It is hard to understate the importance of tread depth on your truck tyres. Whether you operate a small fleet of regional trucks or a large international highway fleet, truck tyres come under a lot of strain, and they must be safe to drive on. That’s why tyre maintenance is so important. Especially when it comes to monitoring tread depth on truck tyres.
In the UK, the minimum legal limit for tread depth on truck tyres is 1mm. This is slightly different to the minimum 1.6mm tread depth for cars and small vans. For trucks, the regulations specify that the minimum 1mm tread depth must be over a continuous band covering at least any three-quarters of the breadth of the tread around the entire circumference.
If you’re close to the 1mm legal limit for truck tyre tread depth, you should be changing your tyres. But you should also be considering your tyre options well before you get to the 1mm legal limit. That’s because for every millimetre of tread depth lost, your tyre performance will worsen. Which means your braking distances will increase, your aquaplaning resistance will decrease, and your tyres will become more susceptible to damage.
Instead of waiting until your truck tyre tread depth is close to 1mm, you should be considering regrooving and retreading much earlier than that. This will extend the life of your tyres and mean you won’t need to replace them as often. For example, regrooving should be done when tread depth is around 3-4mm for regular highway use.
In fact, regrooving and retreading could extend the life of your tyres by as much as 150%. That’s way more valuable than waiting for your tyres to reach the minimum legal tread depth.
For international fleet managers, many countries across Europe have a higher minimum tread depth than in the UK. So if your fleet will be crossing into Europe, you should be considering the law in European countries too.
The tread depth of new truck tyres can vary depending on the tyre’s primary purpose and can be up to 22mm. A new tyre designed for an urban bus will have a different tread depth than a new tyre for an off road truck. Tyres designed for specific axle positions will also have a different tread patterns.
The high tread depth of a new tyre is another reminder of the importance of not letting your tyre depth fall to 1mm. A new tyre with a tread depth of 10mm is going to greatly outperform an old tyre with a tread depth of 1mm.
You can measure the tread depth of truck tyres manually using a tread depth gauge. But when you’re managing a fleet of trucks, an automated solution is a much more efficient way of measuring truck tyre tread depth.
Goodyear CheckPoint is a drive-over-reader that provides automated tyres analysis in seconds. As well as checking tread depth, it also measures tyre pressure, axle load and total vehicle weight. For commercial fleet management, it’s an invaluable piece of kit which speeds up tyre maintenance, reduces your downtime and gets you back on the road.
