Passenger and light truck tire shipments were down across the board in 2008 compared to 2007. What was the makeup of those shipments?
In its "2009 Preliminary Tire Industry Factbook," the Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA) broke out consumer tire shipments into various segments. (To find out what the overall shipments were, see "Consumer tire units: down 5.7%, says RMA," Feb. 15, 2009). Here's how the RMA classified shipments by brand type:
Passenger LT
Major brands: 78% 76%
Associate brands: 10% 10%
Private brands: 12% 14%
The RMA also broke out passenger tire shipments by tread design and speed rating. Nearly 74% of the replacement passenger tire shipments featured an all-season tread, compared to 77% in 2007. Conversely, 5.4% had "traction and snow treads" in 2008, compared to 4.5% in 2007.
Of the high and ultra-high performance speed ratings, H, V and Z (including W and Y) totaled 50.8 million units, broken down as follows:
H-rated units: 29.7 million, or 58.5% of the HP/UHP total;
V-rated units: 10.7 million, or 21% of the total; and
Z/W/Y-rated units: 10.4 million, or 20.5% of the total.
At OE, V-rated tires account for more units shipped than H-rated -- 5.5 million to 5.2 million. UPH tires with a Z-, W- or Y-rating accounted for 1.4 million units shipped at OE last year.
