Single axle tires, Brand and load rating and all that junk.

Fabrik8

Fabrik8

Overcomplicator
Joined
May 27, 2015
Location
Huntersville
So coming back from Hickory with not-my-bass-boat on Saturday, we threw the tread off a trailer tire and wrote off an expensive fiberglass fender. No loss of air though, so things could have been much, much worse.
Not my favorite thing to be changing a tire on the side of I-40 on Saturday afternoon with 70MPH traffic and ALMOST NO ONE changing lanes, and we almost got wiped off the map by a UHAUL truck that drifted onto the shoulder.

Anyway, I'm going to buy some tires for the trailer, to help out with not-my-boat that I spend so much time on. Just another form of boat rent, to help pull my weight.

Tires are 215/75-14 LRC, Carlisle at the moment and they may have been bias ply (not sure, don't care because they need replacing). They were likely too old, and also a bit too worn, so I'm not shocked that one failed at highway speeds.

After doing some rough math, and making some assumptions about what is actually included in the weight specs I could find, it seems like the LRC are pretty marginal for load. That seems to be the consensus on some of the bass boat forums as well, but it may be more cliff-jumping-bussload-of-nuns than it actually is.

So, I have a few options for tires. There is only one decent choice for LRD in that tire size, which is the well regarded Goodyear Endurance.


I can get the same size 215/75 LRC in a Carlisle Radial Trail HD, which is super cheap at Walmart ($56) instead of $85 most places.
Can also do the same with a Maxxis M8008, same LRC for $85.
Both are rated 1870 lbs, so the pair without de-rating is theor tically 3740 which is right at the 3725 GVWR for the trailer.


I can move down a size to a 205/75 to get a LRD and go with a Carlisle Radial Trail HD, which is super cheap at Walmart ($56) instead of $85 most places.
Can also do the same with a Maxxis M8008, also 205/75 LRD for about $85.
Both are rated 2040 lbs, so a little extra margin over the LRC.
I'm not sure how the ride is going to be with a smaller, narrower tire at 65psi or whatever.


I can get the same size 215/75 Goodyear Endurance in LRD, for about $100 each. They're rated 2200 lb.


The Goodyears are close enough in price to the Maxxis that I don't see much reason to get the Maxxis to save a small amount. The Carlisles are super cheap though. If I owned the boat, it would be getting Goodyears.


Opinions.....? Thoughts? Overthinking things (what, me?).... I'm a car/truck person, not a trailer person, so trailer tires are not really my area of expertise.


I also need to get a new spare, but will likely just get a Carlisle in the same size as whatever goes on the axle because cheap. It's a spare, and it will work fine for spare use if ever needed.
 
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Boat and trailer are loosely estimated to be around 3000 lbs, probably a little more in reality. I know tongue weight is going to subtract from that, but I tend to stay on the conservative side of weight de-rating.

Should probably just get the 215/75 LRC Carlisles and call it good, and replace them every 3 years.
 
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Supposedly the new Goodyear endurance are okay but I will never own a set of GY ever again. Had good luck with Carlisle on the camper and stock trailer. Like @Fabrik8 said just plan to replace them cause they will go bad long before the tread wears down unlike a car tire. Another thing that helps is to park the tires on little concrete pavers instead of the dirt and also put tire covers on them when not in use to keep the UV off them.
 
The boat is garage kept and is used a few times a week (year round), so UV and flat spots are never an issue. I'm pretty sure the highway was the death blow for the age of the tires and the sketchy tread wear.
 
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Stuntman Autoworks said:
I would probably get some 15 or 16 inch rims and have more/better tire choices and availability.
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That's what I would likely do if it were my rig (probably would have done it the first time it needed new tires). I'm limiting myself to buying tires for someone else's boat, not buying wheels and tires for someone else's boat.

He doesn't actually know I'm doing it yet, but he's going to be super excited when he finds out. He's really stressing out over how to pay for this stuff.
 
Fabrik8 said:
That's what I would likely do if it were my rig (probably would have done it the first time it needed new tires). I'm limiting myself to buying tires for someone else's boat, not buying wheels and tires for someone else's boat.

He doesn't actually know I'm doing it yet, but he's going to be super excited when he finds out. He's really stressing out over how to pay for this stuff.
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You said something about boat rental? Rims and tires are pretty cheap for unlimited boat rental plus the peace of mind.
 
Stuntman Autoworks said:
You said something about boat rental? Rims and tires are pretty cheap for unlimited boat rental plus the peace of mind.
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I agree, that's why I'm doing it. He's picky about the boat appearance, so new wheels may be a hard argument as they will no longer be stock.

I don't actually rent/borrow the boat, I just spend a lot of time on it along with him (he lives next door). His boat, his tow rig, etc.; I'm just the boat mechanic/engineer and co-angler, parts purchasing agent, etc. The "boat rent" is sweat equity and pitching in with gas, expensive 2-stroke oil, some maint parts, etc. He's my friend, and I try to pull my weight.

I'm mostly about the peace of mind though, yeah. It's my safety too, and inconvenience if we get stuck wherever with a destroyed tire.
 
Fabrik8 said:
I agree, that's why I'm doing it. He's picky about the boat appearance, so new wheels may be a hard argument as they will no longer be stock.

I don't actually rent/borrow the boat, I just spend a lot of time on it along with him (he lives next door). His boat, his tow rig, etc.; I'm just the boat mechanic/engineer and co-angler, parts purchasing agent, etc. The "boat rent" is sweat equity and pitching in with gas, expensive 2-stroke oil, some maint parts, etc. He's my friend, and I try to pull my weight.

