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For an IT manager, this poses a data management problem. Tyres are not simply consumables that are bought, mounted, replaced, and scrapped. They are assets with:
In practice, they behave like independent assets with their own lifecycle and traceability. Without this, historical traceability is impossible. Yet, this traceability provides valuable insights into the position history (front left vs rear right over time), allows for the calculation of actual life-cycle costs, and enables reliable wear analysis. The goal is to answer questions such as: "Which tyre was mounted on which axle under which load conditions and for how many operating hours?"
To gain a meaningful understanding of the financial impact, the following costs must be considered in addition to the purchase costs (depending on axle configuration and fleet size):
From an IT perspective, this is a classic case of data fragmentation:
Unlike some other defects, a blowout leads to an immediate standstill, can result in blocked lanes, safety incidents and delays for secondary equipment. This means that if your predictive maintenance roadmap includes engines, batteries, and drivetrains but excludes tyres, your predictive model is incomplete. And incomplete models create a false sense of security.
For a long time, experience was the foundation of corporate culture. However, this is insufficient for modern requirements. From an IT governance perspective, tyre data represents operational intelligence. The question is whether wear is random or measurable. Structured data can reveal the following:
Once this data is collected, it can be incorporated into BI dashboards, cost-per-hour models, predictive maintenance systems, supplier performance comparisons, and fleet lifecycle optimisation strategies.
The management of tyres is a valuable part of fleet management, supporting optimisation and thus the reliability of the vehicle fleet.
From an IT perspective, the strategic question is simple: Are tyres treated as trackable assets in your digital ecosystem – or as invisible cost factors? Because if they are invisible, they are uncontrolled. And uncontrolled assets always cost more than you think.
Tyres represent a major maintenance cost factor in the maintenance of container terminals, after fuel, and therefore have a significant impact on operational efficiency. The economic scale of this issue is significant: In 2021, the global port tyre market was valued at $1.2 billion, projected to reach $1.6 billion by the end of 2025. With a CAGR of 5.4%, the market is estimated to reach $2.5 billion by 2033. (1)
Controlled, predictable environments make tyre management straightforward. Container terminals, however, are the exact opposite of controlled and predictable.
Heavy loads. Tight turning circles. Constant braking. Uneven surfaces. Heat generation. Static stacking. Shock loads. Long idle periods followed by peak loads. This is not standard operation, such as in road transport. These are industrial loads.
If IT wants to create meaningful data models, it must first understand the technical reality that these models represent.
A tyre on an RTG has a different lifespan than one on a reach stacker. Even within the same vehicle category, operating cycles vary depending on terminal layout and operating intensity.
Static vs Dynamic Load
Container handling equipment is subjected to extreme static loads. A loaded reach stacker lifting a 40-foot container creates a concentrated weight distribution on limited contact areas. Added to this is the dynamic load—such as acceleration, deceleration, and cornering under load—which generates lateral forces and drastically increases shoulder wear.
High Centre of Gravity Effects
Many CHEs operate with a high centre of gravity. When turning under load, the weight shifts unevenly across the axles. This has its own specific consequences, such as accelerated edge wear, stress on the sidewalls, increased heat generation, and uneven profile wear.
Yard Layout Influence
The design of the port area directly influences tyre wear patterns. Factors include: surface material (concrete vs. asphalt), slope, drainage quality, and driving distances between the quay and the terminal. And the often tight yard layouts exacerbate the problem: frequent 90-degree turns under heavy load create their own unique stress patterns. Therefore, equipment on terminals with long, straight transport routes exhibits a different wear profile than a terminal with dense block stacking and low internal circulation.
See also: CHE Operator in Container Terminal Operations
Shoulder Wear
Due to constant rotation under load, accelerated wear of the shoulder is common. It then needs to be replaced, even if sufficient tread depth remains in the centre. To accurately document this, a tread depth measurement must be taken and recorded at every inspection.
Heat Degradation
Heat destroys silently. Negative pressure, overloading, and repeated high-friction manoeuvres generate thermal energy that weakens the integrity. Cumulatively, these damages often lead to sudden failure. By recording pressure readings, ambient temperature, and operating hours between inspections, a correlation between thermal stress and carcass failure can be established.
