Where Can I Find Cheap Tires For My Truck?

I guess if you’ve always been a truck driver this question probably never enters your mind. You probably accepted the fact that truck tires cost more than car tires a long time ago. But most car drivers haven’t really thought about it. I guess it makes sense since truck tires are bigger, but if you aren’t actually pricing them you don’t know. As a new truck driver, trust me - that difference in price can come as quite a shock! Well, ok, to be honest I’m a long-time Discount Tire customer so I’m not used to paying high dollar prices for even car tires, but my last set of tires for my tiny Kia Rio set me back over $600 and that hurt! It was such a shock to my system that I swore I’d never pay that much again and started looking at tire prices online. What I found wasn’t particularly encouraging.

Most tire shops just do the typical advertising game. They put something on sale and then make sure that they never have very many of them in stock. It’s a legal version of bait-and-switch I guess. Once you’re there, you would probably rather just get it done and over with instead of driving all over town comparing prices. And the same is true for truck tires. By the time you walk out of a tire store you have spent more than you wanted, no matter what the ‘sale’ price was on the little flyer in your mailbox. Fortunately I won’t need any tires on my new (used) truck for awhile, but that was one thing I was not looking forward to when we bought it. And then it occurred to me to look into retreads.

So I did my usual and fired up my web browser and searched Google. Several web pages discussed what seems to be the conventional wisdom on the topic: retreads are dangerous! And most point the finger at the tire debris that seems so common on the highways. Sometimes it looks like the entire surface of the tread comes off in one piece! And everyone knows that truck fleets use retreads, so most people draw the conclusion that retreads are just an accident waiting to happen. And yet they would be mistaken.

As it turns out, the main reason truck tires come apart like that is underinflation. This makes sense if you think about it. First, if retreads came apart like that all the time the retread business would be gone pretty quick. Second, we already know that underinflation is bad for your tires. Now imagine if you had to check the pressure on eighteen different tires every day! Plus, eight of those tires might be different every day, or even several times a day for truck drivers who pick up and deliver trailers in a large city. That is a lot of tires to check, and that doesn’t even include the time and effort to inflate them! That is why most drivers walk around their truck with a large stick and just whack the tires. This tells them if a tire is flat, but probably wouldn’t tell them if one was just a little low on pressure. Thus, all of the dead tires on the road.

And this is good for you if you are looking for cheap tires, because retreads for trucks are cheap! When we bought our truck we were looking for an F250 since a ¾ ton truck was as much as we thought we would need to tow a travel trailer. We ended up getting a very good deal on an F350. It also happens to be 4X4, with a crewcab and a long bed. And it’s tall. The wheels are only 16” but the tires are massive! I call it either the blue beast or the monster truck. And yet I can get off-road retreads in that size for under $100 each! That is cheaper than the tires on my Kia. And it is definitely cheaper than the $183 each Discount Tire wants to replace the Nitto Grappler tires currently on my truck.

So do some research. Google will provide you with local sources or even sites where you can order online. Retreads are a great solution for cheap tires.