How to rotate dually tires

[bobbolotune]

The manual for my 2016 Ram 3500 dually shows tire rotation only side to side. Specifically, switch the driver front and the passenger front tires, switch the outer rear tires driver to passenger, and switch the inner rear tires driver to passenger. The picture showing how to rotate shows no rotation back to front.

The manual really doesn’t explain why not to rotate back to front. It does say the rear tires must be matched for wear. Possibly the concern is that if tires are moved back to front that wear won’t match.

The manual does explain why it says to keep the inner rear wheels inner and outer rear wheels outer. It is for the Tire Pressure Information System. To quote, “The Tire Pressure Information System uses unique sensors in the inner rear wheels to help identify them from the outer rear wheels, because of this, the inner and outer wheel locations cannot be switched”.

With my last tires it turned out that I had an alignment problem (now fixed) that I wasn’t aware of until I noticed that the tires were wearing unevenly. Since I was rotating the front tires only side to side both front tires wore unevenly on the outer edges. By the time I noticed this the tires were unsafe and I had to replace the tires probably 6,000 or 8,000 miles early.

I had to have the tires replaced during a trip. I ended up at a tire shop in a rural area that seemed to have plenty of experience with duallys. He told me to ignore the manual. He said that they rotate back to front all the time. He says they take the best looking tires from the back and put them on the front.

If I had rotated like that it would have stalled the uneven wear that killed my last tires.

I am about to get the new tires rotated for the first time. I have been telling the mechanic to follow the manual. I am now totally unclear what to do. It would seem that only rotating side to side in the same positions really isn’t going to help much because every other rotation the tires end up back in the same location.

It could be what the manual says that if you don’t keep the inner tires inner and outer tires outer it will confuse the Tire Pressure Information System. But really how important is that? It is nice to have the tire pressures in the instrument cluster because I look at the pressures frequently as I drive, much more often than I would find myself checking tire pressure manually. But I don’t care much about location. If a tire is low (something that actually has never happened yet) I can find out which one by checking the tires manually.

Does anyone know the correct answer to this question? A set of dually tires is expensive so I want to take care of the new tires.

[mkirsch]

How many sets of fronts did you go through with the same set of rears, though? Two? Three?

Now you've got four tires with tons of wear left in them, but have aged out and need to be replaced!

So instead of rotating and only needing 6 tires, you've bought 8, or possibly 10 tires total, AND had to discard four tires with tons of tread on them.

The whole premise of your argument is that tire rotation is only to compensate for alignment issues, but it isn't. You yourself have admitted that the fronts wear more quickly than the rears. Doesn't it make sense to spread the wear across all six tires and replace them all with fresh rubber at once?

Quite frankly, I've seen 4x4 trucks with steer tires on the front, and they may as well not have 4x4. Worthless treadless wheels spinning uselessly on top...

[BigToe]

This has been an excellent thread on dually tire rotation.

A consideration that could use more emphasis is tire type and axle application.

Steer tires, with closed shoulders, relatively solid and unbroken ribs, and relatively straight circumferential grooves, are optimized for directional stability (less wandering) and cornering durability (closed shoulders).

Drive tires, with open shoulders, laterally divided lugs, zig zagging grooves, and staggered tread blocks, are optimized for traction. The open shoulders give the tire bite into soft terrain.

Even in 4WD duallies, the vast majority of the driving in both time and mileage is actually done in 2WD. More often than not, a 4WD dually will also have some type of limited slip rear differential, which reduces the need to shift into 4WD in many situations. So there is a good usage case for having drive tires on the rear drive axle, and steer tires on the front axle, even when the front axle is driven... because the front axle isn't usually driven that much.

In this case, a back to front tire rotation is not advised. The four drive tires on the back can be left alone, with just the two steer tires rotated side to side. The spare tire can be an all position tire, or a steer tire, and can be rotated in with the steer tires (if the truck has all steel wheels).

If the purpose of tire rotation is to "save money" by distributing uneven steer axle tire across all 6 or 7 operating tires under the guise of stretching the useful life of the tires... that may not actually be what happens.

