LT Tire Replacements - All season

An All Season tire is not necessary for a trailer. I have pulled our heavy fifth wheel with rib tires in the snow and ice with out issue. I have Roadmaster RM170 made by Cooper Tire on our rig

eHoefler wrote:
An All Season tire is not necessary for a trailer. I have pulled our heavy fifth wheel with rib tires in the snow and ice with out issue. I have Roadmaster RM170 made by Cooper Tire on our rig

I agree...John, IMO, you are over thinking this summer/winter tire thing. I have towed my 7-23 26' actual length enclosed snowmobile trailer on glare ice, passing the truckers going 35 mph in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, using truck 4WD. I sometimes towed on roads with deep snow, up to 1', with GY Marathons, without issue. Trailer towed great, but for trailer brakes, there were times, downhill in mountains, that chains on one axle would have been nice.

I would just go with one of the proven Summer tires you mentioned.

Jerry

Good morning John:
I have two comments.
First, although not on my trailer I have been running the Firestone Transforce HT on my Ram for the past two years. A trip to Florida and another to Texas under their belts (pun intended :))and they seem to handle and wear very well.

Second, I kind of agree with the two posters above regarding the need for all season tires vs regular summer tires. That engineer mind of yours is working overtime again (think drag coefficients and Leonardo :W ).
Barney

Hi John, I will agree with previous posters, winter/summer tire designations apply in the context of traction. Softer rubber gives you better grip as it conforms to the road surface better, so "winter" tires are formulated to stay pliable in colder weather. The corollary to traction is wear, so "summer" tires that are run in high heat are formulated to stay stiffer so they don't get too soft and wear out too fast.

That said, your trailer has no drive wheels, so traction is of no concern. When I upgraded to LTs on the Terry, I went to the local tire chain and said, "What's the most economical tire you have?" Now I am on my 5th season of Commodore LTs, and they look as fresh as the day the left China on the boat.....

On the Suburban I am on my 3rd set of Bridgestone Dueller Revo II's, and when these are done a 4th set will be purchased...

When you say you have had 2 tire failures; what does that mean? Did they bubble? Did they blow the tread off? Did you pull over and find a disk on your rim?

I've used a couple of sets of Cooper SRM II in LT235/85-16 E on my equipment trailers. Cooper dropped them but now recommend the Cooper Discoverer HT3 for trailer use.

And don't forget Goodyears Wrangler HT which they recommend for trailer use. These tires came OEM on some trailer brands in the late '90s and early '00s.

I've used several sets of LT235/85-16 E in the older BFG Commercial T/A which were a very good tire for 10-15 years for BFG. Great service like 50k-55k miles and seven years and no issues.
It would be interesting as to know why the Commercial T/A tires suddenly started shedding their treads on trucks/trailer/suvs/vans.

Goodyear All-Terrain Adventure with Kevlar is available in LT225/75R16
Great all season tread. Excellent tire.

Treads blew off. OP showed it.
To the OP, they’re trailer tires, get some, put them on the trailer, drive away.
Regarding winter traction, those that said a trailer doesn’t need traction because it doesn’t have a drive axle, LOL..........
Agree, I haul a trailer around typically in the worst weather possible, on purpose. Regular tires. If it had studs, snows, chains, etc I could go faster in some situations.

For a bestof both worlds, get whatever highway tread tires you want and then have them siped. Instant snow tires that work in the summer. May lose a little tread life, but traielr tires generally don’t go tread bare before they age out or die anyway.

Thank you all. I will start to answer some of your questions. Will have to come back for more later. Running low on time now.

The winter/summer tire ratings. It appears by the responses some have used the XPS Rib tire in a winter setting and had no adverse effects. With so much being printed about only using this as a summer tire, I contacted Michelin on this to confirm the XPS Rib can be used in a trailer application and for limited use below 32F.

I made it past the trailer application. With my weights, axle ratings, GVWR and tire size, using the XPS Rib in a trailer application is approved. (as long as the trailer manufacturer is not stating ST tires only) In my case my trailer manufacturer is out of business and I have no placard stating not to use LT tires.

