Tire Management That Follows the Casing, Not the Invoice
A tyre is the only major cost on a vehicle that walks off it. KO Fleetz gives each casing an identity it keeps through every rotation, repair and retread, and turns a stack of tread readings into a wear rate you can plan against.
The second-biggest bill, managed by complaint
Tyres usually sit behind only fuel in a truck fleet's consumable spend, and they are the one item that moves between assets. A casing fitted to a trailer in March can be on another trailer by June, at a repair shop in August and scrapped in November, with nothing connecting those four events to the same piece of rubber.
The failures are dull and predictable. Run under-pressure for a month and a tyre eats its shoulders and dies at half its life. Leave a mismatched pair on a drive axle and one of them scrubs. None of this is mysterious. It goes unnoticed because nobody measured depth on that axle position, on that date, against the previous reading.
So tyres get bought by invoice and managed by complaint. When a blowout shuts a lane on a Friday afternoon, the enquiry finds a casing with no history at all: no fitting date, no depth readings, no rotation record, no idea how many lives it had already had. The cost is known to the cent. The cause is not known at all.
Give the casing a serial number and a life
Each tyre becomes an asset with its own record rather than a line on a purchase order. A serial or brand number binds it to a vehicle and a specific wheel position, and it carries that identity when it moves to another axle, another vehicle, the spare rack or a retreader's collection.
Tread depth is recorded per position with a date behind it, and two readings on the same casing produce something a single reading never can: a wear rate in millimetres per thousand kilometres. From there the removal date is arithmetic. A tyre reaching its limit in about three weeks can be changed in a bay on a quiet Tuesday rather than on a hard shoulder at the worst possible moment.
One limit worth stating plainly. KO Fleetz does not know your pressures on its own. Unless TPMS sensors are fitted and fed in through the IoT device layer, the platform knows what the fitter wrote at the last check and nothing since. It will tell you a reading is overdue. It cannot tell you the pressure this morning on a truck that has no sensor on it.
Capabilities
What KO Fleetz tire management gives your team
Serial-level tyre register
Brand, size, pattern, serial, purchase cost and date held per casing, surviving every move between wheel positions and vehicles.
Wheel position mapping
Positions modelled to the real axle configuration, so a reading on the near-side drive is recorded where it happened rather than against the truck in general.
Tread depth history
Every measurement kept with its date and position, which is what converts a pile of readings into millimetres of wear per thousand kilometres.
Removal forecasting
KO Fleetz projects when a casing hits its legal or policy limit from its own wear rate, so the change lands in a booked bay slot.
Rotation and transfer log
Axle to axle, vehicle to vehicle, rack to fitted. Every move is recorded, so a casing's working life reads as one continuous record.
Retread and repair lives
Follows the casing out to the retreader and back, counting the lives it has had, so nothing is sent for a third cap when policy allows two.
Cost per kilometre by casing
Total spend on a casing divided by the distance it truly ran — the only figure that compares a cheap tyre honestly against an expensive one.
Scrap reason capture
Worn out, sidewall damage, irregular wear, impact, blowout. Every removal carries a cause, so a pattern on one position stops being anecdote.
TPMS feed where fitted
Where pressure sensors exist, readings arrive with the vehicle's telematics and raise the under-inflation alert that prevents most early wear.
How it works
How KO Fleetz does it
Step 1: Register what is on the fleet now
Walk the yard once and record the casings on each position with their serials and current depth. This is the baseline everything afterwards is measured from.
Step 2: Measure on a rhythm
Depth and pressure checks ride along with routine inspections, captured per position on a phone, so readings accumulate without a separate errand.
Step 3: Watch the rate, not the reading
The platform flags the position or vehicle wearing faster than its peers, which is how alignment problems and slow leaks surface before they cost a casing.
Step 4: Plan the removal
Forecast removals are booked into the workshop queue in advance instead of arriving as an emergency call-out at the roadside.
Step 5: Close the life out
Scrap or retread with a recorded reason. The casing's cost per kilometre finalises and joins the comparison against every other brand you run.
Outcomes
What changes
- Cost and history held at serial level
- Per casing
- Millimetres per thousand km, not a snapshot
- A wear rate
- Removals into bays, not onto hard shoulders
- Booked changes
- Every scrap carries a recorded reason
- Named causes
Frequently asked questions
Because a consumable is gone once it is used and a casing is not. A fitted tyre has a serial, an axle position, a wear rate and possibly two or three lives ahead of it at a retreader. Inventory logic has no way to express a part that leaves the shelf, works for two years on four different trailers, comes back with most of its value intact and goes out again. New tyres sitting on the rack are stock and Spare Parts & Inventory handles them. The moment one is fitted, it needs this.
No, but be clear about what you give up. Without sensors, the platform works from what fitters record at each check, which means you catch a slow leak at the next inspection rather than the afternoon it starts. That is still far better than nothing, since the wear rate exposes chronic under-inflation after the fact. With TPMS the same problem raises an alert while the tyre is still savable. The register, depth history, retread tracking and cost per kilometre all work fully either way.
That depends on your duty cycle, your legal minimum and how fast the fleet actually wears rubber, and anyone quoting you a universal interval has not asked those questions. What KO Fleetz does is enforce whatever rhythm you set and show you when it slips. A useful starting point is to tie depth capture to an inspection you already perform, because a check that needs its own trip round the yard is a check that stops happening by the third week.
It gives you the evidence to have the conversation. Each casing sent out is tracked by serial through to its return, so you see which casings came back, which were rejected, and what reason was given. Across a year that becomes a pattern: rejection rates by retreader, and how long a retreaded casing from each supplier survives afterwards measured in kilometres rather than opinion. The platform will not argue with the retreader for you. It stops you arguing without numbers.
The casing belongs to the wheel position on the trailer, and the trailer is its own asset. That is the only arrangement that survives real operations. Distance accrues to the trailer from its own tracking or from the units that pull it, so cost per kilometre stays meaningful even when a trailer sees six different tractors in a month. Dollies and converters are modelled the same way, as assets with positions rather than accessories.
This is the real gap in almost every tyre programme, including this one. A casing fitted at midnight by a call-out service at a truck stop three hundred kilometres away is invisible until somebody records it. KO Fleetz shortens the delay rather than removing it: the roadside job raises the fitment prompt, and the next inspection catches an unregistered serial in a position and asks about it. The honest position is that you will find these at the next check, not at the moment they happen.
Put a number on your tyre programme
Bring one axle configuration and a year of tyre invoices. We will show you what a cost per kilometre by casing looks like against what you buy on.