Gradeall Takes the Load Off: Tyre Conveyor Systems Explained

Updated on: 7th March 2026 By:     Conor Murphy
Expert review by:     Kieran Donnelly

Gradeall Takes the Load Off is more than a tagline. It describes exactly what tyre conveyor systems are designed to do, and why Gradeall built one.

Loading a tyre baler by hand is one of those jobs that looks manageable until you’ve done it across a full shift. Stacking tyre after tyre into the baler chamber, bending to the floor, walking back and forth to collect more, keeping pace with the machine’s output cycle: the physical toll accumulates steadily. By the afternoon, operators feel it in their backs and shoulders, output starts to slow, and the floor around the baler fills with loose tyres waiting their turn. It’s tiring, it creates hazards, and over time, it pushes experienced people out of the role.

Tyre conveyor systems are built to change that. Instead of manual loading from ground level, a tyre conveyor brings tyres to the operator at a controlled pace and a consistent working height, feeding the baler continuously without the stop-start rhythm of collecting and carrying. The difference in a busy operation is immediate: faster bale output, less physical strain, and a cleaner, safer working area around the machine.

Gradeall International has been manufacturing tyre recycling equipment for nearly 40 years, and the Gradeall Tyre Conveyor was developed directly from that operational experience. The company saw, across site after site, that manual loading was consistently the weak point in otherwise well-run baling operations: the source of injuries, the cause of unnecessary downtime, and the reason skilled operators eventually moved on. The conveyor was designed to address all three. This guide covers how it works, what it delivers in practice, and how to assess whether it belongs in your operation.

Why Manual Tire Loading Creates Operational Problems

Before looking at what the tyre conveyor does, it’s worth understanding the problem it solves in practical terms. The issues with manual loading are not just about comfort.

The Physical Demands on Operators

Tire baling is one of the more physically demanding jobs in a recycling facility. Car tyres weigh between 8 and 10 kg each on average; truck tyres can be significantly heavier. Loading 600 or more tyres into a baler across a working shift means repeated bending, lifting, and stacking, often from ground level, throughout the day.

Even with proper manual handling training, the cumulative effect of this kind of work takes a toll. Musculoskeletal injuries are among the most common workplace injuries in the waste and recycling sector. When operators strain their backs or shoulders, the consequences go beyond the individual. Recovery time takes a skilled person off the floor, output drops, and the remaining team absorbs the extra load, increasing their own risk of injury. The knock-on effect on productivity can be significant, and it’s rarely fully captured in standard operational cost assessments.

There’s a secondary issue that operators and managers in the industry rarely discuss openly: experienced tyre handlers leave. The physical demands of the job drive turnover. Retaining someone who has developed real skill and speed at baling is genuinely difficult if the job is physically wearing them out. Replacing that experience takes time and training, both of which cost money.

Inefficiency in the Loading Process

Beyond injury risk, manual loading introduces inefficiency into the baling workflow. Without a structured loading system, operators typically have to collect tyres from wherever they’ve been stacked or dropped, carry or roll them to the baler, and load them individually into the chamber. The time spent moving between the tyre storage area and the baler is non-productive time. It doesn’t contribute to bale output; it just fills the clock.

In operations handling several hundred tyres per day, this double-handling adds up quickly. It also creates clutter. Loose tyres on the floor around the baler are a trip hazard, a fire risk, and an obstacle to efficient movement. They make the working environment harder to navigate and maintain.

The Gradeall Tire Conveyor: What It Is and How It Works

The Gradeall Tyre Conveyor is a purpose-built loading system designed to work alongside Gradeall’s range of tyre balers. It addresses both the physical strain problem and the inefficiency problem in a single piece of equipment.

The core concept is straightforward. Instead of loading tyres manually from the floor, operators load them onto the conveyor in bulk. The conveyor then brings the tyres to the operator at a consistent, ergonomic height, where they can be transferred into the baler chamber without bending, lifting from the ground, or walking to collect more tyres.

Loading and Feeding the Conveyor

The conveyor is designed to accept tyres in volume. Tyres can be loaded directly onto it from a curtain-sider trailer, a transit van, a moving-floor vehicle, or via a bucket or a grab attachment. The modular design of the system allows loading from either side or the rear, enabling it to be adapted to different facility layouts and vehicle access configurations.

This flexibility matters in real-world operations, where the physical layout of a yard or processing building often dictates how vehicles approach and unload. A conveyor system that operates in one direction but not the other can create its own logistics problems. The Gradeall design accommodates this from the outset.