Temperature ratings. Here I ran into issues. The technician had to confirm with their supervisor on this. The XPS has a low end use temperature rating of 45F. They cannot approve any application when used below that rating. I explained this is a trailer situation and not a drive or steering vehicle. The response was if the tire was used in cold enough weather cracking of the tire could occur. They mentioned this may occur at 20F or lower. They also mentioned that the friction will be reduced when used below 45F and they cannot approve the application as the trailer my slide more than normal in the colder weather as the traction grip can be affected.

I asked if I used the tire in a trailer application and if it was used below 45F would this be declared as a miss-application and void any warranty? They responded, that was correct, it would not be warranted.

In our case we do winter camp. We do not go out in snow, but do go out in weather below 45F a fair amount. Actually we would think a winter 45F day is a heat wave. It appears if I wanted to stay within the approved Michelin application and want warranty, using XPS Rib tires is not an approved setup for our use.

I called Bridgestone. Very nice call but no info as of right now. They told me to call a tire dealer for technical info. I explained I wanted the trailer application info direct from the manufacture. They said all their tire technical folks are out until this Friday but could respond then. So this one is on hold for the moment.

However Bridgestone does make both the Duravis R250 Summer and the R238 All season. For some reason the R238 is even cheaper than the R250. So the R238 may be an option. I will "never" wear out the tread on one of these, but I can age out. So needing to go to a R238 all season does not really bother me.

I'll report more on this temp situation as I find it.

Thanks

John

To some of the questions on the tire failures, here is a top line version. I can have more pics later.

A recap from my post above:

JBarca wrote:
I have had 2 failures this year. This might be from 2 reasons:

1. It is not beyond impossible I ran into a patch of potholes. The tires could have been damaged internally and manifested itself to the recent failures.

2. These current failed tires were also potentially made in the same BFG plant they had the recall on the next size from mine during 2012 when I put mine on. This may or may not have to do with the recent failures. BFG Recall

Mine look like this video. Tire shop showing recalled tires

I have a TPM system (Truck Systems TST) and the running pressures at 60 mph were 90psi and 89F stem temperatures when the failures occurred.

Some more details and pics. This was our first campout this year. A 150 mile trip one way last Friday. I have a TPM and all tires were at 80psi cold before we left.

At 100 miles into the trip, the right rear tire blew out. I only tow at 60 mph as a norm. May coast up to 65 and back down but that is it. The wind was surgeing a lot. I could tell the whole rig wiggled from the wind blasts. The tires in the non sun side of the camper where 3 deg F warmer then the sun side while towing. I thought that was odd but the pressure on all 4 was within 1 or 2 psi. Maybe the wind surges created a little more heat in the one side of the camper with more side flex? Don't know only a guess. I do not think that was a cause, more of an observation.

I heard a loud "bang", looked in right mirror and saw a puff of smoke as the tire tread flew off. Never felt it in the truck. A few seconds later the TPM went off. After limping about 1,000 feet we pulled off the side of the interstate and found this. The flying tread did some good damage to the camper and it beat up the metal valve stem on the front tire creating a leak. Even beat off the grease cap on the rear axle. After fiddling with the valve stem on the front tire I could shut up the tire leak which was now down to 60psi. I pumped it up to 80psi before moving the camper another 1,000 ft to the exit.



You can see here, the entire outer tread separated from the tire and blew off. A large sidewall split went from the OD to the bead.


And the tire on the ground after putting the spare on.


Also to note, we stopped for fuel and lug nut tightening on all tires 10 minutes before this tire blew out. Never noticed anything wrong and I was right at the tire.

I found a tire shop and bought one Firestone Transforce HT LT to replace the blown one and took the right front tire off and put it in the truck. Put the new tire on the front location as this tire took an instant overload and was leaking down before I could pull off and did not want to press my luck. Then we went to camp.

Had a great weekend campout with friends and started heading back home yesterday. At approx 100 miles into the trip, the second one blew out on the left front side. This was about 20 minutes after a gas stop. Same pattern, blew the entire tread off and a large rip in the sidewall all the way to the bead.

Sitting on the side of the interstate dealing with it.






The first blow out I left at the tire dealer. I forgot to grab it as I wanted to talk to my tire buddy on this. The second one I still have here in the barn.

More on this as I start demounting all of them once I get new replacements to put on.

These failed with what looked like the recall in 2012 showed however my tire size was not in the recall.

Thanks

John