Supply of Big Tires Hits the Skids

Steve Walker was ready to sell four 200-ton dump trucks, with price tags as high as $3 million, when the orders were canceled.

The buyer, a coal company planning to open a new mine site, was ready to buy. It just couldn’t find the 12-foot-tall tires to get the trucks rolling.

The mammoth tires, which can cost as much as $30,000 apiece, are in short supply worldwide, leaving earth-moving industries, including coal, in a lurch. The shortage is due to a rise in equipment orders, an increase in worldwide mining because of increased mineral prices and economic growth in China and other Asian counties.

Few manufacturers produce the giant tires, and those that do say they are working around the clock to improve efficiency and to fill orders. At Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., company spokesman Dave Wilkins said, every large tire produced through 2006 was already spoken for. Industrywide, demand is expected to outstrip supply until 2007.

In the coalfields of central Appalachia and across the country, that means coal operators, equipment sellers and tire dealers are continually searching for replacements. And when they get one, it doesn’t last long. At a surface mine, the life expectancy for heavy-machinery tires is about six months.

“There are eight people trying to get the same tire,” said Walker, president of Walker Machinery Co. in Belle, W.Va.

The shortage comes at a time when coal and mineral mining companies are trying to take advantage of high prices. West Virginia is the nation’s secondlargest coal producer, and central Appalachian coal is selling on the spot market for about $65 a ton, according to the Energy Information Administration, a unit of the Department of Energy.

“This demand is unprecedented in the history of the industry and was unanticipated by the industry,” said Prashant Prabhu, president of Michelin Earthmover Worldwide. “Market growth has simply outpaced all expectations.”

From 2003 to 2004, demand for large tires grew 20%. For some sizes, demand was up 30%.

But production levels had remained essentially flat since 1999 and only recently increased, said Jack Fenner, director of dealer sales for Continental Tire North America Inc. in Charlotte, N.C.

“When you have pent-up demand, it usually busts loose,” he said. “I think it got us all flat-footed.”

“A lot of this has to do with the growth of developing nations, China being one of them,” said Chris Karbowiak, vice president for public affairs with Bridgestone Americas Holding Inc. “What you’re also seeing in the world is raw material prices are going very, very high.”

What’s unusual is that economic growth and increasing prices for raw materials are occurring at the same time, putting increased pressure on both large equipment and tire manufacturers, Karbowiak said.

Tennessee-based Bridgestone/Firestone has a large-tire plant in Illinois and is spending millions of dollars to expand capacity at its Japanese plant to address the shortage in Asian markets. But that plant won’t be operational until the end of next year.

Michelin, which has a large-tire plant in South Carolina, announced this month that it was building one in Brazil. The plant is expected to come online in mid-2007, serving North and South American markets.

Unlike with passenger car tires, which can be produced by the hundreds each day, it may take an entire day to produce a single large earth-moving tire, said Kevin Rohlwing of the nonprofit Tire Industry Assn. in Bowie, Md.

“Companies are pumping out new tires as fast as they can,” he said. “Everything they are building is sold.”

Appalachia Tire Chairman Walt Dial has been in the business since 1959, operating in five states and supplying many coal industry customers from the company’s headquarters in Charleston, W. Va. The company has 138 tires on back order and said stock had not been this tight since the Alaskan pipeline was built.

“The customers really get stressed out if we don’t get more products in,” Dial said. “They are going to have trucks sitting.” In the coal business, idle equipment means lost profit.

“We’re at the beginning edge of what could easily become a crisis,” said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Assn. “It’s creating a huge concern.”

With supplies tight, mining companies are paying more attention to tire maintenance, hoping to extend their service life.

In Wyoming, operators have asked for a seminar on tire care and maintenance at their annual meeting, said Marion Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Assn. It’s the first time tires have been a topic.

Until there’s a solution, people like Fenner are keeping busy.

“I have a lot of new friends today,” he said. “I’ve heard from people who have never wanted to buy our product but think it’s the best thing in the world if they can buy it.”