Who ships tires, and when do they book?

Commodity playbook

Who ships tires

Six of the 55 tire manufacturing facilities the industry association counts across 16 states. The distributor network downstream is larger again.

Ask for the plant logistics manager, and separately for the distribution centre's inbound planner. These are two different buyers. Manufacturers tender plant-to-DC on contract; the distributors run their own dense networks out to dealers and are far more likely to use a broker on short notice. The distributor side is the easier door and the more frequent freight.

Where it hauls

The plants cluster in the southeast and the industrial midwest. South Carolina is the densest: Michelin at Greenville and Lexington, Continental at Sumter. Tennessee carries Bridgestone at LaVergne and Hankook at Clarksville, North Carolina has Bridgestone at Wilson, and Oklahoma has Goodyear at Lawton. Illinois adds Continental at Mount Vernon and Bridgestone at Bloomington. Downstream, the volume runs through regional distribution centres and independent distributors, which is where most of the brokered freight actually sits. The plants to know:

How to open

Saying "high cube" unprompted does a lot of work here. It signals you know the load will be full and light, and that you are not going to come back asking for more money when it does not scale.

Qualifying questions

• How many tires, and what does it scale? This is high cube, low weight freight: a trailer fills to the roof and often never approaches legal weight. Get the piece count and the loading pattern, because the question that matters is whether it fits, not whether it scales.
• Floor loaded or racked? Passenger tires are frequently floor loaded and hand stacked, which is slow at both ends. Truck tires and racked freight come off far quicker. Confirm which, because the unload time is the difference between one turn and two.
• Plant to distribution centre, or distribution centre to dealer? The first is long-haul contract freight on a schedule. The second is shorter, more frequent, more urgent and far more likely to be brokered. Ask which leg before you quote, because they are separate businesses.
• Any tires mounted on wheels? Tire and wheel assemblies weigh several times what a bare tire does and can change a load from cube-out to weigh-out. If assemblies are in the mix, get the split before you commit a trailer.
• What is the receiving window at the distribution centre? Tire distribution centres run tight inbound schedules and a floor-loaded trailer takes a bay for hours. Ask what the appointment is and what a live unload actually takes there, not what it takes in theory.

When to call

February and March, ahead of the spring changeover, and again in August before the run into winter. Tires ship every week of the year, so this is less about a season opening than about being on the list when the two peaks arrive. Distributors in particular add carriers when their own network is stretched, and those weeks are predictable.