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“We have a master gauge,” says Hair, “and every 30 to 45 days, Linus (Sweger, tire manager) goes to the technicians and has them check their gauges against the master gauge, and if they’re two pounds or more off, they’re history.”

THE SCRAP PILE

When Hair really wants to know what’s going on with his tires, he spends some time at the scrap tire pile.

“That’s where it all starts,” he says. “If you start seeing you have a lot of impact breaks—and you can get your dealer in to look at them—you’ve got a problem”

Hair recalls that about 10 years ago the fleet was running its tires with a little extra pressure, and was plagued with impact breaks from tires hitting potholes and curbs. “The tire dealer guy asked what pressure we were running and we said 115-110, and he said, ’You really need to come down to 105,’” Hair recalls. “So we had to find a happy medium—now we do heavy haul where you’re loaded on the way out and empty on the way back, you’ve got to have enough air to handle the weight, but you’re looking for the optimum. So, we studied that and tried going down as low as 95, but that didn’t work so now we’re back at 105.”

Drivers can provide almost as much information as the scrap pile, says Hair. “You’ve got to listen to the drivers. If you write them off, you’re going to miss an important piece.

“That’s the first lesson I learned: listen to ride quality complaints,” he says. “It’s a diagnostic tool. If the truck isn’t handling correctly, you’re not getting optimum tire wear. If it’s going left or right it’s an alignment issue, that takes more energy.”

MORE AND MORE TIRE TIPS

Spend a morning talking with Hair, and he’ll rattle off more tire care tips than you can shake a stick at. After all, he’s been the tire guru at Keen Transport ever since he started with the company in 1971 and realized that no one was paying much attention to the rubber. To put it in air pressure terms, Hair saw a vacuum and he filled it.