Originally Posted By: RWEST
Just pushed the "Complete Order" button on a set of studded 215-65-16's for my niece's minivan from TireRack!! She's also my right hand/arm (actually, she pretty much does everything for me!!) here in the office, so I gotta' make sure she can get here every day to cover for me!!
We use the Altimax, along with Hankook I-Pikes, on quite a few of our fleet's vehicles, and both have proven to be very functional, economical tires. The guys are given the choice of studded or non-studded - most choose non, for whatever reason.
As long as I can get the guys to understand how important it is to rotate them properly (every OCI), we'll get about 30-40,000 miles (about 2 winters) out of them. Most of the vehicles are FWD, and they seem really picky about wear unless rotated frequently.
Winters here in SW PA are very variable - from a few inches of snow a year to a couple hundred, so we just plan for the worst and hope for the best!! At upwards of $80/hr, we don't need techs standing around waiting to get their vehicles pulled out of a ditch.
Can't blame you one bit and in fact I feel even better now for buying the Altimaxs after reading your post. I thought about getting the studded 215/65/16s like you got (it's the alternate size for my Grand Marquis) but I went with the unstudded 225/60/16s instead. But so far I'm very happy with the tires.