hasn't changed dramatically.

[26:04 - 26:14]

I remember at the same process then heck is a lot of it still done on pen and paper how you, how you communicate this to this casing went to this plant and came back.

[26:14 - 26:18]

So what's something that you think hasn't changed and what's something that you think has changed?

[26:18 - 26:31]

I'll echo the like the retreading hasn't changed. It's, I mean, I can give the same plant tour I gave in 2007 because it's the same exact setup procedure and walk through, right?

[26:31 - 26:32]

Nothing much has changed there.

[26:32 - 26:35]

I will say one thing that is, has changed is.

[26:35 - 26:44]

You know, when I started in this business to get, to get longer life and longer wear at a tire, they added more 30 seconds. They made the tire the tread deeper, right?

[26:47 - 27:00]

And, and as it's evolved and as, fuel economy, fuel economy and impact on our environment has come about and, and. Thrust into the forefront of of our face, The tread is getting shallower to make the tire roll better and get better fuel economy, sacrificing longevity of the tire and overall length of wear so that's something that's changed dramatically, John, anything for you?

[27:20 - 27:30]

I, I'm gonna look at it from a different angle and go one of the things I see the big changes in, and if we're talking retread in the retread shops is it's hard for a retread shop to keep a full crew.

[27:30 - 27:34]

I mean it's, you know, no one really wants to do the job anymore.

[27:34 - 27:57]

It's it's tougher and tougher and and you know the result of that is delays, you know, consistency in manufacturing because it is a manufacturing plant and that's where I see the biggest change, you know, today versus even 5 years ago is these plants can't keep employees working and one guy leaves that plant that day and it it affects the whole production.

[27:57 - 28:01]

It's, it's, it's a much smaller industry than we all think.

[28:01 - 28:13]

It impacts almost every industry in the United States like the entire America's infrastructure, but you're right, labor has been challenging and there's plenty of complaints out there.

[28:13 - 28:22]

I think there's plenty of solutions, definitely another pod, but, as far as working in a retreading plant, absolutely that's been impactful, yeah.

Industry Changes & Challenges

[28:22 - 28:34]

I, I'll tell you one thing that I think is gonna change is, and I'd ask you this, Rob, what impact, do the customers see as far as having options against retreading today?

[28:34 - 28:50]

Well, that's another huge change. Glad you asked, in the market, third tier tire manufacturing, what we would call third tier in the past, was, was typically, I don't know, frowned upon by a lot of the big fleets because the tires were not, didn't have the quality, right?

[28:50 - 29:00]

That that's changed dramatically. the quality of maybe some of the lesser known names in manufacturing are putting out a great product now.

[29:00 - 29:11]

So for our listeners who aren't familiar, there's tiers we in the industry, we refer to them as tiers, a like a top tier, a medium tier, and a third tier as far as brand recognition.

[29:11 - 29:16]

Yeah, absolutely.

[29:16 - 29:28]

And I think we could say that with just about anything that's being produced today. Globalization over the last 30 years has changed it so that you're not just getting one great product from one great country, you're getting it from all over, right?

[29:28 - 29:36]

And technology has played a huge part in that, the ability to, to add consistency to those plants to how something is made, right?

[29:36 - 30:03]

Well, the, the one thing that I I hasn't changed for me in the industry is that it's very much still a people industry it's very much still how does, how does a tire dealer, a distributor, an expert bring value to a fleet what you do every single day, Rob, going in there and saying this is how you can get the best performance out of your spend.

[29:58 - 30:03]

Yeah, that seems to be exactly the same whether it's pen and paper or digital, absolutely.

[30:03 - 30:07]

OK, Rob, we got a, a few of our traditional questions here.

[30:07 - 30:09]

Blast from the past, your favorite beads.

[30:09 - 30:14]

What's attire that you remember that's one of your favorites that is no longer produced?

[30:14 - 30:40]

The original HSR for dirt haulers, this is a continental, the continental HR a big problem for any kind of dirt rock haulers, people, anybody who did on off road for that matter was rock drilling where the tire or the rock would drill down into the tire exposed. Steel steel lies and ultimately, you know, cause it render that tire useless. when that HSR came out, it was a game changer. The ejectors on it, man, it didn't hold a rock, had thick shoulders on it for the steer applications, scrubbed really well.

[30:56 - 31:03]

They've made a number of changes to that tire over the years and it just isn't quite what it was at that time. It was a, it was a problem solver. I might have sold one or two of those in my past. Great tire. Great tire.

[31:07 - 31:11]

It's, I think we're all, victims of nostalgia. What was working back then we still feel doesn't perform as well as the stuff today, right?

[31:17 - 31:30]

OK, and, and lastly, Rob, your BDE, your big dog energy, we don't always wake up thinking this is the industry we'd be in, this is the industry we'd love, but yet here we are.

[31:30 - 31:37]

What was the moment you said, this is what I'm gonna pursue, this is what I'm gonna keep doing, this is what I wanna do.

[31:37 - 31:44]

You know, when I took my first job in the industry, I didn't, I didn't know from day one it was what I was gonna pursue.

[31:44 - 31:55]

I knew I wanted a career, but when I started to get comfortable with the job and, and kind of realize what it entailed. I got to drive around and make friends all day, right?

[31:58 - 32:09]

From hardworking people, who started somewhere in the industry turning a wrench or dismounting a mounting a tire and have worked their way up. we got great conversations and great relationships and I get to make friends every day.

[32:14 - 32:20]

And now I get to bring what I've learned to in the industry to it and it's just. I just really enjoyed it at that point, you know, bringing that educated side that I had to, to other people who were making emotional and price point decisions and we get to have great conversations and build good relationships.

[32:35 - 32:44]

So it's, it's just a good industry. It's a lot of fun and it's a lot of hardworking Americans trying to, trying to get a job done and help the economy move forward.

[32:44 - 32:51]

I, I love that and, and one of the things I really appreciate about your perspective as long as I've known you is always to keep learning, right? And that's an aspect I would encourage the entire industry to have.

[32:56 - 33:09]

So, gents, that's about time for us. again, Rob, we're gonna have you on for multiple parts of the series as we tackle different types of fleets and different types of tires. But for now, gents, let's air this one up.

[33:09 - 33:17]

Alright guys, thank you very much. Thank you.

Ready to dive in?

This episode is a must-listen for fleet managers and tire professionals who want to optimize their fleet's performance, improve safety, and reduce overall costs. Tune in for valuable insights on the latest tire technologies, application-specific tire choices, and how to make smarter, data-backed decisions.