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October 28, 2009
Tires
Are You Ready for Another Winter?
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Believe or not, there will be another winter coming up in a few months. If you’re closely involved with a fleet maintenance program, you should know by now that it is already time to order winter tires for your vehicles, new or old.
The province of Quebec could very well be “avant-garde” in this field as it has already passed a law making winter tires mandatory from December 15 to March 15 for vehicles registered in the province and running in winter. There is no indication that any other province in the rest of Canada will go forward with such a law. But many automotive specialists do encourage the installation of winter tires during the cold season, even if snow falls are very small. By now, many people know that cold pavement could be a danger for all-season tires with harder rubber compounds.
Consequently, and particularly if you have new vehicles in your fleet, they will require winter tires. It is best to get them as soon as possible since distributors and retailers might only have a limited quantity of some popular sizes in your area. Don’t get caught during a snow storm or a cold snap with icy roads before reacting.
Many new products
The proof that winter tires are being taken more seriously than ever: there are quite a lot of new products on the market this fall. Some of them are only new sizes added to already popular models, others like the Continental Extreme Winter Contact including specific sizes for light-duty trucks (a must!), are brand new to the market. Add to that the arrival of the Falken brand of tires on the winter market. Toyo has a new winter LT tire, while Goodyear’s new Wrangler DuraTrac for big pick-ups shows the snowflake within the mountain silhouette logo showing it’s a “real” winter tire also (the fact that many manufacturers are now producing winter products for light trucks is a proof that the hole subject is taken more and more seriously) while Bridgestone is adapting some of its runflat tires to winter specs as its new LM-60 RFT proves. Also note that Dunlop is out with a new Graspic DS-3 winter tire.
How to recognize a “real” winter tire?
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The Quebec Ministry of Transport has identified most winter tires it considers as “real” winter products—including tires identified by words like Alaska, Arctic, A/T or AT, Blizzard, Ice, LT, Nordic, Snow, Stud, Ultratraction, or Winter—and it just added Cresta, Ultragrip, TS, and INSA names to its collection. All these will be included in the list for “real” winter tires until December 15, 2014, when new rules and identifications come into effect.
For the moment, consider any tire with the snowflake logo in a mountain silhouette a winter tire even if, to some specialists, many of them barely pass the test. At any rate, before buying any winter tire, consult a specialist, preferably a specialist who really knows about winter tires! And don’t necessarily stop at the price. Remember that the safety of your drivers and passengers comes first!
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Éric Descarries