Truck Advice

Originally Posted by Proton

I want to know the brand of sneakers your putting on the old girl so that I may avoid purchasing them, with 270K on the meter and your on your eight set of free tires your averaging 38 thousand a pair.

The ones on there now are Grand Prix Performance GT, but I don't think that is what they have put on every time. Kumho(?) rings a bell, but I don't know. Theoretically, softer tires give better grip, while harder tires last longer. I really don't care. They are putting them on for free.

When I was delivering pizza and buying my own tires, I worked out what seemed to be the best strategy for tire maintenance. Auto shops want to rotate the tires front to back every so often. This will wear out all tires roughly equally, and all at once. Cha-ching! you're on the hook for four tires at once. I found that it I didn't rotate the tires, the fronts would wear out well before the back, so... I would run the fronts off, buy two tires and put the new tires on the rear and put the rear tires (which were in nearly new condition) on the front. Burn the fronts off, rinse repeat. You were only on the hook for two tires at a time and you always had decent tires all around the car.

Originally Posted by t00nces2

The ones on there now are Grand Prix Performance GT, but I don't think that is what they have put on every time. Kumho(?) rings a bell, but I don't know. Theoretically, softer tires give better grip, while harder tires last longer. I really don't care. They are putting them on for free.

When I was delivering pizza and buying my own tires, I worked out what seemed to be the best strategy for tire maintenance. Auto shops want to rotate the tires front to back every so often. This will wear out all tires roughly equally, and all at once. Cha-ching! you're on the hook for four tires at once. I found that it I didn't rotate the tires, the fronts would wear out well before the back, so... I would run the fronts off, buy two tires and put the new tires on the rear and put the rear tires (which were in nearly new condition) on the front. Burn the fronts off, rinse repeat. You were only on the hook for two tires at a time and you always had decent tires all around the car.

I do not consider this a derail of the thread since the OP posted this. I have experienced just the opposite. My rear tires always wear harder on a pickup but that may be because of the loads I haul. For safety reasons I always put my newest tires on front for the ability to steer.

As far as the original question, I own all three major brands and found with proper maintenance all to be reliable. I will only haul with diesels because of the power and mileage therefore will not recommend a gas truck. For the record there are some great trucks for sale in retirement communities. They usually have low mileage and have not been driven hard. IMHO it is worth a plane ticket to fly to Arizona to purchase a truck.