Busting the Myth of 5 year tire life.

OLDSPIRIT, you are addressing an area that has been near-and-dear to my heart for years. TIRE MARKETERS, not MANUFACTURERS, have been playing this age thing as a safety issue and it should be against the law. IMHO it is nothing but a gimmick to sell more tires, just like cereal makers, dairies and thousands of other industries started decades ago. They started by playing their message to kids and, being successful there, have also been somewhat successful in selling the same "theory" to adults.
People, seemingly especially RVers now see a blown tire on the side of highway, immediately assume "it was an old tire". I can tell you from many years in the tire industry, and many, many scrap tire analysis, you will find most blown-out tires are a)cheap, foreign made, b) obvious poor maint., with c)age coming in at a far distant third.
Again, IMHO OLDSPIRIT is doing exactly what smart RVers should do, and exactly as manufacturers such as MICHELIN recommend, AFTER 5 YEARS HAVE TIRES CHECKED ANNUALLY BY A QUALIFIED TIRE TECHNICIAN", REPLACE AT 10 YEARS AGE, REGARDLESS OF APPEARANCE"
This is the same basic message I have attempted on this forum for years. Take it or leave it, it's your money !

"40 years in the tire industry; seen it all and done most of it"

I've never bought any tires at a tire store, well ag tires excluded. I get all my tires online from either Tire Rack or an online seller. Tires are like batteries, volume sellers turn over inventory quickly so you get newly made tires, not dusty sitting in the corner ones.

O mount my own as well (ag tires not included again), so no problem with tire jockeys either. I'm the tire jockey.

Tire mounting (and balancing) isn't rocket science, just takes the right tools, which I have.

To add to what Doug says....I have been in RV parks and have seen first hand several Class A owners who were letting their rig idle as the got ready for their days trip. You could hear their TPMS system beeping and they just ignored it. I asked two of them what that beeping was, knowing all along what the beeping was from my own TPMS. I got the same reply from both which was: "yep that TPMS beep is irritating but once I drive a few miles the tire pressure will come up and it will stop." Brilliant!
I no longer ask but I can tell you that in many years of travel, I can still count on one hand the number of people that I have seen actually check each tire with an air gauge and top them off before hitting the road in the morning.

That retired Tire expert has nailed it. BUT, one thing he did not mention is the fact that a LOT of RV'ers(especially towable owners) do NOT keep their tire inflated to the correct pressure. Also, motorhome owners also do not keep inflation correct especially the inner Dual. I hope that tire expert responds, but I remember a Good Sam article from years ago by a Tire Manufacturer expert, that stated, running a Tire with very low air pressure will damage that tire beyond repair, but there will be no obvious signs what was done to it. I would say over 50 percent of my customers have significant LOW air pressure in their tires when they are in for service. The problem with RV tires is they are NOT rotating on a regular basis and that causes the emollients in the rubber to NOT stay disbursed evenly to keep the rubber pliable thru out the rubber. THAT causes the tire to deteriorate and then causes blow outs. As that expert stated, you CANNOT visually look at a tire and determine its worthiness. Doug

PS, MOST Towable owners do NOT drive at the recommended speed allowed for Towable tires. Unless you spend hundreds of dollars for the higher speed tire(usually 70 mph max) Towable tires are only rated at 65 mph max speed. HOW many times have you been passed by that Trailer or Boat going 70to 80 mph? Couple that speed with LOW air pressure.

When I had a front end aligned on my recently acquired class c I was told the front tires were 10 yrs old and showed slight cupping but no cracking. I decided to change all 6 tires. Afterwards discovered that the rear tires were only 2yrs old so kept and stored them.

Old_Spirit wrote:
I sold tire pressure monitoring systems for 9 years and regularly presented lectures on tires. One of the most frequently heard statements was, "You should get new tires every 5 years." NOT SO! I had perfectly safe tires on one of my motorhomes for eight years. How did I KNOW they were safe? Each year I would go to a store that handled truck tires, in my case, and had the tires rotated. Cost was about $25/tire. I insisted that the tire tech carefully examine the entire inner surface for any kind of damage, including signs of aging (which was never found). If the interior is flawless and the exterior shows no signs of checking or cracks run it for another year. There is a time limit of 10 years placed on tires by all manufacturers. This is a more reasonable duration.

I agree with this. You have to watch and take care of what you have. Cover tires when not in use. If they have lots of tread, test well as article, you should be good. The 5 year rule applies to those who don't take care of their stuff. The 5 or seven year rule is just like all the side affects on the back of a pill bottle. It is for the tire companies to cover their rear against law suits. But hey, if your that guys, you should buy new tires if you don't trust yours.
Brian

Beverley&Ken wrote:
4 tires gives me a total of 6280 LBS.. My trailer total GVW is 6900 LBS
The axles/tires only carry 88 - 90 % of the trailer weight. The other 10-12% is carried on the tow vehicle. Weight wise the trailer tires will be ok.

Ken

Tire care is very important. But it will not stop a blow out. I take very good care of my TT tires, Air them up, before, and during a trip. They are out of the sun most of the day, Now always. Still after 3 years. they tend to explode. So. no more.

