Engineer9860 wrote:
Tire easily had 75%+ tread. Always maintained, never recapped, trailer is always stored indoors, tires never were patched. Took it to the tire store I bought it from and they stated that the tires are 20 years old. No warranty.
20 years???
As was explained to me- tires are actually formulated with an embedded stabilizing liquid that slowly leaks out, and which maintains tire integrity.
After about 5 years, that material is gone, and the tire wears more rapidly (indoor our out). Thus the comment that tires should be replaced every five years.
As someone said earlier, folks are always citing decent tread depth, but for some reason don't mention anything about age, cracking, pliability, or any number of slow chemical processes that can take place with a complex hydrocarbon polymer concoction.
For what it's worth, I had a truck tire come apart and really trash the wheel well of a pickup truck, and then last fall, had a 10-year old tire come apart on my camper (yeah, I ran it more than 5 years). And, hapily there was only some very slight bent siding, and the plastic 'undercoat' fabric was torn a bit- some black duct tape and some whacks with the palm of my hand fixed it all quite nicely...