Trailer tires
Trailer tires are kind of boring… they just carry the trailer and to a large extent are forgotten. Until they fail, and they can cause a lot of damage. Ever heard of the term “China Bomb”? That’s what a lot of folks in the trailer community call the cheap tires installed on most travel trailers. I leave it to your imagination what that means but it’s not good. Just google “china bomb tires” if you want to learn more.
How long to they last?
The first thing I learned about tires is how long they last, even if not used a lot. The experts make a lot of claims, a lot say 5 years but it also depends on the quality of the tire, and how many miles driven each year. Most of us who are not full time RVers will never put enough miles on the tires to actually wear them out! Do your research and find out what you are comfortable with when it comes to the life of your tires. My tires were 8 years old when I replaced them at the start of the season in June 2021, which meant I got just over seven years of use. The trailer sat quite a bit longer due to covid 19 that year. My trailer tires had a lot of tread left and looked fine even then, but it gave us peace of mind to replace them.
Watch your speed!
Trailer tires are “ST” type tires, there are some who swear by “LT” tires as well but never put regular car/SUV tires on! Another interesting thing I learned about ST tires is the speed rating. You can google about learning how to read your tire’s speed rating but it is common for trailer tires to not have a speed rating. Which means 65mph! This is the most common speed rating for trailer tires. How many times have you seen a trailer ripping by you on the freeway going a lot faster than that. It’s no wonder the tires blow up, combined with the poor quality chinese tires.
How much to inflate?
You need to run the correct pressure, especially watch for underinflation which can also lead to overheating, tire damage and possibly a blowout. Typically, the trailer manufacturer tells you the recommended tire pressure, and for the most part you can’t go wrong with that. There is another way to figure it out and it starts by knowing how much load you have on them. For many reasons it is important to know much you weight- go to a scale and get weighed with the load you typically carry. Here in BC it is best to go when the scales are closed, you can still drive on and read the display. Find out more info here about tire inflation and loading. From there go to the manufacturer of you tires website and look up their inflation chart. Any manufacturer worthy of your hard-earned money should have one. For example, for the goodyears tires I have you go here: Load/inflation table for goodyear RV tires.
What to buy?
So the next question is, what tires did I end up buying? Obviously I didn’t want those cheap chinese tires, so I did some research to find tires manufactured right here in North America. And I only found one, the Goodyear Endurance trailer tire – it comes with great reviews! I ended here buying them at Fountain Tire. I got lots of great advice from this guy who recommends these tires highly – Love Your RV. The manufacturer link is here. Right now as of this writing in December 2021 with all the supply chain challenges you’ll likely have difficulty getting your hands on these tires as I think demand is quite high.
Manufacturer Date Codes
Here’s some info about reading tire date codes: Determining the Age of a Tire | Tire Rack You can see my tire has a date code of “1821”, which is the 18th week of 2021. Not bad since I bought the tires in early June. I asked the tire shop to try and not sell me old tires, but he couldn’t guarantee me anything unfortunately since he had to order them in from the warehouse. I’d say he did good though, I was happy the tires were quite new!
Load and Speed Ratings
You can read in detail about load & speed ratings here: How to Read Speed Rating, Load Index & Service Descriptions | Tire Rack The goodyear endurance tire apparently is load index 117 (2833 lbs) and speed code of N. Trailer tires without a rating are assumed to be 65mph unless otherwise stated: Do Trailer Tires Have Speed Ratings | etrailer.com This tire is Load Range E with a maximum inflation of 80 PSI. The original tire was Load Range D with a maximum inflation of 65PSI. And the information sticker on the trailer says to inflate to 65PSI. So that means I was pretty much running them at their maximum capacity as my trailer is usually loaded to the maximum. I still inflate to 65PSI as per Keystone’s recommendations, but now I am not running at maximum capacity. I have heard from others that upgrading the tires this way ca result in a stiffer ride, but we haven’t noticed a scrambled egg kitchen any worse than usual. Our kitchen is in the back which apparently gets the worst of it.
