ContiLifeCycle
New tires, multiple lives
Reduce your truck tire costs with Continental’s global lifecycle solution.
ContiLifeCycle offers a cradle-to-grave approach to tire management that prolongs the life of your bus and truck tires at every stage. The ContiLifeCycle process begins with a new tire and continues with our premium retreading process based upon our durable casings. This comprehensive approach to your tires prolongs their service life, thereby significantly lowering your total cost of ownership. When you decide to retread your existing tires, it not only lowers your operating expenses, but it also helps actively protect the environment. Reusing the casing saves energy and raw materials. Optimal use of the casing also reduces the number of old tires in circulation and thereby reduces the burden on the environment.
Buying a Continental tire has advantages that extend beyond a single tire life:
New Tires
Built for more than just one life
They are long-lasting, fuel-saving, retreadable and a key cornerstone for the lowest overall driving costs
Retreading
Looks like new, runs like new
The cost-effective, eco-friendly and premium quality solution to prolong the life of your Continental tires.
Casings
Cutting-edge and standardized
The 3G Casing platform provides optimized, simplified casing management, specifically designed with retreading in mind.
The ContiLifeCycle Process
The ContiLifeCycle begins with the new tire. Our truck tires and bus tires are designed for ultimate economy over the entire life with our cradle-to-grave approach. By investing millions every year into Research and Development, we increase performance of our new tires and set new standards in excellence and efficiency. Continental Truck Tires are long-lasting, efficient, retreadable, and a key cornerstone for the Lowest Overall Driving Cost.
The third step in the ContiLifeCycle is retreading for your truck and bus tires. Cold Retreading with ContiTread™ is a cost-effective, eco-friendly, and premium quality solution to prolong the life of your Continental tires.
Using the cold retreading method, a patterned and prevulcanized tread is applied to the buffed casing. This tread is placed, under constant tension, together with an unvulcanized bonding ply onto the buffed casing; pretensioning ensures already prior to vulcanization that the tread adapts optimally to the tire contour and guarantees that the parts are effectively bonded together while the tire is in the autoclave (curing chamber). Then the prepared tire is “packed” into a curing tube (envelope) and cured under pressure in the autoclave.
The ContiLifeCycle continues with Continental’s innovative 3G Casing, which offers standardized construction across all axle positions to simplify your casing management program. With its robust design, our casing is ideal for truck tire retreads, as well as retreads for bus and coach tires.
See how our cutting-edge casing can help lower your tire costs
The Continental Advantage
- ContiTread™
- Sustainability
- Lifecycle Management
The premium tread for your tires
With our ContiTread™ brand, Continental exclusively uses the proven method of cold retreading (precure).
In this process, a pre-cured roll of ContiTread™ arrives at the retreader, already vulcanized with the tire tread pattern. The retreader bonds the tread to a casing using Continental’s specially formulated bonding agent. The tire is then placed in a curing chamber to finalize the bond and finally tested under high pressure to ensure safety and reliability.
It may sound simple, but the seven-step ContiLifeCycle Process is the key to delivering a retread tire that “looks like new, runs like new.”
New tires for old
When you purchase a retreaded tire, you not only lighten your tire budget but also help protect the environment. Reusing the casing saves energy and raw materials. Multiple use of the casing also reduces the number of old tires in circulation. Continental’s cradle-to-grave approach cares for the Earth and your wallet.
The ContiLifeCycle approach ensures that Continental is always considering the full lifecycle of your truck tire.
With our 3G Casing design, we simplify tire casing management, ensuring that any casing can be retreaded for any wheel position. Our truck and bus tires are designed for multiple lives, so their lifecycle is much longer than a tire that cannot be retreaded. With many retread patterns that match our new tire treads or rubber compounds, Continental delivers retread tires that “look like new, run like new.”
All of this combines to deliver peace of mind for our customers, knowing that Continental is leveraging its position as one of the largest tire manufacturers and automotive technology suppliers in the world to pursue a single goal: delivering the Lowest Overall Driving Cost to our customers.
ContiLifeCycle Partner Locations
Start benefiting from a truck tire retread program today. Contact your nearest ContiLifeCycle partner or BestDrive location for expert advice on selecting new tires, casing management, and retreading.
Are you a retreader interested in becoming a ContiLifeCycle partner? Contact us
Protecting your tire casing for retreading
The casing of a truck tire or bus tire represents up to 80 percent of its value. Protect your casing to ensure it is suitable for retreading and discover your Lowest Overall Driving Cost.
Follow these simple tips to maximize the life of your tire casing and help ensure suitability for a bus or truck tire retread.
- Maintain proper inflation pressure – Monitoring tire pressure and temperature is the key to getting the most from your tire. Proper inflation helps ensure maximum removal miles for the new tire, protects the casing from damaging heat build-up caused by excessive deflection, and improves fuel efficiency.
- Monitor for penetrations – In addition to examining your tire pressure, it is also vital to inspect tires for nails, stones, and other invasive materials that can damage the casing. Continental tires are designed with an angled belt package to help reduce penetrations, and many tread patterns feature stone ejection technology to reduce stone drilling.
- Stay within the tire load range – Overloading a tire causes its internal components, such as the belt package, to deteriorate, meaning the casing may not have the structural integrity required for retreading.
- Establish pull points – By U.S. government standards, fleets must pull steer tires at 4/32nds remaining tread depth, and drive and trailer tires at 2/32nds. Your ContiLifeCycle retread partner can provide precise recommendations for your particular fleet.
- Use the right tire for your application – Using a tire that is not designed for your specific vocation can cause irregular wear or poor performance, and could even jeopardize the health of the casing. Continental offers new tires designed for maximum performance in each application, ensuring access to the right tires for your needs.