Why buy tires and worry about maintenance when you can pay a company like Goodyear to handle it all for you?
TaaS. Does that mean trucks as a service, trailers as a service, or tires as a service? Trick question! It stands for all three.
That’s the second takeaway I had from the American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council meeting last month. We’re seeing more and more offerings “as a service” — basically subscribing rather than buying.
You’ve probably heard the term Software as a Service, which came about when people started using software via a subscription rather than buying their own software, installing it on their computers, having to worry about keeping it updated, and so on.
Over the years that concept has been increasingly applied to trucking, and beyond software, extending to trucks, trailers, even tires.
Trucks as a service has especially become relevant as the industry tries to figure out how to move toward electrification. With the high up-front prices and questions about maintenance and charging, truck-as-a-service offerings have helped reduce the risk and up-front capital costs of adding zero-emission Class 8 vehicles to their options.
For instance, Volvo recently put the first VNR Electric trucks into service in its Volvo on Demand trucks-as-a-service offering.
In some cases, “as a service” is a new name and perhaps an upgrade from programs already offered, such as full-service leasing.
On the show floor at TMC I had a chance to check out two examples of “as a service” programs: Tires as a Service and Trailers as a Service.
Goodyear: Tires as a Service
Goodyear was highlighting its Tires-As-A-Service program at TMC, which officially launched last year after a year-long pilot program.
Michelle Ross, head of sales and marketing for Goodyear’s Tires as a Service program, explained when I stopped by the booth that it’s very similar to other “as a service” offerings such as software as a service. It’s a subscription where customers pay by the mile.
That subscription includes tires, service, and tire-monitoring technology.
“We are really wanting to take away tire management from the fleet altogether and allow them some peace of mind and comfort, knowing that Goodyear is going to be managing the fleet and reducing their total cost of ownership.”
While tire makers have offered various levels of outsourcing for years, today’s real-time tire technology and data allows a more comprehensive Tires-as-a-Service experience.
Thanks to the latest tire monitoring and inflation technology, Goodyear says its TaaS service can lower costs and improve uptime.
How Today’s Technology Supports Tires-as-a-Service
Traditional tire pressure monitoring technology that Goodyear has used in the past for the TaaS program is now joined by Aperia Halo tire inflation systems under a new partnership announced the week of TMC.
Goodyear’s TaaS is using the advanced automation of Halo Connect i3 (which garnered an HDT Top 20 Products award for 2024.) It includes integrated tire pressure sensing, remote setpoint adjustments, and customized inflation settings for every fleet.
With Goodyear able to monitor pressure and temperature in real time as well as being able to approximate the mileage driven, it’s able to tell when the tires need attention or replacement and schedule service before a breakdown occurs.
Tires that are kept properly inflated and maintained not only mean fewer breakdowns and longer life, but also can lead to better fuel economy.
With 95% of their tires properly inflated, some of Goodyear’s long-haul customers in the program are seeing an average of 3% fuel savings and have cut their breakdowns in half.
The data gained through the technology also helps Goodyear determine which tires are best for a fleet’s particular operations. Long-wearing tires might be able to last for a lot of miles, Ross said, but may not have the traction or the fuel economy a fleet is looking for.
“We’re trying to pick the best overall solution for the fleet and drive the cost down,” she said. “We want to be more of a partner to the fleet and help them drive their costs down their total cost of ownership.
“We often see fleets that have all of the pieces and the elements, but they don’t always put them together to drive those costs out. So we want to take that over for them and really help them achieve what we know is possible.”
Wabash: Trailers as a Service
Wabash’s Trailers as a Service offering first came to my attention in 2022, when the company announced a partnership with a third-party logistics provider to support its power-only offerings.
That announcement said “this rapidly evolving ecosystem is a key element of Wabash’s Parts and Services growth strategy, and provides a new stream of recurring revenue.” And indeed, it continues to be a growth opportunity for the trailer maker.
Wabash recently bought TrailerHawk.ai, a provider of advanced cargo security and smart access management technologies, adding high-tech cargo security technology to the TaaS offering. And it recently made the Phillips Rear-Vu camera standard on its TaaS offerings.
At TMC, I talked to Wabash Chief Growth Officer Mike Pettit some more about the Trailers-as-a-Service program.
“It allows us to meet customers where they are,” he explained. “They don’t want to commit to buying. Their fleet needs might change over time, or like right now and the uncertainty of tariffs, maybe someone may not want to commit capital. We provide the Trailers-as-a-Service as an option.”
With the recent news about TrailerHawk and the Phillips camera, he said, “What we’re doing is, we’re creating a capability set, and as the capabilities expand, we’re able to offer additional service offers for our customers.”
Not all TaaS offerings are the same, Pettit noted.
“There are different flavors of TaaS, from TaaS light, which is more similar to a lease, to the full TaaS offer, which includes all your managed care, including brakes and tires.”
No matter what the “flavor,” he said, “ultimately it means you’re able to get to get the capacity as you need it, how you need it, as opposed to having to commit to spending $30,000, $40,000.”
At the Technology & Maintenance Council show, Wabash executives talk about their flagship dry van trailer and how it’s offered as part of its Trailers as a Service program.
Technology and TaaS
As with the Goodyear TaaS, technology is also part of what makes the Wabash TaaS program successful.
Giving a tour of a Wabash Duraplate dry van trailer on the TMC show floor, in addition to the new rear-view camera, Pettit pointed out the Clarience Road Ready platform that allows Wabash to ensure its TaaS units are up and running.
“We offer an uptime guarantee for our TaaS program, and this technology is required for us to fulfill those service requirements for our customer.”
Currently there are about 1,000 trailers in the TaaS program, but Pettit said that number is growing. Some published reports indicated that an unnamed executive at the show said the goal was to expand that by four times, but Pettit was a bit more cautious.
“We haven’t publicly committed to a number, but I would think [the number of trailers in the TaaS program] could be significantly more than that in 2025.
“We continue to grow. We’re trying to make sure … we have the capabilities to support the program.”
Wabash Looks to Future of Trailers-as-a-Service
As Wabash is getting more and more TaaS trailers out into the field, it’s better understanding customer needs, and tweaking the offering to meet those needs, he said.
Thinking back to that 2022 announcement of the deal with FreightVana, I asked Pettit how TaaS intersects with the concept of trailer pools for power-only broker offerings or drop-and-hook freight.
“If you’re a shipper, you might think of it more of how you can provide a pool for your freight moving,” he said. Right now, we’re not actively talking about the pool offering, because we still have some capabilities we have to create. But over time, managing an active pool might be a place that we would take TaaS.
“Again, it’s all around this concept of, we want to be able to have on-demand capacity as the customer needs it. How they need it would be different if you’re a shipper, if you’re a broker, or if you’re a carrier, but we think we can modify the offering for all those, all those stakeholders.”
Stay tuned for TMC takeaway #3: Smart everything
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