The last time I needed new tires was at the beginning of COVID-19 when I purchased a full set of Michelins for my Elantra Lyft vehicle. Over six years with Lyft I put on 32,000 miles in the slowest year and 68,000 in my most prolific year which isn't something that is mentioned when someone signs up for driving rideshare. I usually ran the tires into the ground in order to get every last mile from a set before heading to Discount Tire for the next set. And I know what you're thinking, that one should never drive those last two thirty-seconds of an inch as it could be dangerous. But while that may be in accordance with accepted standards of tire maintenance it is not legally true. As you can see from the suggestions by Discount Tire, their recommendation is to replace at 4/32 of an inch. But what are the US regulations for tires? For starters, almost all states agree that the minimum tread depth of automotive tires should be at least 2/32 of an inch. That means you can legally drive your vehicle until the tires reach that depth. When I drove my Elantra down to the wear bars that clearly show when you reach that limit, I did notice a difference in how they drove on wet roads. I never drove when there was a downpour of rain anyway, and I just drove a bit slower and more carefully. I never had any issues in those final weeks, although the tire guy pretty much freaked out that I would do such a thing as I asked about new tires.
Another consideration is the age of the tires and again there isn't a specific tire age or expiration law that is applicable. They recommend replacing tires older than six years. However, they will continue to service the tire for ten years. The average person who drives between 10,000 and 15,000 miles each year will run out their tread before reaching ten years. Those who drive just a few thousand miles a year may assume they can run their tires for twenty or thirty years without a problem, but the rubber will harden and crack which could cause a split or blowout while driving. I would suggest you check the tires out closely if you plan to drive past the ten year suggestion.
As much as I am a car guy, I never used to get all that worked up when it came time to replace tires. I think most times I followed the suggestions by the tire guy (or gal, though I've never had one). It is quite possible I replaced too early at times and missed an extra six months or a year of use. Even at Discount Tire I'm finding I don't trust their measurements. They now have an app on their phone that allows them to take a picture of the tire tread and give them the tread depth. I have one of those much more accurate gauges that actually measures the tread depth. I was often quoted between 1/32" and 2/32" less than I measured on the tires. So this recent journey to the tire shop was at my choice with my measurements, and I decided to take the Jeep in when it hit 3/32" since it was getting a little bit squirrelly on the road.
You can get one of these gauges for just a few bucks
I have mentioned Discount Tire several times as that has been the most convenient location for the past dozen years or so. Before that I bought cheap tires (I know that now) from Walmart and Sam's Club. Both of those tire stores did an admirable job for me as I didn't give it much thought. Get a new set of tires and good to go. I do remember not being as careful then to rotate and balance those tires and I did have some issues with tires not wearing evenly. This time as I planned a few months for tire research purposes (as opposed to just deciding to go to the tire store one day) I checked out as many of the shops as I could find. Firestone Tires, Pep Boys, Mavis Tires, Tires Plus, Mr. Tire, and Costco were some of the more known names I decided charged too much. I didn't even check on Bill's and Mac's place as I wanted a more national presence for when I'm travelling and need tire service. A few years ago I had the unfortunate experience of having a flat tire numerous times and I had to pay all those times as new car tires have no ongoing maintenance included. So that left me with Walmart, Sam's Club, and Discount Tire. I would consider that list as Good, Better, and Best in the order I put them, and since I had experience with all of them I gave them all a chance.
When I began looking online for what was available, I decided I'd start a spreadsheet to help remember all that information. That helped me in comparing the tires with each other. Those three tire stores also had a different way of offering their tires. Walmart had the absolute lowest price for the lower end tires, which featured a low installation cost but no Road Hazard warranty. You can buy the extra Road Hazard coverage for $40 when buying a set of 4 but it was a more limited warranty. At Sam's Club they started in the midrange of tire quality so there wasn't a bad tire even offered. Their intallation cost was $80 for a set of four tires, basically the same cost as Walmart since their installation included an extra cost for the disposal fee of the old tires. It you're a Plus Member at Sam's Club you get installation for half price, meaning only $40, so that helped with the overall price point. If you wait until Black Friday (and perhaps some other times of the year as well) Plus Members can get free installation bringing the cost down even more. Sam's offered free Road Hazard warranty which saved $40 when compared with Walmart, and some of their higher priced tires included "instant savings" of up to $100. Then there was Discount Tire that charged more every day but could be counted on to offer up some kind of savings every day, though sometimes not on tires you were interested in. My brother-in-law Bob asked me for help choosing a tire and I found a Pirelli tire that just had it's price lowered to that of cheap tires, probably closing out on carrying these tires. It was such a bargain he went right down and snapped them up. The installation at Discount Tire is $110 for a set of tires so right off the bat it was $70 higher than Sam's Club for me for the same tire. So I spent a few days filling in my spreadsheet with 15-20 different tires and when there was a tire I especially liked I made a column for each of the three tire places. After a time a pattern emerged.
