IAA Voices with Goodyear

Goodyear is one of the world's largest tire companies. It employs about 72,000 people and manufactures its products in 57 facilities in 23 countries around the world. Its two Innovation Centers in Akron, Ohio, and Colmar-Berg, Luxembourg, strive to develop state-of-the-art products and services that set the technology and performance standard for the industry. At the IAA TRANSPORTATION Goodyear will showcase its Goodyear Total Mobility solution and vision for efficient and sustainable transportation. Grégory Boucharlat is Vice President, Commercial Europe and Member of the EMEA Leadership Team at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company.

What does Goodyear stand for and what should every IAA visitor definitely know about the company?

At Goodyear, customer is at the center. We continuously interact with transportation fleets and truck manufacturers across Europe to understand their challenges and evolving needs. It is in core of our operations to help them to drive results. We continuously adapt our offering to match those requirements. During the IAA we will be showcasing how the combination of our exceptional products and innovative smart solutions delivered via reliable service network can help them in maximizing efficiencies, strengthening competitiveness and becoming more sustainable.

We are experts in integrated fleet management and our portfolio of solutions allows our customers to take strategic approach to drive better results and deliver measurable, year-on-year improvements. And I know that many participants and guests of IAA TRANSPORTATION will be looking exactly for such support and tailored solutions for their fleets.

How do you translate your heritage into your current activity?

Goodyear has almost 125 years of experience in providing products, services and solutions that enable mobility and it gives us a strong foundation for helping our customers. We have a great history as a global company and a huge number of achievements, for example our tires were the first to ever leave a tire track on the moon and we have introduced many tire technologies over the years.

We translate our experience from many areas into delivering real value to our customers. And already long time ago we noticed the need to support our commercial customers not only with a high quality and reliable products, but also with a whole package of smart solutions and services that can make their businesses more effective. It was the genesis of our current Goodyear Total Mobility offer which brings real benefits to thousands of commercial fleets helping them be more effective, more competitive and more sustainable.

What is the company's key project for 2022/23?

We are constantly pursuing ways to increase efficiency for commercial fleets and we will continue this focus in the next years. Especially now when transportation industry is impacted by fuel prices, labor shortages or energy uncertainty. We know that commercial fleets are under even greater pressure. This makes Goodyear’s Total Mobility value proposition even more relevant as it provides an end-to-end solution designed to support fleets to lower carbon footprint, be more competitive and optimize efficiency in the daily operations. For example, our Goodyear FleetHub app comprises a high-performance tire pressure monitoring system (Goodyear TPMS) and our Goodyear CheckPoint and Goodyear DrivePoint solutions provide automated pressure checks. These solutions have always the same goals: faster, easier and more accurate tire maintenance together with increased uptime resulting in improved efficiency of fleets. Combining these solutions with the latest generation of tires, like our efficient and versatile Goodyear Fuelmax Endurance range is further helping our customers to reduce fuel costs and meet CO2 emissions targets.

As we want to stay close to our customers and fleets have always been at the center of our strategy in April, we started Drive Results tour with an unique Goodyear-branded showtruck visiting various locations in Europe. Inside our mobile showroom, the latest generation of our fuel-efficient tires and mobility solutions are displayed, enriched by an immersive augmented reality element, which brings guests even closer to our offer.

The Drive Results tour is following the Goodyear FIA European Truck Racing Championship calendar, as well as a number of key cities and trade events. I’m really proud that our Drive Results showtruck have already traveled over 20 thousand kilometers, visited over 30 locations in 12 countries... all in just 4 months! The campaign, although it is only at its halfway point, is very successful, we met many customers and new businesses were attracted by our solutions.

The newly designed IAA TRANSPORTATION is a platform and meeting place for established and up-and-coming transport and logistics companies from all over the world. What makes the trade show so appealing to you?

As one of the leading companies that is an active participant in the road transport ecosystem, we believe that the IAA is the right place to present our solutions and highlight our vision for efficient and sustainable transportation. Many guests and exhibitors of the IAA are our close business partners with whom we have been cooperating for years - this includes both leading European commercial fleets and renowned manufacturers of trucks and buses.

Due to central location of our stand, I believe that many people will be able to get acquainted with our vision. We will be at the center of hall 21 among other exhibitors - just like Goodyear tires and solutions should be at the center of any fleet that wants to be efficient, competitive and sustainable.

What can IAA visitors particularly look forward to at your stand?

We want to showcase our vision of helping customers and we will highlight products, services, mobility solutions, modern web applications and data processing, that demonstrate our important role in providing support for transport fleets in the future and demanding transport ecosystem. Everything under the umbrella of Goodyear Total Mobility one-stop-shop offer.

I’m sure that our fantastic stand will give visitors the opportunity to learn about the benefits addressed to fleets which may allow to improve their efficiency. Through interactive elements using, among others augmented reality, everyone who will visit us will experience the 360-degree support that we offer through our products and mobility solutions under the Goodyear Total Mobility concept.

At IAA we also plan to reveal an extraordinary concept which will likely further enhance our value proposition in the future.

The coming years will be dominated by transformation and sustainability concerns. Where will the transport and logistics industry stand in this respect in 2030 - and what milestones does Goodyear want to cope with by then?

Sustainability is important to us on many levels. First of all, from a global perspective, we have very ambitious goals related to reducing our impact on the environment and other areas defined in our Goodyear Better Future program. We have already made good progress in some areas, which everyone can read in our corporate responsibility reports, for example in 2021 we achieved 24% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions intensity and 18% reduction in energy intensity compared to 2010 baseline globally. Last year, we also announced that we will adopt 100% renewable energy at our plants across Europe and Turkey as the first step in a multiple-phase plan to procure 100% renewable energy in all facilities across Europe, Middle East and Africa by the end of 2022.

In Europe, since 2021, we have been carrying out the Sustainable Reality Survey, in which we check the approach, activities and expectations of transport fleets in terms of sustainability. Over 2,000 companies and representatives of transport fleets took part in two editions of the survey already. For us, results of the Sustainable Reality Survey are always a reliable source of very important insights about our customers and the challenges in which we can help them by offering our Goodyear Total Mobility solution. For example, we see that about sixty percent of fleets are already using more fuel-efficient tires. In that context, we are supporting truck manufacturers and transportation companies in their move towards a greener future. Furthermore, our Goodyear Fuelmax Endurance introduced on the market last year has low rolling resistance and durability attributes that aid fleets with their sustainability goals without adding complexity in their daily operations.

What is more important, 70% of large fleets indicate they have defined clear green goals and a third or surveyed by us companies in 2021 view sustainability as a way to reduce operating costs.

Thanks to that we see a clear need for straightforward solutions meeting both sustainability and efficiency goals. Goodyear Total Mobility responds to this challenge, and we will be happy to talk about it at IAA TRANSPORTATION.

Gregory is responsible for the Truck and Off-Highway business for Europe. He joined Goodyear in 1994. He is an accomplished industry executive with over 27 years of experience in the international tire and automotive sectors.

Prior to his current role, Gregory was responsible for the Fleet & Retread business for Europe and before that, he was responsible for the Retread business for EMEA.

Before joining the European Organization, Gregory was based in France and held various sales management and strategy roles for Goodyear Dunlop Tires France, including Director Fleet and Commercial PBU Director. Gregory studied economics and social administration at the University Lyon III and he also followed trainings in Marketing B2B, Finance and Commercial Business Unit Management at HEC Paris.