Imagine Tiger Woods having to use an old-fashioned wood driver instead of one of those high-tech NexTi titanium 460 CC deals. Think he’d reach 300 yards on average?

So, when a new technology gives both you and your industry an edge, the logical move would be to take it, right? Well, that’s not the case for Canadian truckers looking to spec tires progressively — at least not yet.

We’re talking here about wide-base tires — or ‘new generation’ super singles, or super-duper wide single tires, or whatever they’re being called these days.

Look under any European truck and you’d be hard-pressed to find dual tire sets. Many U.S. fleets also benefit from single tires’ proven weight savings, superior traction and stability, and the elimination of tire mismatch or air-pressure discrepancies. The tires also provide far better fuel economy than duals and they also take less crude to make in the first place. That leaves both Mother Nature and your bottom line looking a lot better.

Canadian truckers aren’t necessarily banned from using single tires like the Michelin X-One or Bridgestone Greatec north of the border. They just have to be prepared to take a severe weight penalty.

Quebec truckers — and soon many in Ontario — can use them on 53-ft tandem trailers for U.S.-bound loads only, while the rest of the country is handcuffed at 6,000 kg per axle, making singles anything but profitable, even if you’re hauling potato chips.

The reason lies with the ghost of the former ‘super single’ tire. The original single in North America was widely used in the 1980s, especially in vocational applications like sanitation, dump, and mixers. But they weren’t very road-friendly.

Pavement engineers concluded the tires damaged the road surface, which they did. The provinces then set minimum standards in the Memorandum of Understanding on Interprovincial Vehicle Weights and Dimensions, agreeing on a total maximum weight of 9,100 kg per axle, but limiting any single tire to 3,000 kg (6,000 for two tires on an axle). That’s a restriction the four western provinces and four Atlantic provinces apply, and which Ontario enforced on 53-foot trailers.

While tire makers have exorcized those single-tire demons through improved technology, the old-school rules remain in place.

In Quebec, however, the maximum load for singles 10 out of 12 months is 8,000 kg per axle, which still carries a 1,000-kg-per-axle penalty. But that’s not a problem for dedicated U.S. equipment. Weights there are capped at a maximum load of 17,000 lb or 7,700 kg per axle.

Therefore, for a fleet running with 80,000-lb gross weights anyway, the penalty, if there even is one, is inconsequential, explains Ralph Beaveridge, marketing manager for truck tires at Michelin North America.

The same can now be said in Ontario for tandem combinations, which make up over 40 percent of Canadian trailer setups. Starting in January 2006, Ontario will harmonize with Quebec and move up to 8,000 kg for tandem axles on SPIF (53-foot) trailers, provided Ministry of Transportation inspectors are all in tune with the amendment.
“In theory you can now convert all those trucks to U.S. runs, and be very happy,” says Beaveridge.

But the industry wants more. “Eight thousand is okay, but really, anything less is baby steps. We’re trying to get full equality for all tires,” Beaveridge continues. “Right now, you have to be dedicated to U.S. [runs]. But you have vehicles doing different routes every day — Toronto to Montreal one day, then maybe west to California the next day. That vehicle needs to go to [9,000 kg] so you can easily [interchange] the truck.”

Danfreight System, a Joliette Que.-based carrier that operates 50 reefer units solely to the U.S., is a 100-percent single-tire fleet.
Known as one of the most innovative fleets in Quebec, Danfreight has been testing and using both the X-One and Greatec tires since 2001. President Daniel Bérard concludes that a fuel-efficiency improvement “far beyond” the 4-percent Michelin claims is attainable with the X-One and top maintenance practices. He also cites noise reduction, superior stability, and driver comfort as added bonuses with both makes of single tires.

“The test period is over. It’s time for a regulation that will allow us to use wide-base tires without restrictions and to harmonize their usage,” says Bérard.

Michelin, along with a handful of carriers and trucking associations, has been leading the charge to have GVW rules for wide-base singles at par with duals. The tire maker has also been working hard in trying to prove the X-One is not a threat to Canadian roads.
At the centre of the debate are two studies — often described as competing, but actually more similar than most critics realize. The first, from Laval University in Quebec City, is the blueprint that a core group of veteran Quebec Transport Ministry engineers dovetailed in a report that’s keeping single tires stuck at 8,000 kg. The Laval study concluded that single wide-base tires do more damage in spring at high speeds than conventional dual tires.

But the same study under closer review also concludes that wide-base singles are equivalent or better for asphalt surfaces other times of year, and where there is degradation, the margin of error is actually larger than the measurement of damage.

“So, to take this and turn it into the report the MTQ published was very difficult for us to understand,” says Beaveridge.

Adds Marc Brouillette, chairman of the Quebec Trucking Association: “Even where wide-base tires possibly have some slight effect on roads, they are outweighed by substantial benefits for the environment and safety.”

The second study was published out of Virginia Tech by a team of engineers who have recently moved to the University of Illinois. Those tests showed that the wide-base singles caused about the same damage as the equivalent dual tires. In addition, researchers determined that the largest factor to pavement damage is the axle load, not tire pressure, as was originally believed. Tire pressure was only found to be a factor at shallow depths, the study states.

Furthermore, the study shows that mismatched tires of various makes and heights on a single unit is a leading contributor to pavement damage since a specific tire would take an unequal share of the weight.

Beaveridge concedes, however, that the original report has its flaws — mainly that it was based on tests on U.S. roads with U.S. loads, and therefore the results cannot be reasonably applied to differing Canadian specs on weaker road pavement.

However, more recently the team has updated its finite-element model to accommodate various load and pavement data for a comparative report. “It now very meticulously mirrors the experiences in the real world and provides a true result of how one tire or another will affect different pavements,” says Beaveridge.

In fact, follow-up studies based on the new testing model have kick-started the lobbying effort north of the border once again-and not just in the legislative halls of Quebec, but in other parts of Canada too.

B.C. is apparently getting ready to make the jump to 8,000 kg as well — an impending move that may only be delayed so that officials can discuss going straight to 9,000. While a decision on that front is a while off, such an initiative would make B.C. the first province in Canada to make all tires interchangeable on an axle.

There are high hopes on the other Canadian coast as well. For the first time in a while, Vern Seeley senses optimism in the air. Seeley, of chemical and petroleum hauler RST Industries in Saint John, N.B., is probably the Maritimes’ hardest-working proponent of wide-base singles. He says the work being done at Illinois U. as well as Ontario’s jump to 8,000 kg may help snowball a similar movement for the Atlantic Provinces. So far, only RST sister company Sunbury Transport has a special permit to run singles on a long combination A-train configuration as part of a pilot project on a controlled-access highway. That may soon change, however.

“We’ve had some ups and downs, but we’re back up now,” says Seeley.

The government is reportedly in talks with the Illinois U. engineers about running the province’s pavement data through the testing model in order to produce relative side-by-side comparisons between singles and duals for New Brunswick’s top five roads. If the project is given the green light, Seeley hopes the results will help New Brunswick — and eventually the rest of the neighbouring Atlantic provinces — update its GVW rules for singles.

Despite the brighter light over the horizon for single tire proponents, Beaveridge isn’t taking anything for granted.

“Uniformity is a hurdle we haven’t been able to clear yet,” he says. “Ontario and Quebec have probably gone as far as they need to go for the time being… But people are really seeing the benefits [of single tires], so hopefully there’s nowhere to go but forward.”

Maybe, like Tiger, Canadian truckers can soon start using the most innovative equipment for a better drive.