Considered views on the OTR market.

Why the OTR tyre market is structurally inefficient – and what that means for buyers

Manufacturer allocation, opaque pricing, fragmented distribution. The inefficiency isn't an accident. It's been the operating model for decades. Here's what it looks like from inside the trade.

David Jewell Director, Jewell Tyres – 50 years in the OTR trade Published April 2026

Most markets get more efficient over time. Information improves, distribution consolidates, prices converge, lead times shorten. The OTR tyre market has done none of that. After fifty years in it, the most useful observation I can offer a new buyer is this: the inefficiency is the model. It's not getting fixed. It's not a temporary glitch in supply. Build your procurement around it.

There are three structural reasons.

One: manufacturers ration the product

Premium OTR tyre capacity is constrained by design. The tier-one manufacturers – Bridgestone, Michelin, Goodyear, Yokohama, Continental – run their factories at high utilisation. They allocate output across contracted customers (tier-one mining contracts) and channel partners (regional distributors) using opaque, relationship-driven processes. Allocation isn't published. It isn't visible to the buyer. It often isn't even visible to the channel partner two levels down the distribution chain.

The practical effect: when you want a specific tyre on a specific date, the answer depends on where you sit in the allocation hierarchy. A tier-one mining contract gets answered first. A civil contractor with no contract gets answered last. The difference can be eight to fourteen weeks of lead time on exactly the same product.

This isn't a complaint about the manufacturers – they're managing scarce capacity through the channels they trust, which is rational. It's an observation about the market structure that buyers need to understand. You are not pulling product through an open market. You are being allocated, by people whose names you mostly don't know, against criteria that aren't published.

Two: pricing is opaque and relationship-driven

The price of an OTR tyre delivered to your gate is not a published number. It's a negotiated number, and the negotiation is between the manufacturer (or the channel partner) and you (or the trader you've engaged). The same tyre, same brand, same pattern, same week, can be priced anywhere across a 30 to 40% range depending on contract terms, volume, payment cycle, and the relationship.

I'm not arguing this should be different. Mature relationships justify better pricing. What I'm arguing is that the published "list price" of an OTR tyre – to the extent one exists – has limited bearing on what you'll actually pay. Procurement teams that benchmark against catalogue numbers will conclude either that they're being cheated or that they're getting an unbelievable deal, when in fact they're just dealing with the normal pricing variance of the market.

The published "list price" of an OTR tyre has limited bearing on what you'll actually pay.

Three: distribution is fragmented across overlapping channels

Every major manufacturer runs a primary distribution channel (the OEM-aligned route – Bridgestone Mining Solutions, Michelin Earthmover, etc.) and accepts secondary movement through trader and dealer networks. The same physical tyre can reach you through three or four different channels at three or four different prices, with three or four different lead times. There is no single, transparent ordering interface.

This is partly because manufacturers want it that way (it preserves their leverage), partly because the buyer base is too varied to serve through one channel (mining procurement and a regional civil contractor have genuinely different requirements), and partly because the trader network solves real problems – moving end-of-line stock, surplus from one mine to another, off-allocation product, bilateral swaps between competing fleets.

What it means for buyers

If the inefficiency isn't going to be fixed, the rational response is to design procurement that uses it rather than fights it.

• Don't rely on one channel. The OEM-aligned route has its place – particularly for warranty-critical primary fleet on tier-one mining contracts. But for the long tail of fleet – secondary machines, civil, ag, mid-tier mining – the independent trader route is consistently faster and often cheaper.
• Build a relationship with an independent trader before you need them. When the OEM channel says fourteen weeks and your machine is down today, you don't want to be starting a relationship from cold. The traders who can actually move things in a week did the work of getting to know your fleet, your sizes, and your standards months earlier.
• Be honest with the trader about what you'll pay. The market clears on pricing. If you have a budget number, share it. The trader can tell you whether the tyre exists at that price, or whether you're 15% off, or whether you're well above market and being slow-played by the OEM channel.
• Accept that mid-tier has earned its place in the middle of your fleet. The market structure ensures tier-one premium remains for the prime production positions. Secondary fleet, civil, ag – mid-tier brands clear at a credible delivered price with credible service expectations. Procuring 100% tier-one across a 60-machine civil fleet is over-paying for what the application requires.
• Track your own data. The market doesn't publish what each tyre actually cost you delivered, with what lead time, in what condition. Your own purchase history is the only honest dataset you have. Maintain it.

The OTR tyre market is what it is. It's not the worst market – pricing is fair, product is generally honest, lead times are real even if they're long. But it isn't an open, efficient, transparent market and it isn't going to become one. Procurement that accepts the structure rather than fighting it will out-perform procurement that doesn't.