If the alignment is "off" to the point of imposing irregular wear on the tires, and all 6 tires are given one or two tours of duty on the front axle, then all 6 tires will have to be replaced. This thread already covered that ground.

This thread also covered the fact that moving all 6 tires through a faulty aligned front axle simply masks the root problem... the alignment that is causing premature wear on the tires. At today's tire prices, it is cheaper to fix the root cause, rather than expose all the tires on the truck to the fault.

But what this thread did not yet emphasize enough is the operational benefit of having dedicated drive tires that are optimized for traction, and bear no steering duties at all; and having dedicated steer tires that are optimized for steering and directional control, and have only a limited and brief call to duty for drive traction.

By leaving the rear drive axle tires alone, and only rotating the fronts side to side, even in the most severe off alignment scenario, only 2 tires will need to be periodically replaced, rather than all 6.

I have a 4WD dually. A decade ago, I bought a set of four drive tires, mounted them on the rear axle, and never rotated them. Now 10 years and 40,000 miles later, the inner duals measure 14/32 tread depth, and the outer duals measure 13/32 tread depth.

A commercial tire tread depth gauge was used to determine these measurements, which were taken at the centermost lugs in the middle of each tire, with the tires and wheels dismounted from the truck and laying flat on the pavement.

When measuring tread depth at the outer shoulders of the tires they measured at 16/32nds, but that might be due to the beveled taper of the underlying casing.

Tire pressures were within 2 psi of each other (between 83-85, on load range G tires rated for up to 110 psi). One might assume that more wear on the outer duals implies that the inner duals must have been underinflated, but the inner dual had 85.

My thinking is that the outer duals are subject to slightly more wear due to being exposed to more turning and cornering scrub. The 1/32nd difference in wear observed occurred over a 40,000 mile period spanning 10 years of time, with dually pair couplets that were never rotated.

From this observation, I might try rotating the inner duals with the outer duals, by crossing the inside right to the outside left, and the outside right with the inside left, such that the tire rotational direction is maintained. This is with all steel wheels.

Obviously, at 10 years, these tires have aged out long before they have worn out. The goal of rotating tires is ultimately to save money, yet the savings realized by not rotating the rear dually pairs with the fronts (and not having to pay for dismounting and remounting tires on and off rims for those who run aluminum outers) likely leads to more money in the pocket, as well as a better driving experience from dedicated drive tires that would not be suitable as steer tires.

[JRscooby]

Grit dog wrote:

JRscooby wrote:

All these signs of excessive tire wear can be corrected with a adjustment between the driver's ears.

Whatever bud.

Don't guess driving style can influence MPG either? All the wear you describe is tire slip, controlled by driver.
Had a driver on truck for couple of years. 3 identical trucks doing same work. His did not need brakes as often, did not need tires as often, did not burn as much fuel. Bought a better truck for him, parked the real fuel hog I was driving, took over his old truck. Fuel bill went up to match others. After a month or so I started to change my driving style.
After that the only vehicles that showed tire slip where the 396 Auto and 327 4 speed El Caminos. Smiles per gallon.

[Grit_dog]

JRscooby wrote:

All these signs of excessive tire wear can be corrected with a adjustment between the driver's ears.

Whatever bud.

[JRscooby]

Grit dog wrote:


Example, after some wear, you notice the feathering of the rear tires on the leading edges? Easy to feel the tread feathering at the sipes in the tread.
This is not a problem but simply wear from the treads gripping while accelerating. If you swap the rears side to side, it reverses the rotation and corrects this deficiency, until they begin to feather the opposite direction.
In general, front tires feather the opposite direction as rears as they are not drive tires, but they do more braking. On a srw, a simple front to back, same side rotation achieves the same goal as above. Plus, if the fronts or rears are wearing faster, it moves the tire with more tread depth to the higher wear position. AND it gets the front tires which are more prone to other wear characteristics being the heavier axle in an empty truck and also subject to steering forces onto the back which serves to "flatten" and correct these deficiencies.
Then of course there's additional treadwear on rwd 1 wheeler peelers sometimes and you have to get that right rear tire moved around to not have excessive overall wear on 1 tire before the others.

