I am speaking with managers right now, and the conversation almost always starts the same way: fuel. Prices are brutal, margins are getting squeezed, and everyone is looking for somewhere to claw back a few cents per mile. Most of the time, they’re looking at routes, loads, driver behavior, and equipment specs. All the right places.
But here’s what I’ve started asking: when did you last look at your trailer tire pressure?
Nine times out of ten, the answer is some version of “we check them when we can” or “the drivers do walk-arounds.” And that’s where the problem lives.
The Drain You Can’t See
A tire that’s 10 PSI low doesn’t look underinflated. It looks fine. It rolls fine. But it’s quietly costing you on every single mile.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a tire running 10 PSI low burns 2–3% more fuel per mile than a properly inflated tire. Get to 20–30 PSI underinflation (which happens faster than you’d think on trailers sitting at docks or drop yards for days at a time), and field testing puts that fuel penalty at 8–10%.
With diesel sitting above $5 a gallon right now, that’s not a rounding error. For a fleet running hundreds of trailers, that’s a meaningful line item leaving the business every single month through tires that, on the surface, look perfectly fine.
And according to FMCSA data, 55% of commercial vehicles have at least one tire running 10 or more PSI below optimal. This isn’t an edge case. It’s the norm.
Why Trailers Are the Problem
Tractors get attention. Drivers walk around them every day, and shop techs see them regularly. Trailers are a different story. They get dropped at docks, sit in yards, and spend days or weeks disconnected from anyone who might notice something’s off.
By the time a tire issue shows up visually, you’ve already absorbed the cost: fuel, accelerated wear, and potentially a blowout that means a roadside call, a delayed shipment, and a safety incident. NHTSA data shows that tires underinflated by more than 25% are three times more likely to contribute to a crash.
Only about 15% of trailers currently have any kind of tire pressure monitoring in place, compared to 25–30% of tractors (NACFE). That gap is exactly where the money is going.
What We Do About It
This is the problem Phillips Connect TPMS was built to solve. Our sensors give fleet managers continuous visibility into trailer tire pressure and temperature, reporting every three minutes with immediate alerts the moment something changes. If a tire starts losing pressure at 2 AM in a drop yard in Memphis, you know about it before it becomes a problem.
The sensors install quickly and easily, last up to four times longer than competing solutions thanks to their energy efficiency, and come backed by an 8-year warranty. They’re built to live on your trailers for the long haul.
The FMCSA studied the impact of TPMS across tractor-trailer fleets and found a 1.4 to 1.8% improvement in fuel economy. Layer in the avoided blowouts, extended tire life, and reduced roadside service calls, and the ROI conversation tends to get straightforward pretty quickly.
Let’s Talk
I’m not going to tell you trailer TPMS is a silver bullet for everything that’s happening with fuel prices right now. But I will tell you that in almost every fleet conversation I have, tire pressure is an overlooked line item, and it’s fixable fast.
If you want to talk through what your fleet looks like and where the gaps might be, I’m easy to reach. No pitch deck required.