Pilbara supply dynamics: what 18 months of disruption taught us

2024–25 was the most disrupted Pilbara tyre supply environment in two decades. Lead times trebled, prices moved 30–50%. Three lessons worth keeping.

David Jewell Director, Jewell Tyres – 50 years in the OTR trade Published February 2026

The 18 months from mid-2024 through the end of 2025 were the most disrupted Pilbara OTR tyre supply environment I've worked in. Multiple factors stacked: a global shortage of premium 45/65R45 and 50/65R51 capacity, a rebalancing of Bridgestone allocation following Yokohama-Goodyear consolidation discussions, the cost-and-availability impact of the Red Sea shipping disruption on Indian and Chinese imports, and ongoing aftermath of pandemic-era inventory unwinding.

Things have settled in 2026. Lead times are back to roughly 6–10 weeks for tier-one premium sizes (versus 18–30 weeks at peak), and pricing is no longer moving every quarter. But the period left some useful lessons that I think will keep mattering even as the market normalises.

Lesson one: Tier-one mining contracts buffer differently than secondary fleet

The major Pilbara iron ore producers – BHP, Rio, Fortescue – held their tyre supply through the worst of 2024–25 with relatively minor disruption to primary production. Their tier-one allocation relationships held. Their pricing moved less than the broader market. Their lead times stretched but didn't break.

Secondary fleet at the same mines, civil contractors building haul roads, ag and forestry operators, and independent dealers all experienced something closer to the published market disruption. Lead times stretched to 18–30 weeks for some sizes. Pricing moved 30–50% on specific tier-one premium products. Mid-tier brands moved less dramatically but moved.

The lesson: the tier-one mining contract is a real risk-mitigation mechanism for the customers inside it. For everyone else, supply risk is real and worth quantifying. If you're a civil contractor with no allocation relationship, your supply continuity is the residual of what the tier-one customers don't take. In a tight market, that residual gets thin.

Lesson two: The independent trader market does what the OEM market can't

Through 2024–25, independent traders moved a meaningful share of the tyres that the OEM-aligned channels couldn't deliver. Off-allocation product. End-of-mine inventory from closing operations. Bilateral swaps between mines that had the wrong stock. End-of-line patterns that the OEM channel had de-prioritised but were still credible fitments for older machines.

For Jewell Tyres specifically, our volume moved up roughly 35% over the 18-month period – not because we suddenly became better at trading, but because the structural inefficiencies of the OEM channel got more acute. Buyers who had previously bought 90% through their primary supplier started buying 25–40% through trader channels. Some of them stayed there after the market normalised.

The independent trader route became less of a fallback and more of a parallel primary channel for a lot of buyers.

The lesson for buyers: build the independent trader relationship now. The version of you that has a longstanding relationship with two or three credible independent traders has materially better optionality than the version that's starting from cold when supply tightens. The cost of maintaining the relationship is small – a quarterly catch-up, occasional minor purchases – and the value when you need it is large.

Lesson three: Mid-tier earns its place in the buffer

Buyers who had standing approval to use mid-tier brands (BKT, Aeolus, Techking, Triangle) for secondary fleet positions came through the disruption in better shape than buyers who didn't. Mid-tier supply held when tier-one supply tightened, because the manufacturers and their distribution channels are differently structured. Indian, Chinese, and East European manufacturing absorbed some of the gap that the tier-one channels couldn't fill.

For procurement teams that had pre-qualified mid-tier alternatives – meaning the engineering review, the contract approval, the operator familiarity were already done – the substitution was straightforward. For teams that hadn't done that work in advance, the substitution required emergency engineering review, contract variation, and operator retraining in the middle of a supply crisis. Not ideal.

The lesson: pre-qualify mid-tier alternatives for the positions in your fleet where mid-tier is plausible. Have the engineering review documented. Have the contract terms specified. Have an operating familiarity test on a sample machine. Then, when you need to substitute, you're working from a position of preparation rather than reaction.

The market we're in now

Heading into mid-2026, the supply picture has eased. Tier-one premium 45/65R45 lead times are back to ~8 weeks for non-contract buyers, down from 25+ at peak. Bridgestone, Michelin, and Yokohama all appear to be adding capacity over 2026–27. Pricing has stabilised, though it hasn't reversed the 2024–25 increases.

What I don't think reverses is the structural learning that buyers did through the disruption. Procurement teams now know that supply continuity is not guaranteed even at scale. They know that the trader market is a real channel. They know that mid-tier is genuinely viable for the long tail of fleet. None of that knowledge gets unlearned in a normal market. The next supply shock – and there will be one – finds a more resilient buyer base than the last one did.