Casing Damage and Impact Stress
Terminals are not clean-swept environments. Debris such as metal fragments, as well as uneven surfaces, cause damage. The same applies to impact damage from accidents involving other CHE (container handling equipment), containers, or port infrastructure. This not only increases maintenance costs but also reduces the value. Therefore, any damage categories, severity, repairability, and reason for retirement should be documented for each asset.
Underinflation-Driven Failures
Insufficient pressure is one of the most expensive and preventable causes of premature wear. If the pressure deviates from the recommended range, it leads to increased heat generation and higher rolling resistance. This accelerates wear and tear and also increases fuel consumption.
The purchase price is only the most visible aspect of the cost structure.
Mounting and Dismounting Labour
Tyres for heavy-duty vehicles require specialised tools and trained personnel. Each mounting incurs labour hours, machine downtime, and opportunity costs. Without clearly recording all relevant events, these costs are hidden because they are attributed to the vehicle as a whole rather than to a single tyre.
Downtime Exposure
If a change is required as an emergency during peak periods in ship operations, it can delay loading operations, trigger a cascading redistribution of equipment, and reduce crane productivity.
Scrap and Retread Potential
Even heavy-duty industrial tyres can still have value if properly treated. However, the profitability of retreading depends on controlled wear, low thermal stress, minimal sidewall damage, and a documented lifecycle history.
What Should Modern Digital Tyre Management Do?
If the problem is fragmented, unstructured, and reactive data, the solution is architecture. Modern digital tyre management is a structured, event-driven asset management layer that treats each tyre as a fully traceable object within the fleet ecosystem.
Unique Identification
Each tyre must have its own record containing the make and model, size and load capacity specifications, purchase price, and supplier reference. This ID must be maintained throughout the entire lifecycle—regardless of how often it is mounted, rotated, dismounted, or stored.
Position-Based Tracking with Historical Integrity
The exact axle and side must be recorded with a timestamp during mounting, as well as every mounting and dismounting operation. As we learned earlier, wear patterns are often position-dependent. If the position history is lost, root cause analysis becomes impossible.
Structured Lifecycle Event Logging
Every relevant interaction should generate a structured event record:
Each event must include the following:
Data Acquisition
If data collection is cumbersome, it will not be reliable. Therefore, anything that cannot be recorded automatically should be designed to be as simple as possible. This can include, for example, mobile devices in the workshop, scan-based processes (barcode or RFID), guided inspection forms, and mandatory field validation. Ideally, this means real-time synchronisation with backend systems, as well as offline functionality with subsequent synchronisation if real-time synchronisation is not possible or not always guaranteed. For the sake of completeness, every interaction must be recorded, including user authentication.
Fleet Overview
The most important dashboard functions should include the following:
For each individual asset, information such as complete life cycle costs and cost per operating hour should be available. A performance comparison of brands, models, and suppliers facilitates future purchasing decisions.
One simple but often overlooked parameter in tyre management is pressure. Of all the factors that influence lifespan, operating costs, and machine reliability, it is often underestimated. Unlike visible wear or damage, pressure changes inevitably occur, and threshold values fall below without this being immediately noticeable. Even under ideal conditions, tyres slowly lose pressure over time; Goodyear mentions about 0.069 bar or 1 pound per square inch (psi) per month for passenger vehicle tyres. (2)
For container terminals with large fleets of rubber-tyred vehicles and machinery, this is more important than it might initially seem. Under the demanding conditions in which RTGs, reach stackers, and terminal tractors operate, even relatively small pressure deviations can significantly affect the load distribution within the casing.
If the pressure drops below the recommended value, the casing deforms more than intended. This causes heat to rise inside the carcass, affecting tread wear and structural integrity. It also increases rolling resistance, meaning the vehicle has to work harder to move. Even one bar too little pressure can lead to up to two per cent higher fuel consumption and can reduce the lifespan by 20%. (3)
Excessive pressure causes other problems. Too high a pressure reduces the tyre's contact patch and concentrates the load on a smaller area. This leads to faster wear, reduced traction, and increased stress on the wheel assemblies and vehicle suspension.
Automatic and continuous pressure monitoring solves this easily remedied problem:
In many terminals, tyre pressure is still only checked as part of scheduled maintenance. While this can detect significant pressure losses, it hardly captures the gradual pressure changes that occur during daily operation. Temperature fluctuations, small leaks, valve problems, or slow punctures can all alter the pressure between checks. What's missing here is real-time transparency.
