RV Tire Safety
with RV tire expert Roger Marble
There are many posts on how to learn the calendar age of tires by reading the DOT serial number and “decoding” the last four digits to learn the week and year a tire was made. But just knowing the calendar age doesn’t tell you the useful life of a tire.
Some folks think ten years or longer is OK; others think it is a good practice to change every two years. We each have different operating conditions which affects the “functional age” of our tires.
We recently took a poll which asked: “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Tires age out before they wear out?'” Here are the results:
I was pretty sure that many of you had heard the phrase, but now I have the numbers.
If you participated, Thanks!
Read more from Roger Marble on his blog at RVtiresafety.net.
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I’ve heard it, and I believe it, but where I disagree with most people is their hard and fast number of years before replacement. I think they are often too low. If you care for your tires, keep them properly inflated, cover them when the RV is outside and being used, then store it indoors when not in use, IN MY EXPERIENCE, they last longer. I’m not saying that is true for everyone.
Understand. I think the suggestion for maximum life for motorhomes of 10 years and 5 years for trailers is reasonable. 10 doesn’t mean keep till 10 but that it’s better to not use after 10. Yes it is possible to get more life out of a tire than 5 or 10 years but the odds are against you and the negative consequences can be costly
Roger, I hope you are following this up with an article on how to determine the useful tires on our own RVs.