by Gamerancher » 17 Jan 2017, 10:58 am
I got the best mileage ever out of a set of Goodyear MT/R's on my F-250, 90,000+km. These tyres had done an off-road ( i.e no road ) trip across the Great Sandy desert which resulted in numerous punctures from driving through scrub. These were repaired, ( patched ) a couple had to be tubed, and then continued life doing normal duties. They did a lot of gravel road miles, a lot of weight carrying and a lot of towing. When it came time to replace them, that particular tyre was no longer available and I opted for a set of A/T's that were recommended by the tyre shop. These then wore out completely in 30,000km. Needless to say I changed brands. Current tyres are Generals, made in the U.S, A/T's and need replacing now at about 70,000km. At least half of that was on gravel roads.
The minimum rating on tyres for this vehicle is 1550kg/tyre plus the speed rating. This cuts out most of the "cheap" brands as they don't have high enough rated tyres.
The life of a tyre depends on a lot of variables, rubber compound, case construction, tread design & depth, vehicle type and operating conditions. For general use, the more rubber in contact with the road the longer the tyre will last. Some A/T's have tread designs that are quite open an can actually have less rubber in contact with the road than a more aggressive Mud Terrain. Some A/T's have a very shallow tread depth which equals less milage. A "soft" case will deform more under heavy loads than a more heavily constructed case that stands up to the weight, again, increasing wear. Be very wary of tyres that have attributes like high "comfort" and low noise ratings if you are after tyres that need to work and last.