Stopping distance on wet roads
It didn't take me long to figure out that Walmart was mainly good for the cheaper tires like the Douglas brand (made by Goodyear), and the Douglas All Season and a Goodyear Reliant were actually Walmart only brands. I had several sets of Douglas tires and liked them well enough. Back then I put on Douglas tires for the Chevette that cost $10 apiece. They were phenomenal around town and I didn't take that on the highway. While those weren't bad tires I was surprised that I could find much better tires for just a little bit more in cost. So I crossed Walmart off my list. Discount Tire also had a few tires that only they carried but they were usually a couple hundred more than they should be. If there was a tire carried by both Sam's Club and Discount Tire then they brought their down closer to Sam's. However, I eventually discovered that Discount Tire offered their "Our Low Price Promise" in which they will not be undersold. So that's what worked for me. I picked out two or three of the most promising tires that they had in common and kept an eye on the instant saving, rebates, and other offers. The tire I settled on had a better price at Sam's Club and I went in to the local Discount Tire to ask for the price-matching. That gave me the best of both worlds as I have had the best service with Discount Tire wherever I've gone. Jonathan wanted to get tires a month after I did and I found him a great deal on an even better tire. But it does take time to stay current with prices. I discovered that prices went up and down daily so a tire you're checking out will change from day to day. I wateched them go up and then there was an "instant savings" that showed up so it wasn't really a price change at all. But between Sam's Club and Discount Tire one should have no problem finding a decent deal. And if it's possible you should try and buy your tires around Black Friday if you want the best deal.
You don't think about the tires all that much until they get squirelly
Okay, so it sounds like you just check prices and then pull the trigger, right? Well, not exactly. I also came up with a process for putting only the better tires on my list. I had several performance specs that I listed for each tire. Those were very helpful in finding the better tires. Here's my list, in no particular order:
1. "Best in Category" - Tire Rack, one of the best online tire resources, also sells tires to those who wish to purchase their tires online, have them shipped, and then get them installed at their favorite local tire shop. To me this seemed the highest cost of any of the options I checked but often you can find higher-end tires not offered at the local dealers. Discount Tire actually acquired Tire Rack a few years back which give Discount Tire access to even better tires, and give Tire Rack a greater market. If you do an online search with "Tire Rack" and your chosen tire name together, you may find a tire review and extra ratings along with it. I say "may" because they only list the better tires and I decided if I didn't find a tire with those ratings on Tire Rack I simply wouldn't consider that tire. It offered six categories of traction, comfort, and treadware and then narrows it down do a number grade with 100% as the highest. There were enough well-priced tires in the 90% to 100% category that I also decided to stick with those. My Cooper Endeavor Plus tire rated a 95% and Jon's Goodyear Assurance MaxLife rated a 92% on the Tire Rack scale. Both of us are very pleased.
2. "Treadwell Tire Guide" - Discount Tire uses this rating system on their website, with all of their driver testing at Treadwell Research Park at their test track in Pearsall, Texas. Similar to Tire Rack there is a wealth of data available in comparing tires with about ten graphs. But the simpler result from this is the "Good, Better, Best" scale they use in comparing tires. Here is the official language of this metric from the Discount Tire website: "Treadwell uses new tire testing and real world tire life date to provide the most unbiased recommention for you. Over time, most tires experience a falloff in performance (e.g. wet/snow stopping distance, wet/snow handling, noise) as they wear. In general, GOOD tires will falloff in performance faster as they wear when compared to BEST and BETTER tires." Every one of their tires lists one of those ratings. Combine this with the best in category rating percentage in the 90's and you're getting a much better tire. I chose the BEST rating with my 95% tire and Jon wanted the BETTER rating with his 92% tire.
