While most industries were still basking in the warmth of the Chinese New Year holiday, those inside the commercial truck tire sector were already frowning at the latest numbers. As of February 12, 2026, the full-steel tire operating rate at Shandong tire manufacturers had fallen to just 44.24% — dropping 16.70 percentage points week-on-week and sitting 18.19 points below the same period a year ago. This stands in sharp contrast to the above-65% peak utilisation seen during the best months of 2025, and it reflects the compounded weight of pre-holiday inventory accumulation, a demand air pocket, and seasonal plant shutdowns pressing down simultaneously. Meanwhile, new export uncertainties were quietly building during the holiday: the United States signalled intentions to layer additional tariffs onto existing trade measures, natural rubber continued to pile up at Qingdao port, and Longmarch Tire chose precisely this moment to announce its IPO preparation and Egypt factory plans. Multiple signals are colliding at once, making the 2026 opening chapter for the commercial truck tire industry harder to characterise with simple optimism or pessimism than any year in recent memory.

 

1. A Sharp Drop in Factory Activity: This Holiday Slowdown Bites Harder Than Usual

Seasonal dips in full-steel tire production around the Chinese New Year holiday are a well-established industry pattern. The scale of this year's pullback, however, caught many insiders off guard. Data cited by both Yinhe Futures and Wankuang Futures in their February 24 morning briefings shows that the Shandong full-steel operating load hit 44.24% by February 12 — more than 18 points below the same week in 2025. Semi-steel tire utilisation, meanwhile, stood at 62.47%, itself down more than 11 points year-on-year. Both categories moving in tandem points toward a single underlying reality: genuine end market demand for truck tires will not meaningfully revive until logistics flows and infrastructure projects fully restart in March.

Ruida Futures' first post-holiday research note (February 25, 2026) states the position plainly: terminal replacement demand 'remains constrained by the pace of logistics and infrastructure resumption, and by a wait-and-see consumer attitude — substantive demand will only release gradually after March.' For anyone who manages a truck fleet, this timing feels intuitive. In the weeks around the new year, tire replacements are deferred unless tread wear has genuinely reached a safety threshold. What makes this year different is that the seasonal lull is sitting on top of an already elevated inventory pile, making the effective duration of the quiet period feel longer and heavier than usual.

The raw material side is adding its own layer of complexity. China's total natural rubber social inventory reached 1.296 million tonnes as of February 8, up 15,000 tonnes from the prior week, with Qingdao port stocks accumulating to 609,300 tonnes — an accelerating build. Southeast Asian plantation regions are approaching their low-production dormancy season, keeping upstream prices firm: Thai ribbed smoked sheets and Indonesian standard grades both rose during the holiday week. Yet with downstream tire factories running well below capacity, near-term purchasing appetite cannot absorb this supply, creating an unusual dual squeeze where raw material costs are rising while finished goods remain difficult to shift.

 

2. Longmarch Tire Hosts Distributor Conference: IPO Preparation and Egypt Factory Advance in Tandem

Against a backdrop of broad industry caution, Chaoyang Longmarch Tire moved in a notably different direction — holding its 2026 annual distributor conference just ahead of the Spring Festival break and delivering a message of expansion rather than consolidation. According to a February 4 report by Yinhe Futures citing Tire World Network, Longmarch announced at the conference that it will advance its listing plans for both the Chaoyang headquarters operation and its Pakistan joint venture in 2026. Separately, the company confirmed that its Egypt factory project — flagged earlier as an ambition — completed formal contract signing by end-2025, with construction set to begin imminently.

Longmarch's strategic positioning offers useful context here. The company has focused exclusively on full-steel wire radial tire production for more than two decades, building a product range spanning 65 specifications and 654 variants, with distribution reaching over 140 countries. Its LONGMARCH and ROADLUX brands carry meaningful recognition in global commercial vehicle replacement channels. Against a backdrop where China's full-steel tire export compound annual growth reached 8.1% from 2020 to 2024, choosing Egypt as its second overseas manufacturing node — a location that offers cost advantages and serves as a gateway to African and Middle Eastern markets — aligns closely with the diversification strategies already deployed by Sailun, Sentury, and others across Southeast Asia and North Africa. The logic: build production behind the tariff wall, ship as locally-made, and preserve access to markets that might otherwise become costly to serve from China direct.

The conference was not without candour about current difficulties, however. Longmarch management acknowledged the challenges of margin compression and intense price competition in the current market, pledging to intensify R&D and equipment investment and improve quality consistency through its internal 'dual benchmark, four guarantee' operational framework. This combination of ambitious forward planning alongside honest acknowledgement of near-term pressures reflects the posture of most leading full-steel tire producers right now: the strategic direction is clear; the road between here and there is going to be bumpy.

