FEATURE
TOTAL MOBILITY
Goodyear Middle East’s Feras Jawhari on the company’s proactive approach
G
oodyear’s Drive-OverReader is an idea so good that it spent most of last year rolling over the competition at a string of technology award events. Fitting neatly into Goodyear’s Total Mobility concept – where the company is fixated on conjuring up tyres to meet the needs of specific regions and even customers – the Drive-Over-Reader checks the condition of the tyres on a vehicle using a ground-mounted sensor. Tyre pressure, remaining tread depth, axle load and total vehicle weight can all be checked in seconds. They can even be checked every time the vehicle returns to base. Typical for an organisation with the desire – and budget – to push the technology envelope in its relentless search for fleet
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efficiency and safety, Dubai’s RTA (Roads and Transport Authority) has been an early adopter in the region. According to figures published last year, the system installed in Jebel Ali Station has helped bus faults on the road to drop by 58% (as recorded between May and July 2019). Feras Jawhari, Fleet & Proactive Solutions manager MEA, Goodyear Middle East, points to the RTA’s success as a sign that Goodyear’s one size doesn’t fit all strategy is working. “We have a very unique solution in the DOR (drive over reader) system. Whether it’s tyre pressure, tread depth, axel load, licence plate reading, it’s very simple and supporting our vision to have efficient mobility.” Describing DOR as helping the RTA to make a massive savings in tyrerelated breakdowns – “It’s preventive maintenance in action” – he explains that
No matter how advanced the vehicles, if the tyres are not, then we lose the advantages of the advanced technology”
the “very simple tool” can work with any type of vehicle, bus, truck or light truck. “Before, the standard or traditional way of doing the inspection needed one tyre man to inspect a full truck or bus. And he would need an average of around 20 to 30 minutes. Now in 20 seconds, you can have a full analysis of the truck and the gentleman can adjust the tyre which has a problem. Whenever a vehicle crosses over, these sensors will measure the pressure and depth and the axle load,” he adds. “The data will be processed and then it will give you reports directly – via our portal; mobile phone; or on a tablet.” Exhibiting a deft moment of mental arithmetic he says that on the scale of a fleet with 100 trucks, that 30 minutes per truck could translate into a total of 3,000 minutes or 50 hours: “And that is the equivalent of meconstructionnews.com
