The China-Bomb debate Put to rest

CapriRacer wrote:

Both Roger (Tireman9) and I are retired tire engineers.

Great to have an expert participating.

CapriRacer wrote:

First, it would be great if we could get a breakdown of the tire failures by producing plant - but that is not going to happen. Not only is that EXTREMELY proprietary (every tire manufacturer would just love to know where their competition is!), it has some built in issues with data collection.

As consumers we don't need the level of data quality that a manufacturer would need. Any hard data would be better than what we have now. Also, if a particular factory or manufacturer seems to be getting bad results they certainly would be able to respond to that bad data with their own take on the facts. A lack of response for some factory that seemed poor would speak volumes to me. Right now there's no real forum for that to take place.


You worked for a manufacturer that cares about quality and takes the time to inspect failures and do something about it. For ST tires, I believe that many, but not all, manufacturers have no interest in quality and never intend to take warranty tires back or do failure analysis. If there was any interest in warranty support, quality control and customer feedback then you would be able to google the tire brand and get a US phone number for technical support and warranty issues. This should be another criteria for us as consumers. If we cannot find a phone number for the manufacturer (not a retailer) of a given tire, then don't buy it.

CapriRacer wrote:

We assumed the data collection didn't change from year to year - even though it surely did! We based our analysis on tires being returned to us - mostly for warranty - and we categorized them according to what we found. We had a HUGE(!!) database and analytical tools to help (For people who care, we made extensive use of Excel Pivot tables.)

That's part of the problem for ST tires. With a typical auto tire, with very little effort I can at least make an attempt to get some satisfaction if I believe the tire didn't meet my expectations. With most ST tires it's simply not possible. At best you may get some satisfaction on a replacement tire within 12 months of a new TT purchase. My guess is that the dealer or trailer manufacturer would just eat that cost and it never makes it back to the tire manufacturer. If the trailer manufacturer eats too many tires in 12 months, they just switch to a different brand - which may or may not be a different factory.

CapriRacer wrote:

The US Federal government has since passed the TREAD Act, and one of those things that it requires is the reporting of tire failures on a quarterly basis - starting in 2008 (Yes, it took that long to get the system in place. It was very difficult to get the system designed and get everyone on board)

Do we (consumers) get access to this data? I'd like to see the stats on my "Trail Express" tires. My guess is that there are zero failures.

CapriRacer wrote:

in order to perform satisfactorily from the consumers point of view.

What if the "customer's" primary criteria is cost? If some factory is building off brand tires for $15 each and some marketer can sell them in bulk in the US for $50 each then they will do that all day. When sales start to drop due to quality issues then the marketer can just create a new company, adjust their marketing campaign and sell the same tires under a new name. The factory doesn't ever see a quality problem because the marketer is happy making their fat margins.

I think this is part of the debate that doesn't get addressed. It's not about if an ST tire is better than an LT tire. It's really about ST manufacturers where the primary criteria is profit. Safety, performance, quality are simply not part of the equation and there's no apparent interest in those aspects. Domestic LT tire manufacturers cannot get away with that, but it seems as if for the Chinese manufacturers there are some (many???) where that's the apparent model.

CapriRacer wrote:

So I am of the opinion that changing the government regulations for ST tires isn't the way to go. I am also of the opinion that ST tires will pass the LT tests as they are on the books now - hence the justification for not changing the regulations.

I agree here. We're in the information age. We, consumers, need to get better organized and informed. I'm not sure how to pull that off.

CapriRacer wrote:

Further, they should be selecting tires with an adequate reserve (unused) load (and speed) capacity. This is basically about tire load range and size. This is was one the lessons from the Ford/Firestone situation a few years ago - and the motorized vehicle manufacturers ALL went up in tire size as a result.

This is a huge issue. It's also a problem in the class A market. It's almost impossible to get the manufacturers to listen.