The Chain-Driven Feed Mechanism

The conveyor uses a chain-driven mechanism rather than a belt system. Chain drives provide slip-free operation, which is important when you’re moving heavy, irregular objects like tyres. Belts can slip under load, especially with heavier truck tyres or when the system is running continuously over long shifts. A chain drive eliminates this variable.

The conveyor is activated by a foot-operated pedal, which leaves the operator’s hands free to handle tyres as they arrive. The feed speed is deliberately slow and controlled. Tires arrive at the operator’s station at a manageable pace, without sudden acceleration or unpredictable movement. This reduces the risk of tyres shifting or falling, which is both a safety consideration and a practical one.

The Slide-Out Loading Platform

One of the more practical design details is the slide-out loading platform. When it’s time to tie a completed bale and open the baler doors, the platform slides out of the way to give full access to the baler chamber. This means the conveyor doesn’t interrupt the baling cycle. The transition between filling, tying, and reloading is smooth, and the operator doesn’t need to reposition the equipment between bales.

The platform is positioned at the correct height for loading tyres into the baler chamber. This is the detail that makes the ergonomic argument for the conveyor most concrete. Operators aren’t bending over. They’re working at a height that keeps their spine neutral and reduces the repetitive strain associated with ground-level loading. Over the course of a shift, this difference is substantial.

Storage Capacity

The Gradeall Tyre Conveyor has a 40 m³ hopper with tall sides, giving it a holding capacity of 600 to 700 car tyres. In practical terms, this means an operator can load a significant volume of tyres onto the conveyor in a single pass, then work through them continuously without stopping to restock. The conveyor serves as both a feed system and an on-machine storage buffer, freeing up floor space around the baler and eliminating the accumulation of loose tyres that creates hazards.

Compatibility with Baler Systems

The Gradeall Tyre Conveyor is designed to work with Gradeall’s MKII and MKIII tyre balers and can also be used with other manufacturers’ baler equipment. This is a deliberate design choice. Many tyre processing operations already have balers in place, and a conveyor system that only works with one brand’s equipment has limited appeal in those environments.

The system can support either one or two balers running simultaneously. For operations with dual baler setups, this means that one conveyor can feed both machines, concentrating the workflow and reducing the floor space needed for tyre handling.

Gradeall’s tyre baling equipment is used across a wide range of industries and sectors, from independent tyre dealers and garages to large-scale municipal and commercial tyre recycling operations. The conveyor is designed to scale with that range. A small operation running one baler benefits from the ergonomic and efficiency gains. A larger operation running two balers simultaneously can significantly increase its hourly output.

Output and Productivity Gains

The practical performance case for the tyre conveyor comes down to what it does for bale output rates.

Experienced tyre handlers working with two balers and the Gradeall Tyre Conveyor in place should be able to produce 10-12 bales per hour, according to Gradeall. This figure reflects the combined effect of continuous tyre supply to the baler, reduced downtime between bales, and faster loading at ergonomic height.

For context, a standard MKII Tire Baler produces bales compliant with PAS 108, the British standard for tyre bales used in civil engineering and construction applications. Each bale contains a consistent, high-density volume of tyres that can be transported and used efficiently. Increasing the number of bales produced per shift directly increases throughput and the volume of tyres processed in a given period.

The productivity gains extend beyond raw bale count. Because the conveyor holds 600 to 700 tyres at a time, operators spend less time in transit between the tyre storage area and the baler. Time that would otherwise go on collecting and moving individual tyres is redirected to the actual baling process. In operations where labour time is a high cost, this reallocation has a real financial value.

Reducing Double-Handling

Double-handling is one of the most common sources of wasted time in any processing operation. When tyres are moved from a vehicle to a storage area, then from the storage area to the baler, each move represents time and labour that doesn’t directly produce output. The conveyor reduces this by functioning as the connection between the unloading point and the baler. Tires can go from the delivery vehicle onto the conveyor and directly into the baling process without an intermediate storage step.

This isn’t always possible depending on the facility layout, but where it can be achieved, it significantly tightens the operational loop. It also means the processing area stays cleaner and more organised, because tyres aren’t accumulating on the floor waiting to be moved.

Workforce and Safety Benefits

The operational case for the tyre conveyor is well-supported by the productivity numbers, but the workforce and safety arguments may be equally important for operations focused on long-term sustainability.

