Damage gets the X

Michelin’s X Works, the all-terrain truck tyre that is robust on site and long lasting on road, now offers you an exclusive guarantee against accidental damage.

For each Michelin X WORKS tyre purchased between January 1 and December 31, 2013, Michelin is offering an Accidental Damage Guarantee, covering the first six months of use, from date of purchase.

Accidental Damage GUARANTEE

The casing, rubber, sidewalls and tread of the Michelin X WORKS range have all been designed for additional strength and durability, and Michelin has deployed its most advanced technologies to make the tyre even more robust and reliable.

But, when tyres are used both on and off road, the risk of accidental damage increases considerably, and tyres that are used on sites and quarries as well as on roads are subject to the most extreme conditions of use. Dangers that increase the risks of cuts and scrapes are everywhere – potholes, stones, scrap metal and rubble.

An incident involving tyres can have major economic repercussions for customers. Recuperating profits lost when a vehicle is out of commission may take a company as long as 15 to 20 working days. The Michelin X WORKS and its Accidental Damage Guarantee will thus address an issue that is very important for customers in the worksite segment.

With the Accidental Damage Guarantee, Michelin reimburses you with a new tyre if it is accidentally damaged in the first six months of use. So you can enjoy the durability and safety of your new Michelin X WORKS tyres with complete peace of mind.

The new Michelin X WORKS embodies the Michelin Total Performance strategy developed by the Michelin Group, which consists of simultaneously improving all areas of performance, regardless of the type of tyre or range. For truck tyres, the benefits fall into three categories: enhanced safety, greater cost-effectiveness and increased environmental protection.

Safer

Designed for use on roads as well as in and around worksites, the tyres deliver heightened resistance to cuts and scrapes and superior load-carrying capacity, while at the same time being cost-effective on the road.

To meet the need for tyres that are safe and reliable, the Michelin X WORKS range features a tread design that reduces the risk of stones lodging in grooves and ensures that water and mud are effectively evacuated when driving on wet/muddy roads. Wider grooves for better grip on wet roads, and optimised groove shape that aids in cleaning the tread grooves allow improved performance on and off road. Internal Michelin tests show that the optimised groove design of the X WORKS XDY, and protective ridges in the grooves of the X WORKS XZY, allow 30 percent less stone retention then the previous generation tyre.

In addition, the casing of the Michelin X WORKS has been designed to carry weights of up to eight tonnes per axle in single fitment, and up to 13,4 tonnes per axle in dual fitment at a speed of 110 km/h and a pressure of 850 kPa. This is well within South African law, which states that maximum load for the steering axle is 7 700 kg, and 9 000 kg for a dual-fitment drive axle, for tyres this size.

More Cost-Effective

Because of its robustness, the Michelin X WORKS provides enhanced resistance to cuts and scrapes. Its architecture has been optimised for challenging conditions of use, while the sidewalls have extra protection to reduce the risk of lateral damage.

Being more robust means the Michelin X WORKS is also designed to be long lasting. Its optimised contact patch distributes wear more evenly, which means greater total mileage. Finally, the Michelin X WORKS casing contains high-density metal cables that provide maximum endurance.

An Improved Environmental Footprint

Like all new Michelin truck tyres, the X WORKS can be retreaded. The casing is designed to be used more than once and due to the improved durability of the tyres, the rate of retreadability is greatly increased. Michelin recommends that when the tyre has a remaining tread of +-3 mm you send the casing in to be retreaded with Recamic.

Recamic treads are manufactured with the same tread designs and compounds as the new Michelin tyres. Recamic can offer 80 percent of the mileage of a new tyre, for 30 percent of the cost of a new tyre.

This new range of tyre is available in two patterns, XZY for all positions and XDY for the drive axles, and come in sizes 315/80 R22.5 and 12 R22.5 (available from June 2013).

The Michelin X WORKS range is available at all leading commercial tyre outlets throughout South Africa. To see the general terms and conditions of the Accidental Damage Guarantee and find out more, visit www.michelin-xworks.co.za.

An operator’s perspective

Tercius Naude, from Safika Oosthuizens Transport, runs Michelin X Works on his fleet; we spoke to him about their performance:

“The X Works tyres we have on one of our trucks have already given us 116 000 km,” he says. “They would probably be able to get up to 190 000 km, but the driver we have on that truck is a bit hard on tyres, so we’ll probably get 160 000 to 170 000 km out of them. Not bad if you ask me!

“As transport companies, we can either take the high road or the low road when it comes to purchasing tyres,” he continues, “If you take the low road and buy ‘fong-kong’ tyres, you’re going to end up spending more money in the long run as you’ll have to replace them more often. That’s why we’ve chosen to take the high road and spend more money initially on the X Works, because we know we’ll get much more out of them down the road.”