 

3. Export Headwinds Build: New U.S. Tariff Signals Raise Stakes for Offshore Manufacturing Strategy

A piece of macro news circulating during the Spring Festival holiday attracted significant attention in the tire trade: the United States indicated it may add a further approximately 10% in global goods tariffs on top of existing duties. For Chinese full-steel tire producers exporting directly, this directional signal compounds an already complicated trade environment. Ruida Futures' February 25 research report flags that the move 'may trigger market concern about rubber demand in 2026,' while also noting it could drive broader commodity sentiment volatility given the knock-on effects through petrochemical feedstocks.

From a practical industry standpoint, however, the leading Chinese tire companies had already been building their defences for years. The 8.1% compound annual growth in full-steel tire exports between 2020 and 2024 was largely enabled by an expanding network of offshore manufacturing sites. Sailun, to take the most prominent example, now has combined overseas full-steel and semi-steel capacity exceeding 40 million units, drawing from factories across Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Mexico, and Egypt. Research from Guohai Securities calculates that even with an additional 25% tariff burden, full-steel tires manufactured in Southeast Asia by Chinese brands price into the U.S. market at approximately $80-$85 per unit — still well below the average import price of $117 for the category overall. The price advantage, in other words, survives the tariff shock.

For mid-tier and smaller full-steel producers without meaningful offshore capacity, this arithmetic is harder to read comfortably. Their direct export economics face additional erosion with each successive tariff round, and the gap between their cost structure and that of the leading players is widening. The most plausible consequence is further market concentration — as the full-steel tire segment that looked broadly competitive across dozens of producers in 2023 gradually becomes a space where scale and geographic diversification determine survival.

 

4. Capacity Expansion Continues in the Cold: Major Projects Press Ahead Through the Quiet Season

Even with end-market demand subdued, investment in production capacity has not paused. China Tire Business Network's tracking of in-progress capacity projects shows more than 30 tire production facilities at various stages of construction globally, with full-steel radial tire expansion accounting for a significant share. One of the clearest signals came on February 24, when a Shandong enterprise's full-steel engineering radial tire project — with an annual output target of 50,490 tonnes — formally broke ground as a provincial major project, the first tangible full-steel capacity commitment of the post-holiday period.

Sailun Tire's feasibility study for its new Shenyang base provides a detailed window into how the industry's leading firms are thinking about expansion. The project plans annual production of 3.3 million full-steel radial tires and 20,000 tonnes of off-road tires across two construction phases, with a total investment of approximately RMB 1.7 billion. The facility will deploy the company's proprietary liquid gold chemical mastication technology — a process that brings rolling resistance and wet grip performance to AA-grade under EU tire labeling standards — alongside smart logistics systems and automated building equipment. The underlying message: new capacity is being built to a higher performance baseline than the assets it will eventually displace.

Expanding against a demand trough looks counterintuitive from the outside, but industry logic supports it. The cargo transport economy that drives full-steel tire consumption is not going away: trucks need to run, tread wears down, and the replacement cycle for medium-duty cargo trucks runs as short as 0.7 years. Companies that lock in lower-cost, higher-performance capacity during the current quiet period position themselves to capture disproportionate share when demand recovers. For fleet operators, the longer-term consequence of this investment wave is straightforward: the same budget should buy a meaningfully better tire within two to three years.

 

5. Spring Rebound Countdown: March Data Will Be the First Real Verdict on 2026's Direction

What the full-steel tire industry is now collectively waiting for is a seasonal thaw. As the post-Lantern Festival weeks unfold, logistics volumes typically begin recovering toward normal operating levels, construction sites reopen, mining operations return to full shift schedules, and inter-city freight picks up speed. Historical patterns suggest that tire purchasing demand concentrates noticeably in mid-March, representing the first meaningful demand peak of the calendar year. Multiple futures research teams flagged this window in their first post-holiday reports — while each one also included the qualifier: 'watch the pace of factory restart carefully,' signalling that the timing of this thaw is not guaranteed.

Raw material costs add another variable to track. Natural rubber is entering its supply off-season, with Southeast Asian tapping regions moving toward their low-production period — an environment where upstream prices are biased upward rather than down. This is compounded by the geopolitical oil price spike that unfolded over the holiday: Brent crude moved from $67.45 per barrel before the break to an intraday high of $71.86, a move of more than 6%, before settling into a $70-71 range by February 23. As of February 25, synthetic rubber feedstocks and carbon black — key non-rubber tire inputs — are facing modest but real upward cost pressure. If the spring demand recovery proves weaker than expected, tire producers will face the uncomfortable position of rising input costs against sluggish finished goods pricing. If downstream recovery is robust, the cost pressure can at least partly be absorbed through faster throughput and restored pricing power. March's shipment data will deliver the first concrete reading.

For truck operators themselves, the current environment carries a practical implication worth noting. The period immediately after a major holiday — when factory utilisation is low and distributors are eager to move inventory built up over the quiet season — historically represents a buyer-friendly pricing window. Operators whose tires are approaching end-of-life have reasonable grounds to act now rather than waiting for the full demand surge that typically arrives in April. Once the spring recovery momentum is clearly established, pricing leverage shifts back toward producers and distributors — a shift that plays out with near-clockwork consistency each year.