While home with my family during the holiday break I joined my father on a short trip to a nearby town.
On the way there we started discussing the stories I was working on for Truck Parts & Service and I mentioned I was conducting interviews for an article on retread tires.
Almost on cue, we passed a detached tire tread on the shoulder and dad pointed, “You mean, retreads like that?”
Armed with the knowledge from my interviews from the previous week, I immediately jumped into action to disprove his claim.
I mentioned how the “unsafe retread tire myth” is just that, a myth. That today’s top commercial vehicle retread tires have the same minuscule adjustment rates as new tires. That retreading facilities today rely on a wealth of highly advanced technical machines to test and evaluate all potential tires before retreading. And that once a tire is deemed eligible for retreading, the true act of fusing new tread to a casing is done by highly sophisticated and automated machines — not a guy with a glue gun and some clamps.
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I also mentioned that almost all major fleets have active retreading programs. I mentioned that almost any commercial vehicle tire you buy today is built to be used multiple times, and then the big one, that retread tires cost about half as much as new tires.
Poor guy didn’t know what hit him.
The information all came out so fast. I hope it comes out as well in my upcoming feature, which you’ll read in Truck Parts & Service magazine in February.
But I think I got through.
Dad doesn’t have any Class 8 trucks but he’s got a few medium-duty grain trucks that’ll need new tires down the line. When he gets new ones will he try retreads? I don’t know.
But I know at least now he’ll consider it, and if his tire man asks he’ll be willing to listen. At least now he knows the truth about retreads.
That’s an important thing to remember when selling tires to your customers. You probably have a lot of customers who are loyal retread users. They’ve been using them for decades.
But you’ve also got customers like my dad. I can almost guarantee it. Guys who don’t know enough about retreads to trust them and haven’t been motivated to find the real truth.
Tell them what I told him.
Retreading is safe. It’s reliable. And it saves money.
In today’s marketplace, that’s something any customer wants to know.