Retired tire engineer here! I used to analyze failed tires like DSDP Don said. And, Yes! You will not find any experts at the tire shop level.

I was also involved when the Ford/Firestone thing hit some 17 1/2 years ago. Allow me to fill everyone in on tire age.

The tool really needed to analyze tire aging is a shearography unit, which can "look" inside a tire and see if there is a separation. These are expensive, so tire shops will not have one, but every tire manufacturer does for just this purpose.

First, there are 2 problems: The first is that most tires wear out long before the tire ages out. That limits the amount of data available to analyze.

The second is that heat is a major driving force behind tire aging. Tires operating in Phoenix age a lot faster than tires operating in Minneapolis. So unless you are careful to account for ambient temperature, any data collected is going to have a lot of scatter.

In fact, the RMA (Rubber Manufacturers Association, now the US Tire Manufacturers Association), did an extensive study shortly after the Ford/Firestone thing to see what could be determined by looking at tires being scrapped. I forget how many places they looked at tires, but it was at least 5 different cities. They examined thousands of tires and cataloged everything they could find.

They could not pick up any discernable pattern - except to say that old tires tend to fail more often than new tires. The scatter on the data was HUGE!! - making it impossible to say anything precise about tire age. The discussion at the time was how there must be other factors involved and how could those factors be determined to sort the data out further.

That's why you will find tire manufacturers state a 10 year limit. Everyone who looked at the data could see that. But it was clear from the data that tires from AZ looked a lot worse, but how do you say something about that in a clear and unambiguous way?

And part of what added to the confusion was that certain brands used a rubber compound in their sidewall that resisted cracking - and that rubber compound had nothing to do with the critical area between the belts! That meant that the normal indicator of problems was not available in every brand.

Further, I looked at our company's data and it was clear that the desert southwest (AZ, NV, TX, CA) produced the vast majority of the failures - and it took a few years for those to appear.

Since I retired, I have been studying failure patterns of tires as reported on the internet, and it seems like tires on trailers have far more issues than tires on motorhomes. It's hard to sort out, but it looks like a combination of loading (Trailer tires are more heavily loaded than other types of tires) and the tire design (the internal construction). This somewhat correlates to the country of manufacture, but it also correlates to the lack of attention given to the design (internal construction) of ST tires versus LT tires - BUT - this is thoroughly confounded by the manufacturer (brand).

Put another way, LT tires were given a thorough look-see after the Ford/Firestone thing and all the major tire manufacturers changed construction, but I'm pretty sure ST tires weren't.

Now this adds fire to the ST vs LT tire debate as well has the Chinese vs US debate, but both of those debates ignores the fact that those things could change - AND - since we are looking at reported failures as our data, it is easy to overlook if the reports disappear - and that appears to be what is happening.

And that could mean a reset on the age debate.

DSDP Don wrote:
I would really like to see someone show me a tire store that has a tire expert. In case you didn't notice, most of them have a few high pressure salesman and a couple of local yocals changing tires. I always laugh when someone says they had a tire expert check their tires....really.....show me the documents they provided you after the inspection that said your tires were safe.

When I was in high school, I worked at a tire store. We were lucky to keep anyone there longer than a few months. Keep in mind, this isn't a career type job. As a matter of fact, I was probably considered the tire expert at the store where I worked, I was 18 years old and was the only one that showed up to work everyday.....thus I was the expert!

There are tire experts, they work for the tire manufacturing companies and do investigations when tires fail, but they certainly don't work at your corner tire store. Can some guy at a tire store look at your tires for obvious issues, like cracks, certainly, but beyond that most haven't a clue.

This X100. I just had tires on my CRV rotated and balanced by an "expert". I used a store owned by a large regional tire chain in the OP's neighborhood,BTW. The kid tries to impress me that he "used to be a Honda dealer tech." (Yea, OK, you left a job where you could make 3-5X what you're paid here, and there is no missing part of this story that should worry me?) He failed to properly reassemble the glove box and air box on the engine, while checking filters. (I reassembled everything after I got home and did a damage review, since he had self-identified as a moron) He then notes that the rear differential is a bit wet with gear oil, and tells me there is "no way to check the oil level". I tell him I typically stick a 3/8" ratchet in the square hole in the fill plug, remove it and stick my finger in. But that's just me. Maybe he drills a hole in the side, then patches it with JB weld?

That, my friends, is what a "TIRE EXPERT" looks like. Heck, it even says so, right on his rental uniform. If you think I'm going to drive my motorhome on tires that are 3-4 years past their service life, because they were inspected and approved by a "tire expert", guess again. Life is too short, no need to make it shorter by following the "expert" advice of idiots.

Beverley&Ken wrote:
4 tires gives me a total of 6280 LBS.. My trailer total GVW is 6900 LBS
The axles/tires only carry 88 - 90 % of the trailer weight. The other 10-12% is carried on the tow vehicle. Weight wise the trailer tires will be ok.

Ken

Your math is sound, but you're skirting the edge a bit. You're free to do whatever you wish, but personally, I would rather take a safer path.