Tires Identification Numbers
Do you know what a TIN (tire identification number) is? If you didn’t then you are like me before today. The saying you learn something new everyday is legit. TINs are the identification that is supposed to be found on each tire sold in case of a recall. The TIN tells the week and year that the tire was made. All registering of new tires began in 1970, according to Judy L. Thomas of the McClatchy Newspapers where I got this information.
The problem is that the tire identification numbers have not been correctly done by certain companies, specifically Firestone. Many batches of tires have been found to contain the same TIN number, such as 4444. If this TIN was correct then that would mean that these tires were made in the 44th week of 1944, which is impossible because these tires weren’t even invented at that point. So, there is a problem. The problem came to light in 2000 when there were a lot of tire recalls from the Ford Explorer rollovers. Remember?
When this problem with the tire identification numbers was investigated, the arbitrator found that about 66% of TINs were accurately reported, and then later Firestone improved their TINs to 90%. Which is good I guess, but I feel like it shouldn’t be that hard to assign TINs and include them on each tire. A customer is Kansas City last December bought four tires, and the invoice showed 1 TIN for all four tires. That’s a problem. The real problem lies in the fact that without correct TINs, how can these customers be tracked if there is a serious problem with the tires and there was back in 2000? I hope that Firestone comes up with a better plan soon. Safety is a major issue and TINs seem like an easy way to start the safety process.