tires getting low milage due to hi tread wear

[scadaman29325]

We have 3 "meter reading" trucks here at the city and the tires only last about 12,000 miles, even with front end alignments they seem to quickly wear on the edges of the tires.

Is this typical for pickups in this type of industry.

TIA

[okie-chevy-man]

check your tire pressure. what kind of tires do you have? what kind of shop do you have it aligned at?

[scadaman29325]

I've do some checking since I wrote the message above, NO regular maintenace on these trucks has ever been done (other than oil changes). Alignments every 2 years (that's every 3rd set of tires)... Fortunately we hired a guy that "gets into" vehicle maintenance and he is developing a good maintenance routine/budget that we can go by. As for tire pressure, it used be "if ain't flat, I'm not worried".

Right now we're looking at about $350 worth of frontend maintenance on 2 of the 3 trucks (parts/labor/alignment) to get them back in shape. Really not to bad for a 1994 and 1995 Ranger.

We are using 20k mile tires (cheap?), but we're going to start monitoring them a lot closer. I don't think rotating is an option since we use mud grips on the back... Can you take a tire off the rim and reverse its direction of rotation, then move it from the left side to right (and vice versa) correcting the rotation and get better equal wear on the edges of the tires. Sort of like getting 12k miles on the outside edge and then get 12k miles on the other edge?

TIA

[danny350]

Try replacing the ball-joints.

[scadaman29325]

Originally Posted by danny350

Try replacing the ball-joints.

Yeppers, that was part of the $350. Hopefully this will help! We'll see.


Thanks