Scottish bus operator saves money with Continental tyres
Scottish bus operator, JMB Travel, has adopted a Continental Tyres only policy on its fleet of service buses, following impressive trial results against its former tyre choices.
In 2016, the company had taken delivery of a number of new single decker buses for its service fleet, and company director, Martin Bell decided to run head-to-head trials between existing tyres and Continental products, fitting two of each the new arrivals with the competing brands.
Bell said: “We had a great opportunity for a really fair comparison, running identical buses on identical routes with virtually identical annual mileages. And to make sure we gave both brands a fair outing, we ran them for a whole year – so around 90,000 miles on each of them.
“At the end of that time, we had results that were unquestionable: the Continental tyres had produced significant mileage improvements, some 30,000 more miles without a change than the other brand on test over that period, as well as delivering excellent performance in terms of day-to-day damage resistance. Add the fact that we no longer need to worry about different steer and drive axle tyres, the Conti Urban HA3 does both jobs really well, and you can see why our decision has been an easy one!”
The tyres used in the trials, and now in use across all 40 of the service bus fleet, are Continental’s Conti Urban HA3 M+S P245/70 19.5 tyres. These are produced specifically for urban bus work, designed to deliver genuine advantages in that demanding stop/start, short distance environment.
The latest version of the Conti Urban HA3, which has a dedicated urban tread compound, optimised tread void ratio and a 20 per cent increase in sidewall thickness, is said by the manufacturer to deliver up to 20 per cent more mileage and two per cent less fuel consumption compared to its forerunner, the HSU 1. The all-weather M+S version has a wide tread width to enhance cornering stability under urban driving conditions, with a high density interlocking pattern for outstanding wet grip.