Hot-tire pickup

Euclid Chemical's technical bulletin CP-22 names the phenomenon directly: "Tire marking or hot tire pickup on concrete sealers and coatings is caused by a phenomenon called ... plasticizer migration."

The bulletin never glosses the three words one at a time, but its mechanism accounts for each. Hot is the tire after driving: "When the car is driven, the tires heat up, causing the plasticizers to soften and leach out of the rubber." Tire is where the plasticizer comes from. Pickup, read against that mechanism, is the sealer taking it in: "When a hot tire is driven (especially in a turn) or parked on concrete sealed with a cure & seal, the plasticizers migrate into and discolor the sealer/coating."

CP-22 is written about concrete sealers and coatings, and it sorts them by how prone each chemistry is to marking. Which sealer families mark, and why, is argued at why tires leave marks on sealed pavers.

The bulletin also names rubber items other than tires, such as mats and weatherstripping, as sources of the same migration.

Nothing in CP-22 is written about interlocking concrete pavers, so how a sealer is chosen for a paver driveway rather than a pool deck is a separate question, answered at driveway versus pool deck paver sealer.

The words hot tire pick-up do appear in Techniseal's own literature, but for a garage floor coating rather than a paver product: its Product Guide says the Carbopoxy+ Finishing Coat "provides resistance to hot tire pick-up."

ICPI's Tech Spec 5 for interlocking concrete pavers does not use the term. Its only line about tire marks on pavers is a stain-removal instruction for tire skid marks: "Scrub black area with water, detergent and scouring powder." Tremron, a paver maker, names a remover for tire marks on pavers and says sealing will help make them easier to remove. Taking an existing mark off is answered at can tire marks be removed from pavers, and what a paver sealer is and does is under the two paver sealer families.