Nearly a quarter of truck breakdowns are tyre failure related, and 90% of those failures are triggered by a slow loss of pressure.
The best-case scenario in a tyre blowout, is hours of downtime and late delivery disputes. Worst case scenario? A catastrophic loss of staff, ruined trucks, hijacked cargo and legal issues.
ConnecTyre brings advanced tyre pressure monitoring to your driver’s cabin and fleet management hub. With one in four truck tyres being underinflated at any given time, ConnecTyre’s Bluetooth-enabled tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS) helps drivers and fleet managers deal with tyre issues, before they become accidents.
Why tyre pressure matters
Correct tyre inflation is critical for all other truck safety systems to work. Underinflated tyres will influence a truck’s steering, anti-lock brakes, stability control systems and increase diesel consumption. All those performance losses are avoidable – if you have real-time tyre pressure data.
It takes only a few minutes to ensure a truck and trailer’s tyres are checked and inflated to recommended pressures before rolling out of the yard or depot. And that can prevent hours of downtime or costly vehicle damage due to a blowout. But tyre pressure isn’t a set-and-forget feature, so real-time data monitoring matters.
Tyres age, vales wear, and steel rims deform over time, increasing the likelihood of air pressure losses. Season and temperate changes through the day also influence tyre pressure. In deep winter, at dawn, a tyre pressure reading in your loading zone can vary from a midday reading when you are rolling along en route.
Fleet managers and maintenance technicians know that correct tyre pressure reduces wear and ensures you get all the mileage you paid for with a tyre. But the daily operational benefit of accurate tyre pressures matter even more: less downtime, better ontime delivery schedules and lower risk of drivers and trucks becoming potential hijacking victims, stranded with tyre failures.
The unavoidable risk of potholes
Over the road cargo volumes are increasing while road conditions are degrading. Infrastructure development and maintenance are wildly out of rhythm with trucking traffic, and tyres compensate for poorer road conditions by suffering a more punishing lifecycle.
When transporting loads along demanding routes, with poor road surface conditions and unpredictable pothole frequency, real-time time pressure can be the difference between a successful delivery and stranded failure.
Underinflated tyres suffer greater sidewall flex when rolling through potholes, especially when supporting a full load. Tyre sidewall stresses due to pothole strikes can shorten a tyre’s lifecycle and significantly increase the risk of total tyre casing failure.
Steering to avoid potholes increases collision risk, meaning pothole strikes are unavoidable, but correct tyre pressure to absorb those impacts means less sidewall stress and a lower risk of blowouts.
Double redundancy
ConnecTyre acts as your tyre pressure data guardian, preventing premature tyre wear and blowouts, by empowering drivers and fleet managers with real-time data without creating an analytics burden.
Usable and intuitive data management is what ConnecTyre is designed to provide because more data and shareability shape better decisions. The ConnecTyre TPMS signals tyre pressure data in-cab and to your fleet’s management centre to ensure redundancy, by using power of cloud computing.
Drivers can become overwhelmed on challenging routes after many hours at the wheel. With ConnecTyre, the fleet manager also has access to on-board tyre pressure monitoring, allowing them to flag a low-pressure warning the driver might have missed.
Integrated route analysis also benefits from ConnecTyre’s powerful data dashboarding. Road sections known to be harsh on tyres, with successive pothole impacts, can be flagged, and drivers primed to be more aware of tyre pressure issues.
TPMS makes cents
Replacing tyres is a significant cost of business, but replacing a destroyed truck is a lot more expensive with days and weeks of downtime, as you source a replacement. A truck tyre is less than 1% of the cost of a new heavy-duty truck, but one tyre failure can destroy a truck and devastate your business cashflow.
Proactive tyre maintenance is about maximizing the lifecycle of your tyres while safeguarding the investment in your trucks and drivers. It is pointless having a TPMS asset that isn’t intuitive and becomes overwhelming to use.
ConnecTyre makes your tyre pressure monitoring instinctive and easily visible for multiple users, linking to your fleet management systems and telematics. With ConnecTyre you get more sensors, made simple.
As a data-centric solution, ConnecTyre adds business intelligence functions beyond its enhanced safety features for drivers. We’ll calculate the savings and return-on-investment for your TPMS costs, proving how ConnecTyre safety sensors and software, makes financial sense for your fleet.
TPMS where they matter most
Drivers no longer need that mechanical intuition when driving, listening for engine or transmission issues. Sensors reduce mechanical risk, making trucks run safer, avoiding preventable repairs and increasing uptime. Trucks are built with integrated sensors and early warning systems that alert drivers before severe engine or transmission damage occurs.
Fleet managers, technicians, and drivers are uncomfortable operating any truck without advanced engines, transmission and fuel sensors, so why risk running unmonitored tyres? All braking and steering stability rely on tyres. Tyre pressure is crucial and inflation air is free, so the cost-to-risk equation is a given.
Tyres are essential safety components and deserve the same data sensor overwatch that monitor truck engines and transmissions. The benefits of ConnecTyre’s cloud integrated TPMS system are immense. Instead of being unaware of a pressure issue and unknowingly driving towards a potential blowout event, drivers and fleet managers can respond to warnings and avoid low tyre pressures becoming an emergency.