Every tire had these three UTQG ratings
3. "Uniform Tire Quality Grading" - UTQG is the abbreviation for the Uniform Tire Quality Grading system created by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It measures treadwear, traction, and temperature resistance of a tire in a controlled environment. The UTQG rating can be found on the sidewall of most passenger vehicle tires. This test system is designed to give consumers an “apples-to-apples” measurement to compare tires when shopping. There are three ratings list on each tire: treadware, traction, and temperature. So if your tire says "400 A A" that means you have a 400 treadware rating, an A traction rating, and an A temperature rating. The letters can include a B or a C which mean not as good as A. The higher the number of the treadware rating means the miles your tire will last. These number roughly translate to mileage, so by adding a couple zeroes to the treadware rating you will get a rough idea of the mileage you may get. For this 400 rating you should get around 40,000 miles down to the wear bars of 2/32 of an inch. However, some manufacturers add a treadware warranty number either higher or lower than that as they have tested that tire themselves and came up with their own rating. By comparing both the UTQG number rating and the tire manufacturer's warranty rating you get get an idea of where you'll end up. I never found any tires in the 300's nor did I find any in the 900's (not saying there aren't any even though I looked) so figure you'll find most all tires between 400 and 900. My tires had a "680 A A" rating with a warranty of 65,000 miles and Jon's had an "820 A B" rating with a warranty of 85,000 miles. Both were exceptional.
4. "Tread Depth" - This was one that I put a greater emphasis on, your mileage may vary. When you buy a brand new tire it starts with a specific tread depth, from 9/32" to 12/32" in my research. Again, there may be higher or lower numbers available but I didn't see them, and I looked. In general the lower priced tires had the 9/32" and 10/32" tire depths, and the better higher-mileage tires had 11/32" or 12/32" depths. Using my Cooper Endeavor Plus tires as an example with its 11/32" tire depth, you would get no more than 9/32" of use during your 65,000 miles or 7,222 miles per every 1/32 of an inch. The Goodyear Maxlife would get 8,500 miles for each 1/32" of its tread life as it started with 12/32 of an inch. I don't understand why all tires don't have 12/32" tread but I imagine it costs a bit less to produce a tire with only 9/32" and that helps the budget tires.
5. "Miles Per Dollar" - I started using this reference point later on in my spreadsheet research. Discount Tire used that term but it seems to mean something different than the way I use it. This one is quite simple. Take the mileage warranty number from the manufacturer (or the UTQG number with two added zeroes if there is no warranty mileage number) and divide by the final out-the-door price of your tire purchase and you'll come up with a number on either side of 100. What I found interesting was that a MPD rating of 100 seemed like a decent every day price for any particular tire. If it's less than 100 then it's not as good a value. In other words, it may be a fine tire in its own right but it's priced higher than it should be. If it's higher than 100 it's a better value. I looked for the higher number at the best price with the other highest specs I could find. In my research this number was as low as 52 for Jon's OEM Yokohama tires which were outrageously priced for only 40,000 mile tires, and as high as 133 for Jon's new purchase of the Goodyear Assurance MaxLife tires with an 85,000 warranty. My Coopers were at 112 which wasn't too bad since I was going for the lowest cost BETTER tire with all the other higher ratings.
Use a tire installer with a good reputation
In the end we are not all going to be able to find a fantastic deal in record time when we suffer a blowout or two and need tires quickly. It was at the beginning of my research that I found what seemed to be a bunch of tires at amazing prices back in February 2025, and I could have gone with any one of them. I hesitated and that sale ended and I missed the chance. I could have gotten those MaxLife tires like Jon did at the same 133 MPD but in the end I saved $50 or $60. Here's what I think about that. Sometimes there's a better reason for buying more quickly than waiting and possibly spending less. We rarely find the best price every time we search for one and sometimes it's just better to grab it when you need it. But if you can wait for a couple weeks you can at least do some of this research like I have and you will still probably get a pretty good deal.
As it turns out my wife and I are taking four trips this year following the purchase of the tires. It was at our last trip that we were driving up and down the Tennessee mountains, with a bit of snow and ice on the roads, and I discovered that squirrelly feeling in the tires. For Jon it was that he was spinning his tires on the rain-soaked roads when accelerating and braking. Somehow it didn't seem all that important to eke out a couple thousand more miles when you might be putting yourselves and your family in harm's way. Plus, now I've got some spreadsheets all ready to go in six years or so!
As always,
Artander
(aka David Andreasen)
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