A burning issue: what tyres keep fire departments on the roads

It is often said that this is the busiest week of the year for the nation’s firefighters. While 5 November 2020 looks likely to be an outlier in this regard thanks to the new national restrictions to counter rising Covid-19 infections, there’s no more appropriate time of year to follow up our previous looks at the tyre demands of police forces with a similar analysis of the fire service. T&A made Freedom of Information requests to the largest, by number of full-time firefighters, UK fire services earlier in 2020, asking for such data as: tyres bought and replaced, the fleet size and vehicle parc, minimum tread depth at change, and whether tyres were regrooved and/or retreaded. The latter is probably the easiest question to answer, as eight fire services told T&A that they do not retread their tyres versus zero who do.