So CarpriRacer, maybe you can take us all back to some basics of tires and inflation? Air in the tire is what holds up the weight it carries right? For car and light trucks in North America there are load inflation tables that are common across all manufacturers, right? That is a LT235/85R16 LRE carries the same load no matter who manufactures it, right?
My truck came with optional LT265/75R16 LRE's rated to 3415 pounds each. The door placard happens to just list the standard tires LT245/75R16 LRE rated to 3042 lbs each. I had a set of LT265/75R16 LRD studded snow tires for it on an another set of rims. These snow tires where rated to 3000 pounds at 65 pounds inflation. I run around 57 pounds in my front tires and 42 to 44 in the rear running around empty. So where am I going with this? The truck had a noticeable softer ride with the snow tires aired to the same load capacity. The LRD tires were much lighter and flexible compared to the LRE's. If I loaded the rear near its max of 6084 pounds with the LRD's (aired to max 65 pounds) tires there was a noticeable decrease in stability compared to the LRE's aired to handle the same 6082 GAWR.
So when we look at our trailers we have lots of wrappers that will hold up the weight of the trailer. LT235/85R16 LRE's are on the market that vary in weight from around 41 pounds Transforce to 59 pound for the R250. That is quite a spread. For ST235/80R16 LRE's vary from 35 for the "bunch of 35 pounders to 43 pounds to the Maxxis. Again quite a spread in weight.
When we look at the real world user feed back the Maxxis comes out as the only ST that gets more of less universal good reports out of the highway. We have already covered the LT's so I will not repeat that.
So the question for you is if it is just air that holds up the weight, then the vessel (tire) that we put this air into must play a big part in how well a tire does out on the highway, right? How do we know which is best other than reports from actually use?
Chris
