Hills enjoys benefits of switching to Michelin tyres

A 50% increase in tyre life has prompted Wiltshire-based Hills Group to swap its nine-strong fleet of quarry machinery to Michelin’s premium XHA and XADN tyres.

“We performed a couple of trials on a variety of Michelin tyres, including low-profile models, to see what buoyancy benefits there would be,” said Andrew Liddle, production manager for Hills Quarry Products.

The new tyres have been fitted to nine machines: XADNs on two Volvo A25D ADTs, and XHAs on three Volvo L150s and four L120s. The benefits in terms of longevity and maintenance have been significant.

“On loading shovels we can get up to 13,000 hours per set of tyres, where before we would have been getting maybe 8,000-9,000 hours,” said Liddle.

The improvement on the dump trucks has been less easy to quantify, but significant nonetheless, with average tyre life now between 9,000 and 10,000 hours. “The XADNs have a good tread pattern that will clean out a lot of clay,” says Liddle. “They’re almost self-cleaning, which is important as they need to be able to go anywhere on the site.”

The move comes as the supply shortages that have been plaguing purchasers of premium tyres for several years have abated. Hills has also resisted the lure of cheaper imports from China and Eastern Europe. “We’re trying to maintain a decent wear rate for our tyres in terms of millimetres per hour, not gambling on the quality of imports.”

The tyres the company has replaced with its new Michelin products were from Bridgestone and Goodyear.