Bob Ulrich

Editor

Bob Ulrich was named Modern Tire Dealer editor in August 2000. He joined the magazine in 1985 as assistant editor, and has been responsible for gathering statistical information for MTD's "Facts Issue" since 1993. He has won numerous awards for editorial and feature writing, including five gold medals from the International Automotive Media Association. Bob earned a B.A. in English literature from Ohio Northern University and has a law degree from the University of Akron.

» More

Tire labeling law will have wide-ranging effect, says King

By: Bob Ulrich

Rolling resistance standards will impact everyone, says Yokohama's King.

Not everyone sees the rolling resistance labeling law for what it is. Yokohama's Dan King does.

King, vice president of sales and marketing for Yokohama Tire Corp. in Fullerton, Calif., recently visited Modern Tire Dealer’s office in Uniontown, Ohio. He was in town to talk about not only Yokohama but also the state of the industry.

He is quite familiar with the law proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), because California first broached the issue.

In California, lawmakers are focusing solely on developing a minimum rolling resistance standard. King says the legislation “will have major impact on the industry… and how dealers will operate.”

So will NHTSA’s proposal, which is close to being finalized. It mandates that manufacturers test their consumer tires for fuel efficiency (low rolling resistance), wet traction and tread wear. It will replace the Uniform Tire Quality Grading, or UTQG, system.

The national standard will greatly affect tire manufacturers in a number of ways, according to King.

UTQG testing required that a company test one size in a line, which represented the whole line. As it stands now, the new proposal will give tire companies a plus-or-minus variable of 5% between sizes, with penalties for non-conforming tires. Necessarily, this will lead to additional testing and more cost.

King estimates testing will cost manufacturers between $50 million and $60 million in the first year. But wait, there’s more.

There are trade-offs between low rolling resistance and other performance characteristics, such as grip. So manufacturers are going to have "to push the envelope on tire performance" in order to reduce those tradeoffs.

(Because the goals tend to be mutually exclusive, NHTSA, by requiring ratings for wet traction and tread wear in addition to fuel efficiency, ironically is undermining the original purpose of the proposal, which is to push fuel efficient tires.)

King says Yokohama already has been working on leveraging its own technologies to advance tire design for both the government and the consumer (see "Yokohama creates new tire category for Avid Envigor").

"We are comfortable with the idea of informing the customer about tire attributres.” He is still hoping the industry can get the word “safety” eliminated from the wet traction rating because it implies that tires with lower ratings are not safe.

(To see what the label may look like, click http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/DOT/NHTSA/Rulemaking/Rules/Associated%20Files/Label_Examples.pdf.)

As for tire dealers, they will have to deal with educating the consumer, too. The ratings that result from the testing will appear on a label on every passenger and light truck tire sold in the United States. In addition to the label, point-of-sale material will be required. And counterpeople will have to be trained.

Will the new labeling law create different expectations from consumers, who already are more informed because of the Internet? King says time will tell.

Related Topics: Dan King, Green, NHTSA, Tire labeling, Yokohama Avid