We've written before about why control over the equipment matters, not just the per-tire savings. This post is the companion to that one — it lays out the actual numbers a fleet operator needs to work through before deciding whether running a retread line in-house pays for itself, rather than handing over a single made-up payback figure. There isn't one number that applies to every fleet, and any post claiming otherwise is guessing. What follows are the real, current, sourced inputs — you plug in your own volume.
Input 1: what a retread actually saves per tire
Current 2026 commercial tire pricing coverage puts new truck tires in the range of roughly $300–$800 depending on position (steer, drive, or trailer) and brand, against retreads in the roughly $150–$400 range for the equivalent position — commonly described in trade coverage as retreads running 40–60% below new-tire cost while delivering on the order of 80–90% of comparable mileage. That's consistent with the more general figure cited across the industry: a retread typically costs 30–50% of a comparable new tire. Whichever range you use, the savings-per-tire number is the first input — and it's the same whether the retread comes from an external plant or your own line, so it isn't, by itself, the case for going in-house.
Input 2: how many retreads one casing is actually worth
The casing is the asset that makes the retread math compound. How many cycles it's good for depends heavily on application: long-haul casings, under more sustained high-speed stress, typically support around 2–3 retread cycles, while short-haul or regional casings under less stress can often go 5–6 cycles. Michelin's published retread casing warranty covers up to three retreads on a qualifying casing — a concrete, brand-backed floor under the "multiple cycles" claim. Every additional cycle a casing survives is effectively another tire's worth of the savings from Input 1, off the same original casing purchase — which is why casing condition and handling (see our 5-point casing inspection guide) matters as much to the ROI case as the per-tire price gap does.
Input 3: where fleet size already tells you volume matters
Retreading itself — not necessarily in-house, just using retreads at all — tracks fleet size closely. A joint Bandag/Bridgestone-sponsored fleet study found retread usage climbing from roughly 34% of fleets running fewer than 5 trucks, to 55% of fleets with 5–24 trucks, to about two-thirds of fleets with 25–99 trucks, to 87% of fleets with 100 or more trucks. The Tire Retread & Repair Information Bureau (TRIB) separately reports that 89% of fleets with 500 or more trucks use retreads. That curve tells you something useful even though it isn't a payback figure: the fleets with enough tire volume to make retreading worthwhile at all are, by a wide margin, the same fleets that would have enough throughput to keep a dedicated line busy. Volume is the variable driving both decisions.
Input 4: what the line itself costs
We've published our own transparent, all-in breakdown of this: a small precure shop sized for commercial truck casings runs roughly $45,000–$62,000 CAD for the core machinery, tooling, and an opening consumables inventory, before facility and labour — see the full cost-to-set-up breakdown for the line-by-line numbers. That figure is the other side of the equation: an annualized cost you're weighing against the retreads-per-year volume from Input 3 and the per-retread savings from Inputs 1 and 2.
Putting the inputs together — without inventing a number
We're deliberately not publishing a "your fleet saves $X" figure here, or a fabricated case study — every real fleet's mix of tire positions, casing survival rate, and duty cycle is different enough that a single generic number would be misleading rather than useful. The structure of the calculation, though, is simple and it's yours to run:
| Variable | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Retreads you run per year | Your own tire-position count and casing turnover — not an industry average |
| Savings per retread | Your actual new-tire cost minus retread cost, in your positions and sizes |
| Cycles per casing | Your duty cycle (long-haul vs. regional/short-haul) — 2–3 vs. 5–6 as a starting range |
| Equipment cost | Our published $45,000–$62,000 CAD starter range, sized to your throughput |
Multiply your retreads-per-year by your savings-per-retread, and you have your annual gross savings from retreading at all. Compare that to the equipment cost, and you can see roughly how many years of your own volume it takes to cover the line — which only makes sense to run once you already know you have enough volume to keep a shop busy, which is exactly what Input 3's adoption curve is telling you to check first.
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