Or simply put agian, read the tires. They'll tell you if rotting would benefit and where they should be placed.

All these signs of excessive tire wear can be corrected with a adjustment between the driver's ears.

[Grit_dog]

^ Big thumbs up.
And to your point, tire rotation is subjective and situational.
If you "read" how your tires are wearing (not some extreme case of misalignment, broken belts and wheels out of balance), you can see how rotating them will benefit tire life, ride and noise.

Example, after some wear, you notice the feathering of the rear tires on the leading edges? Easy to feel the tread feathering at the sipes in the tread.
This is not a problem but simply wear from the treads gripping while accelerating. If you swap the rears side to side, it reverses the rotation and corrects this deficiency, until they begin to feather the opposite direction.
In general, front tires feather the opposite direction as rears as they are not drive tires, but they do more braking. On a srw, a simple front to back, same side rotation achieves the same goal as above. Plus, if the fronts or rears are wearing faster, it moves the tire with more tread depth to the higher wear position. AND it gets the front tires which are more prone to other wear characteristics being the heavier axle in an empty truck and also subject to steering forces onto the back which serves to "flatten" and correct these deficiencies.
Then of course there's additional treadwear on rwd 1 wheeler peelers sometimes and you have to get that right rear tire moved around to not have excessive overall wear on 1 tire before the others.

Or simply put agian, read the tires. They'll tell you if rotting would benefit and where they should be placed.

[bobbolotune]

I am the original poster.

I got the truck back from service today, so it is already a done deal. I decided to follow the manual and do side to side rotation only. Dealer charged me $100 to rotate the 6 tires.

Some good advice in the responses.

Someone asked, is it worth the cost to pay someone to rotate? Will you get the $ back in tire life? Tires may age out before needing to be changed anyway. Good point.

Or if the front tires wear out before the rears I can replace only 2 tires not 6 tires. The responses have confirmed that the tire guy (see my original post) was a sales job saying I couldn’t replace only the front tires. But I don’t regret replacing all 6 because I was running the original Nexen tires. Replaced with quality Michelins (had to argue with the tire store about this he wanted to sell me his cheap value brand) and the difference in handling was immediately obvious. But now that I have the tires that I want, if I need to replace only the front in the future I can buy 2 new Michelins.

I am concluding it is extreme what the RAM manual says to rotate with every oil change (which is 8,000 miles). But in this case actually it was 14,000 miles since I got the new tires and this is the first rotation. I don’t regret doing it. Maybe a good idea to do at least one rotation on brand new tires. But I'm not sure if I will continue to pay to rotate the back tires. For sure not every 8,000 miles. But it might be worth still rotating the front tires once in a while since the cost should be minimal.

From the responses. I am thinking rotating back to front might be risky because you can end up with uneven tires on the dually rears. In other words, the manual may be correct. But I know some responses don’t agree and do rotate back to front.

People saying it isn’t worth rotating the rear tires because they will last long enough without it make sense.

Thank you for all the responses!

[Grit_dog]

Couple comments.
1. I thought this thread was about trucks. I generally have to rotate far less on cars and 2wd trucks with pavement princess tires.
2. I did qualify rotating as needed and based on tire wear.
3. Not all tread cupping is a result of misalignment or bad shocks. Plenty of it is a result of style of tire (staggered tread tires like mud tires being the worst), driving habits, load, type of road and type of vehicle. Tread feathering and eventually what I'd consider cupping is virtually inevitable on any steer tire with an open shoulder. Big truck guys like some of you know that, whether you try to play it off of not (scooby). Or did I miss the boat on why heavy highway steer tires are always close shoulder tires, despite the disadvantage they provide traction wise? Nope, it's because they last longer.

[JRscooby]

time2roll wrote:

Grit dog wrote:
And tread cupping on the front.

Usually balance or weak shocks. Or rotate them to the back and flatten them out.

