By: bill,
oakland, ca
I understand your information on tread depths matching by position (LFRO & LFRI) but what about along the whole axle or from the front to rear axle on the same side. Some of the same logic should hold true. If I am running new tires on the rear drive axle and barely legal tires on the front drive axle…wouldn’t I be impacting the tires costs as well?
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Response from Vicki:
Hi, Bill. Thanks for your question about our article on tread depth.
We know for sure that tires need to be the same or as close as possible on one side of an axle. Since Mike and I have only ever been company drivers when driving professionally, we have never tracked the impact of different tread depths on tires across an entire axle or between axles. We suppose that there might be an impact, but we have no solid evidence to back up that supposition. So, we’ll open up the question to our readers.
Owner-operators (or others who may know):
* What has been your experience with different tread depths across an axle or between axles?
* At what difference in depth between tires (measured in 32nds of an inch) do the deeper-treaded tires start to be negatively impacted at a faster rate than normal?
* Have other non-tire problems come about as a result of this situation (perhaps with the suspension)?
Your table of data would be greatly appreciated. (If you need a way to quickly change info in an Excel spreadsheet to HTML format, we recommend Tableizer.)
Bill, I hope that we get some definitive answers about this part of truck operations. Thanks again for your question.
We wish you safe travels and lots of money saving opportunities on the road.
Best regards,
Vicki Simons
https://truck-drivers-money-saving-tips.com/
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Update: We published a guest post in response to the questions raised on this page, which you can read here: Tread Depth 2.
