Goodyear Boosts Automated Tire Inspection Tech With New Leasing Options
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CLEVELAND — The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. now will offer customized leasing options for its automated tire inspection device, the company announced Sept. 14.
Goodyear CheckPoint inspects tire pressure and tread depth before sending that data to fleet managers. The company launched the new leasing options to make the device more accessible to fleets.
“We’ve had fleets that have reported fuel-efficiency increases, tread-life increases, because if you’re taking care of your pressure, it’s going to make your tires last longer,” Austin Crayne, Goodyear business development manager, told Transport Topics. “Pressure is the No. 1 killer of tires. So that really does help.”
Austin Crayne, business development manager at Goodyear. (Goodyear)
American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council hosted the tire company during its 2021 Fall Meeting and Transportation Technology Exhibition.
There, the company discussed the device and leasing options before the official launch.
“Since we brought it over to North America, we’ve done a little bit of installs here, but we’ve really used it selectively with how we’ve been deploying them currently,” Crayne said. “But now, we’re about to start opening it up for actual leasing.
“So fleets that are out there that are interested in this type of technology, we’re going to have lease programs for those fleets to be able to use this technology.”
Goodyear said the options are available to any of its national account fleets throughout the U.S. and Canada. Because the systems are installed based on the needs of a fleet, there aren’t select types of leasing options for customers. Instead, a Goodyear sales associate will work with the fleet to figure out a personalized plan.
“CheckPoint actually falls into what we would call the tire management experience, and as a product we define it into the category known as automated inspection,” Crayne said. “What that really means for us is, it’s trying to take the labor out of the equation when it comes to inspecting tires and make it more efficient to gather data. Especially for those larger fleets.”
Goodyear booth at TMC 2021. (Goodyear)
CheckPoint usually gets installed at a fleet yard entrance so that it can automatically scan passing trucks. It will then trigger alerts to fleet maintenance teams if there are any immediate tire concerns that require attention, such as low pressure or tread wear. The alerts usually are sent through emails but can be integrated directly into existing maintenance systems.
“We have the pressure plate right here that has a bunch of microtransducers built under it,” Crayne said. “It’s looking at the pressure distribution on the footprint of that tire to calculate what the pressure is in the tire.
“And then at the same time, we have these little slots right here that actually shoot the laser onto the tire, and also combine that with a bunch of different camera images that are taken at that same time. What it does is, it takes a bunch of different readings and it uses the lowest point to say, ‘Here’s what your tread depth is.’ ”
Goodyear said the solution enables large numbers of vehicles to be inspected efficiently. Fleets, the company states, can better maintain their tires to extend casing life and tread wear. This can add up to significant cost savings as improper air pressure causes about 85% of tire failures, according to the company.
Goodyear said that this year alone the devices deployed in North America have automatically inspected more than 1.5 million tires and alerted fleets to 126,000 potential issues.
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