Originally Posted By: 92saturnsl2
What you folks on your high horse don't realize, is that I didn't buy these based solely on cost. I bought them because it's a great tread design for the way I use the truck and I added the kedge grip for severe weather as a bonus. I was set on a set of Cooper Discover ATPs (they too, carry the mountain/snowflake designation), but I couldn't find them in stock locally or online. There was the Hankook A/T tread rated for snow that everyone sells, but I'm not one to put money into Indonesian's pockets, so I went with something domestic that I knew would be applicable for my use and had good reviews. I spent many of winters as a kid riding on retreads, so it seemed a safe bet. Did the experience suck? Sure, but new tires sometimes wind up with the same fate. If I have another failure, I'll write these off for good.
I know how important tires are. Just this month I bought two sets for our family minivan. Michelin Defenders that were installed, and studded Goodyear Ultragrips to put on in late November when the weather starts to get [censored] around here. So yes, the tire budget is gone for at least a couple months. The Treadwrights seemed to fit this 33 year old truck perfectly, the way I use it-- that's all.
And yes, I asked for opinions, so I'm not disregarding the adverse ones by any means. Just a little disconcerting how rude and self-absorbed some were.
"Rude and self-absorbed"? Hardly---I've just been too close to the downside risks of motoring obliviousness, and tire-related cost/benefit calculations that didn't work out well.
Your own description of what you did/didn't do when your retread tire failed seems to indicate some degree of obliviousness. You heard/felt what, in retrospect, you describe as an impact that felt like you hit a moose, and saw a bunch of black fragments flying out from behind your truck, but you gave it a few minutes thought---and, presumably, several more miles of 70mph travel---before stopping to look things over ("Hey, was that my cheap plastic tool box that used to be back in the back? Uh, nope---hmm---I wonder what it was? Maybe I should stop and look."). No point in being real concerned/panicked about the well-being of motorists behind you, eh? . . .
I've seen a couple of recent examples of driver obliviousness that may've been worse than yours. I was sitting at a stoplight at an intersection with a four-lane major street in my town a few months ago, when I could hear a loud metallic screeching noise getting closer to me on the intersecting street. The source of the noise quickly became obvious when a mid-size sedan came through the intersection at a typical morning commuting speed, with sparks showering from the right front steel wheel that was running on the ground with absolutely no tire left on it (no sidewalls, no tread----nothing) and had beaten itself into a multi-faceted shape (it had been driven far enough in its tire-less state that it wasn't round anymore, and had multiple flat sides). After the car drove through the intersection, it pulled into a gas station at the same corner. I turned the corner after the light changed, and curious about the no-tire car, I pulled into the gas station and saw the no-tire car sitting there with its older male driver looking a bit quizzical. There was a van from a local HVAC shop also in the station, and the HVAC tech/van driver had his window down and was laughing as I rolled my window down to see what he knew. The no-tire driver had told the van driver that he "had felt a little vibration for awhile, and heard some noise, so he thought he'd stop at the service station to maybe have it checked out." Uh, yeah---good call, Sir.
Last month, I pulled over on an interstate highway near my town to help a young lady change a flat tire on her mid-90s Saturn coupe. I didn't see her situation until after I was past her, so I had to loop around at the next exit, and then again at the exit/entrance a couple of miles north of where she had come to a stop. When I got back to her, she had unloaded a packed trunk and was looking for the spare and tools. The damaged right front tire was essentially non-existent---the wheel looked generally OK, but only the sidewalls of the tire remained attached to the wheel. The entire tread circumference was missing---no rubber, no fabric casing. She said that she felt the tire go flat, "and I didn't really drive it that much further". I didn't question out loud her claim about how far she had not driven on the flat, but there were no indications/pieces of tire obvious anywhere on/near the highway that I saw on my circumnavigation of the adjoining exits. She extracted the jack and lug wrench, and we got the car lifted and the wheel off. I went back to get the spare tire she had, and found that the car's compact spare was also flat, and its sidewall had de-laminated, with its fabric sidewall casing open and flapping. It had apparently disintegrated at some point in its un-examined 20-year occupancy of the spare tire well. Obliviousness is darned inconvenient.
On retreads: Those "retread gators" you see laying in/next to the road on most highways aren't just ugly debris; they were, at least briefly, projectiles that come flying off at inopportune times. I was riding my motorcycle (yes, I make some risk/benefit calculations that others view as problematic) near Detroit years ago, when I had a near-miss with the Reaper, thanks to a retread tire failure. I was on I-75, and had passed a medium-duty tank truck that had dually tires on the rear axle, and a sheet-metal fender over the top portion of the rear wheels. I was only going 3-5 MPH faster than the truck, so, at highway speed, I had been fairly close to the truck for some time as I had slowly come up behind and passed beside it. I was only about 25 yards ahead of it, still in the adjoining lane, when I heard a loud "boom" immediately behind me. Looking in my rearview mirror, I saw that one of the rear tires on the side of the truck that I had just passed, had blown out, and what appeared to be a retread belt was flapping from the tire casing, ripping off the sheet metal rear fender on that side of the truck, and sending pieces of the fender and bits of tire fragmenting out behind the truck. Cars still behind the truck started swerving in all directions to avoid the various bits of shrapnel. If that tire had failed few seconds earlier, I would've been immediately beside or behind that thing when it detonated, and BITOGers would've probably been spared from my insights.
Tastes and risk assessments vary, and I'm glad to see in your follow-up post that you put good rubber on the vehicles that mean the most, and that carry the folks that matter the most to you. It's not always that way. My own father, an economically-successful chemical engineer for a major metal manufacturer for his working career, was also a Depression-era/WWII-rationing kid who sometimes cut vehicle maintenance corners, notably on tires back when 10-15K was about all you got out of a set of bias-plies. That was fine, I guess, until my younger sister got a job that required commuting into Pittsburgh nightly (read: "hilly, rough roads") in his Ford Fairmont with worn-out tires ("Not many grooves, but plenty of rubber, Son!"). One evening, on a rainy highway into town, she hydroplaned that set of tires into another car, and set off a chain-reaction crash that trashed 7 or 8 cars, injuring about as many drivers and passengers, including herself. After she recovered (she still has the rod in her upper arm that the docs used to put that back together), she spent a lot of time answering questions in multiple personal injury case depositions. The insurance paid, folks generally got back to their lives, and Dad may've gotten smarter, but I'm pretty sure that I certainly did.
If this latter statement is just more evidence to you and others that I'm a condescending, sanctimonious jerk, fine. I simply prefer that you avoid this particular risk of death and injury to yourself and others, and I make no apology for saying so in terms that may offend, but that may also prompt greater vigilance and appropriate action. I join those who are telling you to avoid the retreads, even on the low-mileage truck--and secure your toolbox, while you're at it.
I'm glad that most of your vehicles have good tires on them. And, as the motorcyclists say: "Keep the rubber side down."