Reducing Injury Risk

Lifting and carrying heavy, awkward objects repeatedly is the most direct pathway to musculoskeletal injury in manual handling work. The tyre conveyor removes the ground-level lifting element from the baling workflow. Operators work at a fixed ergonomic height, receiving tyres from the conveyor rather than bending to collect them from the floor. The foot-pedal activation means the feed rate is controlled by the operator rather than the machine. There’s no rush, no sudden movement, and no need to reach or overextend to keep up with a machine-set pace.

For operations that have experienced lost working days due to back or shoulder injuries among baling staff, this is a direct operational benefit. Fewer injuries mean more consistent output, less reliance on temporary or less-experienced staff, and lower costs associated with absences, retraining, and potential workers’ compensation claims.

Retaining Skilled Operators

This point deserves more attention than it typically gets in equipment procurement discussions. Skilled tyre handlers are not easy to replace. They develop speed, judgment about loading patterns, and an understanding of the equipment that takes months to build. When the physical demands of the job become unsustainable, experienced operators leave, and that institutional knowledge leaves with them.

The tyre conveyor makes the job more physically manageable over a full working career. This isn’t a marginal consideration. In industries with historically high turnover, anything that meaningfully improves operator retention has compounding benefits over time. The cost of the equipment needs to be weighed against the ongoing costs of recruiting and training replacement staff, and the output loss that comes with less experienced operators working at lower speeds while they learn.

Improving Yard Safety

Loose tyres on the floor are a consistent hazard in tyre processing facilities. They create uneven surfaces, make navigation difficult, and present a fire risk. By providing structured storage for 600 to 700 tyres within the conveyor itself, the system reduces the volume of loose tyres on the working floor. The area around the baler stays clearer, which is safer for both foot traffic and any vehicle movement in the vicinity.

This kind of incidental safety improvement often goes unaccounted in formal assessments, but it’s the kind of everyday operational benefit that the people working in the facility notice immediately.

Integration Into a Complete Tyre Recycling Workflow

The tyre conveyor doesn’t operate in isolation. It’s one component in a broader tyre processing workflow that typically involves receiving and sorting tyres, baling them for transport and end use, and, in many operations, pre-processing steps such as sidewall cutting for larger truck or OTR tyres before they enter the baler.

Gradeall’s range of tyre recycling equipment is designed with this workflow integration in mind. The MKII Tire Baler and MKIII Tire Baler are the core baling machines that the conveyor feeds. For operations handling truck tyres, the Truck Tyre Sidewall Cutter is typically used upstream of the baler to remove sidewalls from larger tyres, improving bale density and compliance with PAS 108. For operations dealing with off-the-road and agricultural tyres, the OTR Tyre Sidewall Cutter and OTR Tyre Splitter handle the pre-processing requirements before material enters the baling stage.

The conveyor fits into this workflow at the point where tyres are ready for baling. Whether those tyres arrive whole from a collection route or have been pre-processed through a sidewall cutter, the conveyor’s role is the same: to present them to the baler operator efficiently, safely, and without the physical overhead of manual loading.

Gradeall International Ltd is a specialist manufacturer of tyre recycling and waste management equipment based in Dungannon, Northern Ireland. The company has been designing and building this category of equipment for nearly 40 years, and its machines are operating in more than 100 countries. The tyre conveyor reflects the same approach that runs through the rest of the Gradeall range: identifying where operations lose time, efficiency, or personnel to practical problems, and building equipment that addresses those problems directly.

Choosing a Tire Conveyor for Your Operation

If you’re considering whether a tyre conveyor makes sense for your facility, the key questions are volume, layout, and workforce.

Volume is the clearest indicator. Operations processing a few dozen tyres a day may not see sufficient return on investment from a dedicated conveyor system to justify the investment. Operations handling hundreds of tyres per shift, or running multiple balers, are the environments where the conveyor’s impact on output, efficiency, and operator welfare is most pronounced.

Facility layout affects how the conveyor integrates into your existing workflow. The modular design accommodates loading in different directions, but you’ll need to assess vehicle access, the floor space around the baler, and the relationship between your tyre reception area and your baling station. Gradeall’s team can work through these specifics with you; site demonstrations at the Dungannon facility are available for customers who want to see the equipment in operation before committing.

Workforce factors are harder to quantify but genuinely significant. If your operation has experienced injury-related absences among baling staff, or if you’ve found it difficult to retain experienced operators, those are indicators that the conveyor’s ergonomic and retention benefits have direct value for your business.

The conveyor works alongside your existing Gradeall balers, or with other manufacturers’ equipment. It requires no major infrastructure changes. It slots into the existing workflow between tyre delivery and baler loading and changes that step in a way that’s immediately apparent to anyone working the baler station.

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