Carlisle trailer tires

Brian Jasper co. Ia

Well-known Member
Bias or radial? Blew one on the trailer today. With the DOT getting picky I"m thinking I"ll put trailer rated tires instead of the passenger tires it came with. Looks like there aren"t many choices for US made tires. I"m not going to buy any China junk. Anybody ever used Carlisle trailer tires? Quite a bit cheaper than Goodyear Marathon.
 
Almost every trailer tire is made in China. We have 235/85R16 14-ply Carlisle tires on our gooseneck and have had no trouble with them but we have not had any trouble with the cheap China made Akuret brand trailer tires on our car hauler, horse trailer, 2 boat trailers or utility trailer either. We run radials on on all our trailers and I would not recommend anything less... We always try and go up a load range too so the tires will carry the weight better and have even less stress on them. Dont know if it would make any difference with our luck on tires but are trailers are all stored inside and we always check tires pressure before using...
 
as long as the tire are rated for trailers. i have michelin tires on both my truck [265-75-16] and 5th goose-neck [235-85-16]. they have a stronger side wall to handle the load. both are 10-ply tires, you get what you pay for. a few extra bucks for safety might be worth it. my opinion
 
My tire jobber (+30 years exp) asked me how I was to use the trailer. He said if you can wear the tires out in 3 years go radial. Otherwise bias ply. I chose bias ply tires and after 4 years they are still like new. Just keep them inflated properly. Heat kills tires.

CT
 
I'd call around to the local tire shops and see if I could find a decent set of used truck tires. Put a set of good Coopers on a trailer a couple years ago, that I would not have hesitated to run on the truck. If they were the right size. All 4 mounted for $100, 225/75R16E.
 
Look for the Towmasters in the 13", 14" and 15" diameters...made by the same Chinese company that makes the Goodyear Marathon, but waaaay less expensive. Most Carlisle won't be domestically made either. I get these by the ocean container (1300 at a time) and I have had no failures.

In 16" sizes, you might as well go with LTs vs. STs. The Light Truck 10 plys (load range "e") are less prone to tread sep ( less nylon) than ST service trailer tires, and far more available.
 
also- almost everything in the size you mentioned will be radial...I haven't seen a bias in that size since Denman went out of business.
No real reason not to go radial- typically not even a price difference.
 
ST tires are made with a compound that doesn't dry out as fast when it's sitting, and the sidewalls may be a little stiffer.

As long as the tire has a load rating high enough for the load, meets minimum tread depth, and is properly inflated, with no cords exposed, what can they say?

There are all kinds of semi trailers running around with under-spec steer tires (tires on a steer axle have a deeper minimum tread depth than drive or trailer tires per DOT), drive tires that lost their mates, and recapped steer and drive tires out there. Are they going to take all those out of service? I don't think so.
 
(quoted from post at 02:56:03 07/02/11) ST tires are made with a compound that doesn't dry out as fast when it's sitting, and the sidewalls may be a little stiffer.


They guys I know that used to mix compound for Uniroyal disagree with you. The "trailer tire mix" was the left overs from all the other batches run. Think of trailer tire compound as analogous to pot metal. Anything left over was just tossed in. They ran trailer tires when the scraps piles started to overflow. I can't imagine that the products from China are better or produced differently than what Uniroyal used to make. Could be wrong, but...
 

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