Bigger vs smaller tires and wheels

Harder to notice on pickup, but bigger sidewall adds to fishtailing.
Once we had 2 identical cars in the family. One on original 16" wheels with 55 sidewalls, other on 18" with 35 sidewall.
For few days I drove both on the same day.
The bigger fishtailing on 16" was the first thing noticeable while switching the cars.
Than driving over a curb on 18" was adventure. Can't have it all.

06Fargo wrote:
As an example if you look at this chart Goodyear offers 16in Duratrac tires with up to 3800lbs load capacity:

Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac

It is a Great Mystery why 17in light truck tires seem to stop at 3100lbs +/-

We bought some take off 18in wheels for our outdated 3500 to get some 3800lbs capacity tires.

I ran 19.5's for a while - they are awesome when you load the truck heavy but less desirable handling and stiffness wise when running around empty. The steel construction is nice and quick for airing up and down vs fabric tires which ride better but are more balloon like...

Toyo 295-70-17 MT is rated for 3950lbs. But yeah the choices are very limited in 17s for some reason. Which is weird since 17s were the new 16 about 15 years ago. Prolly a greater percentage of 17s on the road on HD pickups right now than any other rim size, although 18s in particular and 20s are catching up.

The Mad Norsky wrote:
Some of the 20's do have a heavier load range tire.

Just saw where Nitto is releasing a tire late this month in 20 inch size, load range F

This looked interesting, however the "F" load tires do not have any higher load index than Nitto's and others' currently available tires.

Here's the spec sheet and the E load 295 65 20 still out classes it by several hundred pounds.
New Ridge Grappler
Just a marketing gimmick or something I don't understand about load ratings?

What would be cool is a 33-34" tire in 275/285 width with a 129 load index.

As an example if you look at this chart Goodyear offers 16in Duratrac tires with up to 3800lbs load capacity:

Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac

It is a Great Mystery why 17in light truck tires seem to stop at 3100lbs +/-

We bought some take off 18in wheels for our outdated 3500 to get some 3800lbs capacity tires.

I ran 19.5's for a while - they are awesome when you load the truck heavy but less desirable handling and stiffness wise when running around empty. The steel construction is nice and quick for airing up and down vs fabric tires which ride better but are more balloon like...

What Buzzcut said. My outfit seems to spend as much time on dirt roads as pavement and when in rough terrain the more sidewall the better off you are. No use to air down if there's no sidewall to the tire to increase footprint!

There are tires for 18" and 20" wheels that have higher weight ratings than you can get for a 16" wheel. That is the main benefit, that I can see, for going with the larger diameter wheels.

This is only a concern if you're trying to run a single rear wheel truck at a rear axle weight greater than 7500 lbs. If not, then there really is no reason to change from 16" wheels.

Even going to 18" or 20" wheels, you reach the max rear tire weight rating around 8000 lbs rear axle weight, so there isn't all that much weight carrying benefit (500 lbs) to the larger wheel size, unless you go with 19.5's or 22.5's.

biggest issue I have with some of the tire sizes is if you go off into the dirt and rocks. low pro puts the rims to close to the stuff that can damage it for my taste, plus less tire to spread out if you air down in the soft stuff. not so much an issue if your rig is a pavement queen.

Some of the 20's do have a heavier load range tire.

Just saw where Nitto is releasing a tire late this month in 20 inch size, load range F

20s have shorter sidewalls if the diameter is the same. All else considered, probably a bit stiffer sidewalls. The same thing is the case for 265 vs 285. 265s would be slightly shorter/stiffer sidewalls which will make handling bettter and more rough riding.

Maybe you are talking about putting 19.5 wheels onto your F250? It is a popular method of adding much tougher wheels and tires onto your truck.

I have them on mine, and they make a huge difference.