Case study: Scottish Ambulance Services

Michael Jackson, general manager – fleet at the Scottish Ambulance Services (SAS), has decided that fitting cold weather tyres all-year round is the best policy for his fleet.

The fleet consists of 550 accident and emergency ambulances, 500 non-emergency ambulances, 100 support vehicles, 100 rapid response cars and 300 managers and officers’ cars.

Cold weather tyres, mainly from Michelin, will be fitted all-year round to 80% of the fleet with 20% (typically 2WD A&E and rapid response cars) changing tyres in spring and autumn.

“For logistics reasons and ease of use it’s the best all-round policy,” Jackson says. “There is a lot of additional cost if you have to keep taking tyres on and off. There is also the headache of storing a huge number of tyres. We could end up with 6,000 tyres locked up in our workshops.That’s a lot of money sitting in tyres.”

Jackson admits the disadvantage of running cold weather tyres all year is that they are “not quite as good” as standard tyres during warm, wet weather but he doesn’t believe that the safety of the fleet is compromised.

“With the latest technology and rubber compounds there isn’t as much of a difference between cold weather and standard tyres as there used to be,” he says.

“We’ve done a lot of testing at MIRA assessing how the tyres perform in dry, wet, and icy conditions.”

Jackson also points out that some of the rural parts of Scotland where the vehicles operate have a ‘winter pattern’ all-year round.

“We have a lot of days between 6°C and 7°C, which is ideal for cold weather tyres,” he adds.

SAS has used cold weather tyres in remote areas for the past 10 to 11 years but has decided to roll it out to the entire fleet as a result of the past two severe winters.

“In the severe weather we often struggle unless it’s a four-wheel drive vehicle or fitted with snow chains,” Jackson says.

Fitting cold weather tyres will improve safety in the winter and help vehicles to reach patients quicker.

“The driver feedback we’ve had has been excellent,” he adds. “People have seen a huge difference in performance.”

The FleetNews view

Fleet operators need to weigh up the safety and operational benefits of fitting cold weather tyres versus the cost, storage and tyre availability issues.

Regional weather also comes heavily into play.

We’ve studied Met Office data (1971-2000) on the number of days that snow is on the ground, the mean temperature and the number of days when the rainfall is greater than 1mm, from October to March.

Admittedly this data doesn’t take into account the recent harsh winters, and it is worth fleet operators examining recent weather patterns, but broadly speaking the data suggests that in the north of England and Scotland the weather does warrant fitting cold weather tyres.

It’s a different matter for the south of England.

It appears that for roughly two-thirds of the time fleets there may be best sticking to standard tyres and simply advising drivers not to travel when conditions are severe.