Global off-road tyre supplier Trelleborg Wheel Systems will be launching a new solid tyre specifically designed and developed for the waste management and recycling industries.
The Brawler HPS Soft Ride is a re-engineered version of the Brawler solid tyre. It offers radically improved operator comfort and equipment-life through reduced vibration, while retaining the signature Brawler life performance in the harshest of applications.
Ditri Zweistra, Segment Manager Specialty-Mining, Waste & Recycling at Trelleborg, said: “We challenged ourselves to create a solid tyre that matches the benchmark for comfort achieved by foam-filled pneumatic tyres but which still performed against all other requirements for tyres in this specialist segment. I am pleased to say that we met – and exceeded – our own expectations.”
The Soft Ride tyre features a new cushion rubber compound that significantly increases deflection and shock absorption. Combined with the Brawler ultra-cut-resistant tread compound, this makes for a solid tyre that is very tough yet much less stiff.
At the bottom line, this means all the benefits of a premium quality solid tyre, plus a much more comfortable ride for operators, no loss of load-index, and increased efficiency even at higher operating speeds.
Zweistra also shared that they undertook an extensive testing programme at an independent facility in Treviglio, Italy over the winter where they measured performance against three key ISO-standards for comfort and stability. The results confirmed a 35% improvement in comfort compared to the standard solid tyres used in the segment.
The results also mean that the Brawler Soft Ride effectively matches the comfort benchmark level of a foam-filled pneumatic tyre. “For customers in waste management we believe firmly that we have the perfect solution with the best per hour cost of ownership – a tyre that is as comfortable as a filled pneumatic tyre but with the life performance of a solid tyre,” Zweistra said.
“In addition to these tests, we also rigorously field-tested the Brawler HPS Soft Ride for over two years at waste and recycling facilities around the world. While their geographical locations were very different – Oceania, America, Europe – the reactions of both operators and site managers were the same: ‘We don’t want to switch back’. Our investment in this process and time spent with customers to understand and solve their key issues is what we at Trelleborg call applications expertise and is just one of the things that make us industry leaders,” added Zweistra.
The new tyre is debuting at recycling aktiv Karlsruhe, Germany from April 27 to 29, and will be introduced at Waste Expo in New Orleans, US from May 9 to 11.