CapriRacer wrote:
OldGreaser wrote:
The trailer manufacturer has a challenge to compete. If he makes better tires part of his base offering, his cost & price are higher than the competitors. His purchasing volume on a given model or series is not high enough to get a huge discount on tires. A significant percentage of potential customers know little if anything about different tires & quality. Another percentage of potential customers know something about tires & quality, but the marginal tires meet their needs, i.e. they don't plan to travel far and expect to replace tires based on age instead of travel wear. In either case, sales will be lost due to his rig being 'more expensive'. It would be very helpful if the manufacturers or dealers offered an enhanced wheel/tire option and made the benefits of the basic vs enhanced selection clear to the potential customer.
I just did a quick look and the retail price difference between an ST225/75R15 Load Range D with a wheel and an ST235/80R16 Load Range E, also with a wheel,was about $60.
Does this mean that $300 is the difference between someone buying and not buying a particular vehicle?
There is more to it than that. The ST225/75R15 Load Range D will be a 6 lug wheel. The ST235/80R16 LRE will be 8 lug. It is possible to get a 6 lug 16 inch wheel that will handle the 80 psi (I put them on my trailer when I upgraded to the BFGCTA), but that is not a combination that is commonly available to the industry already mounted. The difference in price is going to be more on the order of $500 to $600 IMO. All other things being equal, $500 to $600 will make the difference.
What I have noticed over the past year reading these forums is that the number one thing people look for in an RV is a particular floor plan. The next important thing is TVs and a fireplace. Note that was a plural on TVs.
The irony of it all is that until RVs started coming from the factory with TVs, the most technologically complex thing on it was the tires, and nobody realized it. To most, the tires are just those round black things under there that they don't care about until they start going pop, pop, pop . . . and pop. And when they do that, the problem was the brand. They just need to know what brand to put on that will hold up and don't care what makes a tire hold up. This thread has dealt with a lot of the technical aspects of why or why not a particular tire will hold up. Yet you can read several posts in this thread where the poster has no interest in that information -- just tell them what tires they should put on their brand XXXX model YYYY -- like as if there is a book out there that has every trailer make and model in it and what tires you can put on it (like it were an automobile).