Of course, you can just rotate the tires around, get equal cupping on all 6. And when you put that cupped tire next to a good as dual it will have a smaller average diameter, so you can watch the tread disappear in a few hundred miles.

[time2roll]

Grit dog wrote:
And tread cupping on the front.

Usually balance or weak shocks. Or rotate them to the back and flatten them out.

[JimK-NY]

Grit dog wrote:


While I may be inclined to agree with you with respect to rear duals, you are insinuating “all” wheels and all vehicles……
All I can say is folks ignorant about tire rotations hopefully don’t read this and believe what you said.
Do some of you just write opposites stuff to watch what ensues or actually believe it?

And bobbolotune don’t be gullible. Your “tire guy” is a ripoff.

I used to commute 70 miles a day. I went 180K miles on my Honda CRV before I retired and sold it. No tire rotations ever. I was on my third set of tires with no issues. My Izuzu went 290K miles when the tranny died. No tire rotations. I kept gas mileage and all the maintenance miles on that vehicle. I got 80K on one set of Michelins and about 60K on some off brand my local shop recommended. Average for tire changes was in between at about 70K. I did have to replace one additional tire because of a puncture.

I did some rotations on my SRW truck camper. With my first truck, I had a front right tire with a sidewall cut. That was at a bit less than 30K. I put the rear tires on the front and got a new pair from the rear axle. At about 50K, the fronts were gone and I again moved the rears forward and got a new pair for the rear axle.

So no tire rotations but I did buy tires in pairs and keep the newest on the rear axle. I did the reverse with my Honda Accord, front wheel drive. I blew a rear tire due to metal in the road. I put the new pair on the front and moved the fronts to the rear.

Other than moving tires when replacing damaged tires, I haven't done a tire rotation in 50 years or more. I think I had two alignments in all of those years. Once my wife hit a big pothole and needed 2 rims and an alignment. When my shop replaced the Accord tires, they told me I needed an alignment. I think they just ripped me off because there was no uneven tire wear, just road damage. I did it anyway.

It has also been at least 30 years since I gave up with the 3000 mile oil changes. I also don't follow the dealer recommendation for severe use. Same with my diesel. It is made to tow so I follow normal service with oil changes every 15K miles.

[Grit_dog]

time2roll wrote:
x 2

Not surprising...

[JRscooby]

JimK-NY wrote:
I stopped doing routine tire rotations decades ago. I have not had any issues with premature or irregular tire wear. If there is a problem with the suspension, then rotations might just cover it up. Instead get the alignment or other issue fixed.

The idea of routine tire rotations should die along with the 3000 mile oil change.

BLASPHAMY! HERITIC! BLASPHAMY!

1969, 1 of the instructors at GM training center got in trouble for telling future techs (called mechanics back then LOL) the reason to make sure tires where rotated was to hide factory mis-alignment until the warranty ran out.
Tire companies love people that rotate their tires, because instead of 1 wearing a little, then car fixed the same problem might sell 10-15 tires.
Before the All Season Radial, would "rotate" the back 2 tires on the car twice a year/ snow tires. (Pickups, every spring the "snow tires" changed into "mud grips")

[time2roll]

JimK-NY wrote:
I stopped doing routine tire rotations decades ago. I have not had any issues with premature or irregular tire wear. If there is a problem with the suspension, then rotations might just cover it up. Instead get the alignment or other issue fixed.

The idea of routine tire rotations should die along with the 3000 mile oil change.

x 2

[Grit_dog]

JimK-NY wrote:
I stopped doing routine tire rotations decades ago. I have not had any issues with premature or irregular tire wear. If there is a problem with the suspension, then rotations might just cover it up. Instead get the alignment or other issue fixed.

The idea of routine tire rotations should die along with the 3000 mile oil change.

While I may be inclined to agree with you with respect to rear duals, you are insinuating “all” wheels and all vehicles……
All I can say is folks ignorant about tire rotations hopefully don’t read this and believe what you said.
Do some of you just write opposites stuff to watch what ensues or actually believe it?

And bobbolotune don’t be gullible. Your “tire guy” is a ripoff.