The China-Bomb debate Put to rest
Almost every week or more a thread appears with someone with a tire question. And just as predictably the China Bomb experts come out and start decrying all Chinese made tires. Then usually they re...
Forum Discussion
JIMNLIN wrote:
Before china made any of our tires ST tires we called them ST tire bombs......for good reasons.
Then ST tire production was moved to china and naturally morphed into china bombs.....for the same reasons.
Not all tires made in china expire at the rate the ST tire does. We have some very good china made P and LT and heavy truck tires out here on the road.
JMO....... Carlisle who is the oldest ST makers out here saw the light and redesigned their ST tires with the Radial Trail RH. The RH lost that rounded sidewall/tread profile and now looks more like a LT tire profile and its higher speed rating.
Now several (not all) ST tire brands have the higher speed rating. At some point maybe all ST tires will be the new redesign with the higher speed ratings and can run for 7-8 years at 50k-60k like the LT tire.
Once the ST tire has reached that goal then we can drop the china bomb tag. Only years in service and miles in service will tell the rest of the story but i'm betting companies like Carlisle and others can make a ST tire that can equal the LT and P tires we use on trailers.
Well this is just not true in my experience. My family owned a large trucking company...moving and storage, Van Lines Agents with branches from So. Calif. to N. Carolina. This was in the early 60's through the 70's.
We had commercial ST tires on most of our trailers. When the "Doughnuts" came out we had some of those. ST tires were made then to do what they do. That same technology and the lessons learned were flowed down to smaller versions. In those days they were all Bias ply tires of course, which had many more problems than the radials of today.
Europe had radials on virtually all of their cars by then...America was way behind and slow to adopt the new tire design. (as usual)
ST tire design has been a continuously updated technology, and both the commercial types and light vehicle types are much much better than ever.
It's peoples unchanging perceptions and mindsets that haven't kept pace with reality that brings us here to this discussion.
