LEGISLATION
Motor Wheel Service Distribution (MWSD) has appointed Kim Blissett to the role of business and marketing coordinator, with a brief to raise the profile of the company’s key industry campaigns with customers. Reporting to managing director John Ellis, MWSD says she will be tasked with keeping truck and trailer operators abreast of the wheel safety activity in the UK and Europe, as well as promoting the company’s steel wheel Chevron branding.
On 5 April 2014 all workplaces are required to display the latest Health & Safety Law poster, while a new pocket card has also been produced to replace the Health & Safety leaflets circulated to employees based off-site. Workplaces have been required to display the current Health & Safety poster in a prominent position since […]
Come November, every new car and light commercial vehicle sold in the European Union will need to have a tyre pressure monitoring system, making the region the second behind the US to make TPMS fitment mandatory. The question vehicle manufacturers must answer is which type of TPMS is best for them. While direct TPMS systems have enjoyed a lot of attention since the first phase of the ECE R64 legislation came into force in November 2012, one indirect TPMS manufacturer expresses confidence in a growing presence in the high-volume market.
Recent tax reassessments have given the Nokian Tyres Group a negative bottom line in the fourth quarter of 2013. The Finnish tyre maker’s pre-tax profit of €57.7 million (already down 44.6 per cent year-on-year) was dragged down to €-36.4 million by the additional €100.3 million in taxes and interest that Finland’s Tax Administration requires Nokian to pay for the 2007 to 2010 financial years.
There are now 2.5 million uninsured on UK roads, according to the new Private Motor Insurance Market Report, published by Lake Market Research. The report also suggests that 84 per cent of motorists want car insurance to be more tightly regulated and only 49 per cent of motorists completely trust the price comparison websites.
Nottingham City Transport (NCT) will run its Scania double decker buses with PFC Brakes brake pads following a two vehicle trial period. The trial, led by NCT, monitored pad and disc wear on two Scania double decker buses, which are used daily around the city. The results confirmed that the PFC Brakes would cover 156,000km […]
Retail sales of tyre pressure monitoring system sensors and service kits are growing fastest in northern Europe. According to Ian Smith, managing director of British firm Tyre Sure which supplies Tech Europe’s TPMS needs across the continent, drawing a line from the Nordic region south to Spain and Portugal gives you an ever-decreasing continuum of market demand. As you might expect there is a direct correlation between having a distinct winter market and TPMS success. Those at the South of Europe have comparatively little demand by comparison.
While Rema Tip Top has a significant Tyre Pressure Monitoring heritage, it might be said that the TPMS part of their offering has been flown somewhat under the radar – in the UK at least. Now however, the company’s management is sharing details of its broad offering in what is quickly becoming an important part of the professional tyre retail business.
Roughly 18 months ago as part of our 2012 TPMS feature, Tyres & Accessories asked if there was a long-term future for indirect TPMS. In conversation with one of the two biggest suppliers of this technology, Swedish firm NIRA Dynamics, we examined the case for so-called iTPMS. This year we flip things around and ahead of his forthcoming speaking engagement at Tire Technology Expo, in Cologne on 11 February, Bernd Schuchhardt, general director at Dunlop Tech GmbH (the other large indirect TPMS producer) presents the case for this technology.
Commenting on the U.S. International Trade Commission’s extension of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on certain off-the-road tyres produced in China, the United Steelworkers union says the decision to continue with the 2008-introduced tariffs is a “good outcome to provide job security for the hundreds of tyre workers who make these same tyre products at Titan Bridgestone-Firestone and Goodyear factories in Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Kansas and New York.”
In response to the coroner’s findings following the September 2012 fatal coach crash on the A3 caused by the failure of a 19 year old tyre, on 19 December the Department for Transport and Vehicle and Operator Service Agency released a tyre age recommendation document. The guidance “strongly recommends” that tyres over ten years old should not be fitted to the front axles of buses and coaches.
People in the UK tend to think they live in a heavily-regulated country, and when it comes to commercial transportation this is certainly the case. In addition to the safety laws that apply to all motorists, the professional driver and fleet operator must take a host of workplace health and safety and duty of care requirements into account – and on top of this come the regulations that apply to the vehicles themselves. Towards the end of October, Tyres & Accessories spoke with Tony Stapleton, commercial fleet sales manager for Continental Tyre Group, about the issues facing fleets and what the tyre maker can do to address this while minimising whole life tyre cost.
The 1 April didn’t fall this week, so survey results shared by Halfords Autocentres – which include the gem that 32 per cent of all people believe kicking a tyre is an adequate means of gauging inflation levels – must be the awful truth. The survey of 1,000 motorists, conducted by Atomic Research on behalf of Halfords Autocentres in September, also revealed that 24 per cent of motorists don’t know how to check if tyre tread depth is above or below the legal limit.
While a durable, high-performing tyre is of utmost importance to a fleet manager’s decision making process, Bridgestone believes that the ‘power of the product’ only goes so far. It says other key factors are increasingly being considered and are proving equally compelling when customers mull over the most suitable manufacturer to opt for. “In many […]
“It is extremely concerning that access to manufacturers technical information is still limited for independent garages” said Stuart James, Independent Garage Association (IGA) Director. A new study by BOVAG, The IGA’s European counterpart, has found that only six of 13 manufacturer websites examined in the study allowed the researchers to successfully establish a connection between the vehicle and the manufacturer’s website.
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