Panel: Tire Debris Won't Go Away

If you think you’re seeing more tire debris along roads these days, you may be right.

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.



Safety organizations see retread tire failures as a significant highway hazard. Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety are among groups that have called for greater government oversight of retreading procedures, including curbs on the number of times tires can go through the process.

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.

For the full story, see the April 5 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.