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When it comes down to fleet costs, tires are a huge part of the equation; and the more miles driven, the more important.

It’s an expensive numbers game, and you want your fleet on the winning side—around 80 percent of fuel energy consumed by a vehicle is from friction, around 10 percent of which is lost to rolling resistance. According to the Department of Energy, rolling resistance can consume 5 to 15 percent of fuel in light duty vehicles and 15 to 30 percent in heavy trucks.

The good news is that a National Renewable Energy Laboratory modeling study showed a possible 3 percent improvement in fuel economy for a very low rolling resistance tire; some manufacturers claim up to 5 percent.

Those numbers might look good, but to guys like Bruce Stockton they don’t mean squat unless you can prove it out on the road.

PROVING GROUNDS

As Con-way Truckload’s vice-president of maintenance and asset management, Stockton has a finger on the pulse of one of the largest fleets in North America, and another wrapped around its purse strings. Entrusted with the care of around 2,700 tractors and 8,000 trailers as well as the bottom line, adopting an efficient, fleet-wide tire technology to trim costs is a top priority.

Con-way started testing low rolling resistance tires in 2003, putting Michelin single-wide X1 on some used trucks.

“My initial reaction to it was probably what most maintenance peoples’ reaction to wide base initially is,” Stockton says. “’No way—it’s something new, it’s not proven—the last thing I need is another problem.’”