I'm mostly about the peace of mind though, yeah. It's my safety too, and inconvenience if we get stuck wherever with a destroyed tire.
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The world needs more neighbors like you and your neighbor
 
You can get 15" tire and rim combos off Amazon for ~$100/each. May end up being Chinese radials but new Chinese radials are better than old Chinese bias plys. Personally for a rental boat that's the route I'd go
 
Chris_Keziah said:
You can get 15" tire and rim combos off Amazon for ~$100/each. May end up being Chinese radials but new Chinese radials are better than old Chinese bias plys. Personally for a rental boat that's the route I'd go
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I did see those a few places, yeah. For $100/ea I'd just buy the Goodyears for the stock wheel size in LRD, which is looking more like the proper option unless I can prove to myself that a China radial with a C Load rating is going to have enough weight margin and will be reliable for its cheap price. For my vehicles I usually buy Michelins or Pirellis, or buy Continental to save money, so I'm completely out of water when it comes to $56 trailer tires with sketchy reputations that are made in China. I think I have trust issues.

Ugh.
 
Fabrik8 said:
I did see those a few places, yeah. For $100/ea I'd just buy the Goodyears for the stock wheel size in LRD, which is looking more like the proper option unless I can prove to myself that a China radial with a C Load rating is going to have enough weight margin and will be reliable for its cheap price. For my vehicles I usually buy Michelins or Pirellis, or buy Continental to save money, so I'm completely out of water when it comes to $56 trailer tires with sketchy reputations that are made in China. I think I have trust issues.

Ugh.
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If the cheap chinese bias plys lasted three years then thats probably pretty good for those.
 
I ended up getting the C-Load Carlisle Trail HD for $58 each from WalMart (then the price went back up to $87 a day or two later), and the day they were supposed to ship they send a "delayed" notification. So after a week, I did a customer service chat and they ended up refunding me 10% for continuing to wait. So now I'm at $46 per tire, but still don't have any tires. At this point, if I replace them after a conservative 3 years, I'm barely out any money.

At least I'm probably guaranteed nice freshly manufactured tires, because I'm assuming the delay is production-based.
 
I have had great service with the Carlisle radial hd 205/75/14. Run them on my work trailer daily, and on my car trailer for jeep hauling.

Load range d radial. Run them at 65 psi.

Good wear, smooth running, no complaints.

1 failure out of 8 tires. It lost air psi, and got cooked.
No puncture, and valve stem was still intact.

It was a year old with daily use. Not complaining, just got another off amazon.

Haven’t had a single flat on the car trailer with these while hauling the jeep.
 
Mac5005 said:
I have had great service with the Carlisle radial hd 205/75/14. Run them on my work trailer daily, and on my car trailer for jeep hauling.

Load range d radial. Run them at 65 psi.

Good wear, smooth running, no complaints.

1 failure out of 8 tires. It lost air psi, and got cooked.
No puncture, and valve stem was still intact.

It was a year old with daily use. Not complaining, just got another off amazon.

Haven’t had a single flat on the car trailer with these while hauling the jeep.
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Cool, hopefully we'll have the same good results.. My only concern is still the C load rating, but likely not an issue and there isn't a good to go to a D-rated (except buying the Goodyears) without going to a smaller tire or changing to a different size wheel.
 
Mac5005 said:
I’ve only heard bad abt the Goodyear’s.
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The shitty Marathons that have the "flaming busload of nuns off a cliff" reputation I'm assuming, not the new Endurance line that are supposed to be good (and are now OEM for a lot of trailers and RVs)?

The Endurance I could have got in D-rated in the right size, but at $118/each vs the $46/each I paid for the C-rated Trail HD. Not my boat, so that was the decision point. If the boat was mine, it would have a set of the Endurance on it.

Everyone looooooves the Endurance from what I hear, at least from my research on the RV forums and boating forums.

The owner of the boat tows a tandem axle trailer every day, but cares more about cheap tires than good tires. I'm the opposite....
 
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Soooo my order was hung up in Walmart's system, so I had to make another order, get the price adjusted to the first order, then cancel the first order. And then they refunded the first order minus the 10% that they already refunded (the 10% was a consolation bonus for waiting for 2 weeks), so I lost my 10% happy customer bonus.

On the plus side, the second order shipped and arrived in a day.

.....but the fucking things are a year old according to the date code. I was expecting much newer tires from Walmart, which is the entire reason I didn't order from Amazon for the same price (people were complaining about old tires from Amazon).

So the lesson here is that Walmart sucks even more than they did before.

Edit: One customer service rep and two supervisors later, I now have a "one time exception" that got me half of the 10% back. So they took pity on me and gave me $10.71 as compensation for waiting 18 days and placing two orders and then removing my original compensation.
 
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Fabrik8 said:
Soooo my order was hung up in Walmart's system, so I had to make another order, get the price adjusted to the first order, then cancel the first order. And then they refunded the first order minus the 10% that they already refunded (the 10% was a consolation bonus for waiting for 2 weeks), so I lost my 10% happy customer bonus.

On the plus side, the second order shipped and arrived in a day.

.....but the fucking things are a year old according to the date code. I was expecting much newer tires from Walmart, which is the entire reason I didn't order from Amazon for the same price (people were complaining about old tires from Amazon).

So the lesson here is that Walmart sucks even more than they did before.
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The tires from amazon probably shipped from a Walmart hub lol


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