SmartWay is no guarantee

Oct. 8, 2015
The increase in verified tires leads to more questions

Pop culture junkies like myself are obsessed with movie quotes. I can recite thousands of classic movie lines and scenes word for word, including most of Caddyshack. Another personal favorite is Tommy Boy, which starred the late, great Chris Farley. There is a particular scene in the movie where Tommy Callahan (Farley’s character) discusses the merits of putting the guarantee on a box of brake pads. He basically said you can put a piece of junk in a box and mark it guaranteed because all you are getting is a guaranteed piece of junk. I have that same feeling towards the SmartWay tire program.

Since customers require SmartWay, fleets are encouraged to participate. Don’t get me wrong. I still believe that every effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the industry is a step in the right direction.  On the other hand, the long-term effect on the truck tire industry has been questionable.

When I look at the positives, the advancements that have gone into rubber compounding and tread design are resulting in actual fuel savings with low rolling resistance (LRR) tires and retreads. In some cases, there may be some trade-off in terms of fuel savings versus tire cost per mile. But in most instances, the overall benefit is still there. Unfortunately, a SmartWay-verified truck tire could still be a box of guaranteed brake pads.

Since 2013, the number of SmartWay-verified truck tires has tripled and the number of brands has doubled. Despite my 30-plus years in the business, when I looked at the list, there were a lot of names I didn’t recognize, so I decided to check out a few. All of them were offshore manufacturers, and they featured tires with tread designs that were amazingly similar to name-brand models but with enough subtle changes to avoid patent infringement.

Having spent the last 11 years dealing with federal agencies on a semi-regular basis, I am still amazed at the highly efficient rate of verification for SmartWay applications. In the past year, they approved almost 300 new SmartWay-verified truck tires, which must be some kind of record for a government agency, federal or state. It’s almost like they have complete trust in the offshore manufacturers that submit their test results, so they push them through as fast as they can to publicize the success of the program.

I stand by an earlier column that SmartWay is more about marketing, especially when it comes to LRR tires. We’re reaching the point where I think one of four things is going to happen to the tire program:

1.  It will remain unchanged and a year from now SmartWay will boast more than 1,000 approved truck tires.

2.  It will totally lose value because the SmartWay verification could be the guarantee on the box.

3.  Someone will take a second look at the rolling resistance coefficients in order to determine if the bar is set too low.

4.  Someone will start verifying the test results to ensure the LRR benefits of all SmartWay tires actually meet the target values.

It’s still too early to tell if SmartWay will ever achieve meaningful reduction in emissions. These could be the baby steps that ultimately lead to a revolution in clean transportation and I will be proven wrong. Or, its status as a marketing campaign for LRR tires remains unchanged because the standards are too low and/or there is no policing. My position hasn’t changed—I hope I’m wrong.   

Kevin Rohlwing can be reached at [email protected]

About the Author

Kevin Rohlwing

Kevin Rohlwing is the SVP of training for the Tire Industry Association. He has more than 40 years of experience in the tire industry and has created programs to help train more than 180,000 technicians.

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