bias ply tires

Yep, the replies to this thread are becoming "same old - same old". This thread is closed.
Barney

JIMNLIN wrote:
A independent tire testing report over the broad range as the power of the net input gives us, will never happen and has never happened in the tire industry.

Time for a reality check.

Right now out here in the real world we can take the benefit of many thousands of tire owners reports of tire issues and how those type of tire issues were eliminated over one independent testing report.
Remember testing and reports are paid for by someone.

You can't go by what owners say because-

1) The vast majority of owners speed beyond the limits of ST tires.
2) I have never seen someone check their inflation before leaving a campground.
3) Road hazards cause flats but owners refuse to believe this
4) Some say certain tires are junk even with improvements and good reports, because they used them twenty years ago and had issues.

So-no it will be the "same old-same old here when it comes to tires.

IMO too much emphasis is placed on why a tire or tire type or brand doesn't perform as advertised. Or why it failed when the tire owner did every thing by the books. I'm not concerned with tire brands/types failure percentage rates. As a trailer owner I'm looking for what tire type/brand eliminates having those types of issues.

Forums across the trailering world are current and provide most folks with all the ammo needed to make a informed decision for those looking for help.

The problem with the testing report provided by users of forums like this is that by and large you only get the negative reports. You don't hear anything from all the people that had no problems with a particular tire. This leads to a negative bias against popular brands - which may not fail frequently as a percentage, but appear to because there are so many of them in use.

Let's just assume for a minute that, on average, all tires are subjected to the same amount of good/bad care and therefore we can ignore things like over-loading, going too fast, under-inflation, road hazards, and so forth. (IMO, this is not something that we can assume, but let's do it anyway just to see what we can learn.)

Based on the information you've gleaned from forums, for each of the following please provide the failure rate as a percentage of the sample size, and the size of the sample (so that statistical significance can be calculated):

GoodYear Marathon
Carlisle
LT tires (of various brands)
Maxxis (Bias play and radial)
TowMax (and related brands) (Bias ply and radial)
Greenball (and related brands) (Bias ply and radial)

(add in other brands, as appropriate)

This sort of thing CAN and IS done with independent testing for other products. Not ST tires, unfortunately, though.

Consumer Reports gathers data from MANY people about the reliability of various cars, appliances, and the like. While anecdotal in nature, it includes both positive and negative reports (unlike the forums) and they get enough of it from their members to establish statistical significance. They don't report data for a particular model if they don't get enough responses for it to be statistically significant. They also do their own independent testing of these things, buying a number of samples from local retailers. They're funded by their members, not advertisers or other entities with an interest. Their reporting isn't perfect, but tends to be more accurate and useful than other sources.

They don't really do this for tires (they just test traction and handling, not reliability) and not at all for trailer tires. Either they or someone else could though, using the same model.

A independent tire testing report over the broad range as the power of the net input gives us, will never happen and has never happened in the tire industry.

Time for a reality check.

Right now out here in the real world we can take the benefit of many thousands of tire owners reports of tire issues and how those type of tire issues were eliminated over one independent testing report.
Remember testing and reports are paid for by someone.

Actually, no. It's not.

There are (at least) a couple of things that you need in order for the aggregate anecdotal information provided in forums like this (and others) to be useful:

1. The total number of tires of a particular brand (model, size, etc.) in service on all of the trailers (or other vehicles) of all members of the sites where failures are reported, along with the total number of failures reported. This is needed so that you can calculate a rough percentage failure rate, and determine whether or not there is enough data about a given brand (model, etc...) to be statistically significant.

2. The exact conditions under which the tire was used, and the exact conditions under which the tire failed. For each tire, this would need to include the age from manufacture, the number of service miles, the pressure at time of failure, the lowest and highest pressures at which the tire was ever used, the average pressure at which the tire was used, the weight being supported by the specific tire (not the weight of the trailer divided by 4) at the time of failure, the lowest and highest weights the tire was ever subjected to, and the average weight the tire was subjected to. There are probably a handful of other things too (temperature, road conditions, for instance).

Without these crucial pieces of information there is no way to know that a particular tire is better or worse than any other. It could just be, for instance, that the sort of people that buy cheap tires (or keep the OEM tires, which tend to be cheap) also tend to be the sort of people that don't weigh their trailer, don't load carefully, don't tow level, exceed the speed rating, and don't check their pressure. Whereas the sort of folk that are concerned enough to buy a particular brand of tire with a better reputation could be the sort of folk that do take care to insure they operate well within the tires' limits (or who have learned to do so).

I also wouldn't be surprised if some portion of the reported failures are actually caused by road hazards (punctures) - this isn't always obvious after a tire's been destroyed.

It could also be that a particular brand really is better. From the information provided on sites like this, even in aggregate, there is just no way to know which of these (or other possible scenarios) is really the case.

There's no substitute for scientifically rigorous independent testing.

atreis wrote:
How many Volvos have you seen sitting on the side of the road waiting for the two truck? How many Chevy's? Can you thus conclude that Chevys are junk and should be avoided at all cost? Of course not! There are simply far more of them on the road, so the probability of seeing one broken down is much greater.

The same COULD be true for Maxxis tires. There are simply far fewer of them in use than there are of the other brands. (Without independent testing, we only have the anecdotes on here and will never really know if they're actually more or less reliable.)

The power of the net is incredible.
Now were linked to dozens of trailering forums of all types (not just RV camping type trailers) but the boating industry all the different farm animal show and event trailering public/etc/commercial haulers with the same axle and tires/etc/even RV brand specific forums/etc and on and on.

When they all have the same type of issues with the same tire types or tire brands then we have the power to make an informed decision about any specific tire being used on a trailer out here.

IMO this type of input is many times better than any one person opinion or one so called independent testing services giving us their opinion.

How many Volvos have you seen sitting on the side of the road waiting for the two truck? How many Chevy's? Can you thus conclude that Chevys are junk and should be avoided at all cost? Of course not! There are simply far more of them on the road, so the probability of seeing one broken down is much greater.

The same COULD be true for Maxxis tires. There are simply far fewer of them in use than there are of the other brands. (Without independent testing, we only have the anecdotes on here and will never really know if they're actually more or less reliable.)

CKNSLS wrote:

blt2ski wrote:
Only 19 failures of Maxxis?!?!?! I think I have had more michiblows blow up in 30 some odd yrs of driving than that! I have yet to have a Cooper or Toyo blow up. Every other brand I have owned has had at least 1 blow out!

Marty

Yes Marty, but the Maxxis users as a whole are a very, very small group.

So a small group is better than this ONE user?!?!?!?!?

No barney, stiring the pot is fun at times.......LOLOLOL

Back to getting lights ready to go on the boat tomorrow! no round rubber thingies on it to blow up! good thing too!

Marty

Marty,
Quit stirring the pot! :B
Barney