Modern digital systems close this gap by continuously monitoring the pressure of the entire fleet. Sensors mounted directly on the tyres or wheel assemblies measure the pressure in real time. The data is transmitted to a central platform. Instead of relying on periodic inspections, terminal operations teams gain continuous insight into the condition of each monitored wheel position. This makes the management proactive.
If the pressure falls below a defined threshold, the system can generate warnings before the situation develops into a critical problem. Maintenance teams can intervene early, often with a simple pressure correction, instead of experiencing an unexpected failure during operation.
Stored as historical data, patterns can be revealed over time that would otherwise remain hidden: for example, slow pressure losses due to valve problems or minor damage.
Pressure monitoring thus supports lifecycle management of each asset, but another important aspect is operational safety. Early detection of pressure loss reduces the risk of sudden failures that could disrupt operations or create dangerous situations in busy terminal environments. Maintaining the correct pressure also contributes to lower energy consumption from a sustainability perspective.
In large terminals with dozens or even hundreds of vehicles in use, this transparency can make a measurable difference. Small pressure deviations that would previously have gone unnoticed become visible. Maintenance measures become more targeted. And they are more likely to reach their full service life.
Their production has a significant environmental footprint, as it relies on energy-intensive manufacturing and raw materials such as synthetic rubber, carbon black, and steel. Synthetic rubber and carbon black are derived from petroleum, and the production of all three components is energy-intensive, as are the vulcanisation and moulding processes. While a single passenger car tyre generates approximately 25–35 kg of CO₂, a medium-sized truck/industrial tyre (approx. 70 kg) generates approximately 210–250 kg of CO₂.
Yes, they can be recycled, but the process is complex. Most of them are made of rubber, steel, and various chemical compounds. Recycled tyre material is often shredded into rubber granules, which are then used for applications such as playground surfacing, sports fields, asphalt mixtures, or building materials. Some are also reused for industrial purposes or converted into energy in controlled processes.
Tyres may seem like simple components, but in their function at container terminals, they represent complex assets with measurable performance indicators. Without structured data, the management remains reactive: failures are only addressed when they occur, and lifecycle costs remain largely invisible.
Digital management changes this dynamic. By capturing each tyre as an identifiable asset, documenting lifecycle events, and integrating inspection, pressure, and usage data, terminals gain a better understanding of wear patterns, cost drivers, and operational risks. This transparency enables maintenance teams to intervene early, extend the lifespan, and reduce unplanned downtime.
For IT managers, the conclusion is clear: tyres should not exist outside the terminal's digital ecosystem. When their data becomes part of the broader fleet data architecture, it contributes to predictive maintenance models, cost analysis, and operational optimisation.
In other words, effective tyre management is not just a maintenance task—it's a data problem, and therefore an opportunity for IT.
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Delve deeper into one of our core topics: Smart Port
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools are integrated software systems that connect and manage an organisation’s core processes—such as finance, procurement, inventory, manufacturing, HR, and customer orders—in a single shared database. They standardise and automate workflows, provide real-time visibility across departments, and create a single source of truth for operational and financial data. This integration reduces manual data entry, avoids inconsistencies between siloed systems, and supports better planning, reporting, and decision‑making across the entire enterprise. (4)
IT governance is the framework of structures, processes, and responsibilities that ensures an organisation’s information technology supports and extends its business strategy, manages risk, and delivers value to stakeholders. It defines who makes which IT decisions, how performance and risk are monitored, and how compliance and accountability are ensured—typically using recognised frameworks such as COBIT, ITIL, and the ISO/IEC 38500 standard. Core domains include strategic alignment, value delivery, risk management, resource management, and performance measurement of IT. (5)
References:
(2) https://www.goodyear.eu/en_gb/consumer/learn/checking-your-tire-pressure.html
(4) Monk, Ellen F.; Wagner, Bret J. (2013). Concepts in Enterprise Resource Planning. Cengage.
(5) Calder, Alan 2012). IT Governance: Implementing Frameworks and Standards for the Corporate Governance of IT. Kogan Page.
Note: This article was partly created with the assistance of artificial intelligence to support drafting.