Tire Cost per KM Calculator
A tyre is not a purchase, it is a casing that gets used two or three times if you look after it. Judging it on the price of the first cover is how fleets end up buying cheap rubber twice as often and calling it a saving. This works out the cost across the whole casing life.
Your numbers
Price of one new cover, excluding fitting.
Count every wheel that carries a tyre, trailer included if you own it.
Distance to legal removal, not to failure. Removing early is what leaves a casing worth retreading.
How many times an average casing goes back on. Set to 0 if you scrap at first removal.
Kerbing, sidewall damage, running underinflated. These casings never come back.
Mounting, balancing and disposal each time a tyre goes on a rim.
What the casing is worth at the end. Enter 0 if you pay to dispose of it.
Used only to turn cost per kilometre into an annual figure.
Result
Tyre cost per kilometre
0.033
12 positions, 238,800 km per casing.
- Annual tyre spend per vehicle
- 3,008
- Cost per km per position
- 0.0028
- Total casing life
- 238,800 km
- Lifecycle cost per casing
- 665.08
- Surviving retread cycles
- 1.32
- Cost per km without retreading
- 0.041
- Retreading saving per km
- 0.007
The formula
- Surviving retreads = Retread cycles × (1 − Scrap rate ÷ 100)
- Total casing life = Distance on the new cover + Surviving retreads × Distance on a retread
- Fittings per casing = 1 + Surviving retreads
- Lifecycle cost = New tyre price + Surviving retreads × Retread price + Fittings per casing × Fitting cost − Residual value
- Cost per km per position = Lifecycle cost ÷ Total casing life
- Tyre cost per km = Cost per km per position × Tyre positions
- Annual tyre spend = Tyre cost per km × Distance per year
- Cost per km without retreading = (New tyre price + Fitting cost − Residual value) ÷ Distance on the new cover × Tyre positions
- Retreading saving per km = Cost per km without retreading − Tyre cost per km
Assumptions and limits
- Every position is treated identically. Steer, drive and trailer tyres wear at different rates and cost different amounts, so run this once per position type if the answer is going to buy anything.
- Scrap rate is applied as an average across the casing population. It does not model the fact that one driver's kerbing habit accounts for most of it.
- Retread life is assumed to be the same on each cycle. A second retread will typically not match the first, so the figure is generous to fleets pushing casings hard.
- Rolling resistance is ignored entirely. Premium covers usually burn less fuel than budget ones, and on a high-distance vehicle that difference can be larger than the tyre bill itself.
- Inflation pressure discipline is not modelled and is the single biggest variable in real tyre life. A fleet that never checks pressures will not hit the distances it enters here.
- Vehicle downtime from a roadside blowout is not included. Price it with the vehicle downtime calculator and add it if you are comparing a cheap cover against a premium one.
You are buying a casing, not a tyre
The tread is the consumable. The casing is the asset, and a good one will carry two or three treads before it is finished. That is the whole economic case for a premium cover: not that it runs further on the first fit, but that it survives to be fitted again.
This changes what the price tag means. A cover costing half as much that scraps at first removal is not half price. It is the same money spread over one life instead of three, and you paid for fitting twice as often to get there.
It also changes who the important person is. The tyre supplier sets the purchase price. Your fitter, your pressure checks and the driver who parks against a kerb set the casing life, and they move the number far more.
The scrap rate is where the money leaks
Casings lost before retreading are the quiet failure in most tyre programmes. Nothing draws attention to them. The tyre came off, it went in the pile, someone graded it as unsuitable, and the loss was absorbed into a line called tyres.
Move the scrap rate field on this calculator and watch what happens to cost per kilometre. It has more leverage than the purchase price does, which is the reverse of where most procurement attention goes.
The causes are unglamorous and known: running underinflated, kerbing on tight urban work, mismatched pairs on a drive axle, leaving a tyre on past the legal limit because the vehicle was needed. All of them are operational, none of them are negotiated at the point of purchase.
What this calculator deliberately leaves out
Rolling resistance is absent, and on a high-distance vehicle it is arguably the larger number. A difference of a few percent in fuel burn across a year of long-haul work can exceed the entire tyre spend for that vehicle. If you are comparing two specifications, price the fuel difference alongside this and add it.
Downtime is absent too. A blowout at the roadside costs a recovery callout, a driver standing still and a customer who was expecting the load. Budget covers that fail early do not fail in the workshop where it would be cheap.
The result is that this model is fair to the cheap tyre. If a premium cover still wins on cost per kilometre here, it wins by more than the page is showing you.
Frequently asked questions
Take the full lifecycle cost of one casing — new cover, every retread it takes, fitting each time, less whatever the casing is worth at the end — and divide by the total distance it covered across all of those fits. Multiply by the number of positions on the vehicle for a per-vehicle figure. The mistake to avoid is dividing the purchase price by the distance on the first tread, which ignores the casing's remaining life and makes cheap tyres look good.
The arithmetic usually favours them, and this calculator will show you the crossover on your own numbers. The condition is casing quality: retreading only pays if the casings survive to be retreaded, which is why the scrap rate field matters more than the retread price. A fleet losing a third of its casings to damage is not ready for a retread programme. It has a pressure and kerbing problem to fix first.
Because running a tyre to failure destroys the casing, and the casing is the part with the value. Pulling at the legal limit leaves an asset worth putting back into service. Fleets that squeeze the last few thousand kilometres out of every tread often end up with a worse cost per kilometre than fleets that remove early, which is the sort of result that only shows up when you model the whole life.
For the rubber, yes — run it twice and change price, expected life, retread cycles and scrap rate. But be careful about what is missing. Rolling resistance and blowout downtime are both excluded, and both favour the premium option. If the budget option wins here by a narrow margin, it is probably losing overall.
Distance to removal needs the odometer reading at fitting and at removal, per position. Scrap rate needs the grading result from whoever inspects your casings. Very few fleets have either to hand, which is why the defaults on this page are round numbers and yours should not be. Maintenance & Service records the fitment and the removal against the vehicle so the distances stop being an estimate.
Stop estimating. Measure it.
Tire Cost per KM Calculator gives you the arithmetic. Fleet Maintenance Software gives you the live numbers from your own fleet.