Michelin Ag Tires

Michelin is introducing three tires for ag applications that are designed with the company’s Ultraflex Technology, a tire and casing design the company said promotes soil protection, fuel savings, longer service life and greater endurance.

The VF480/80R46 177D Michelin SprayBib is designed to offer the farmer a sprayer tire that falls between the standard, narrow row-crop tire and a flotation tire for pre-planting applications. This tire provides a load capacity of up to 16,094 lb. at speeds of up to 40 mph.

The Michelin VF380/90R54 176D SprayBib is designed for high-clearance sprayers and row-crop tractors.

The largest harvester tire in the Michelin portfolio, the IF1000/55R32 CFO 188A8 CereXBib, is designed for use on large harvesters and grain carts. Harvesters and grain carts are among the heaviest ag machines and have surpassed the weight capacities of most radial tires, the company said. This new Michelin Ultraflex tire carries these loads at lower pressures to guarantee the least-possible soil compaction and rutting, Michelin said.

Michelin said its Ultraflex VF tires can operated at up to 40% less air pressure than standard radial tires (up to 20% less pressure for Ultraflex IF tires). The result is a larger footprint, which reduces soil compaction and can improve yield, the company said. In addition, Michelin said a larger tire footprint provides excellent traction in the field, which can improve fuel economy by reducing slippage.

“As farm equipment has grown larger and heavier in recent years, farmers now cover more acres per day, but soil compaction has become a greater challenge,” said Mike Pantaleo, customer engineering support for Michelin Agriculture tires. “Michelin Ultraflex tires address this issue by operating at lower pressures than standard radial tires, therefore producing a larger footprint. This larger footprint distributes the weight of the machine over the largest area possible to reduce compaction.”

www.michelinag.com