Tire Wear from Traveling on Pavement

[MHarryE]

Back when I worked for Allis-Chalmers we had an Amish clan that purchased a new combine every year and roadbed it from our plant in Independence, Mo, to their farm NE of Moline, IL. The distance must have been close to 400 miles. They always used standard R-1 tires. Road speed was 24 mph. They said tire wear was significant and they figured they saved a lot of money considering they figured only fuel cost and did not consider their time. This is what I would consider a lot of reading - 400 miles per year. We probably run on asphalt per year on some of our tractors and don't notice unusual wear patterns since we changed to radials. The L5740 I keep around my home place for odd jobs has R-4 bias ply but it rarely ever sees asphalt so I wouldn't. Know how they wear.

 

[chim]

I ran a B7500 with R4's back and forth to my Mother-in-law's farm for mowing for the ten years I owned it. That comes out to around 500 miles total. I couldn't guess how many miles it went on our driveway, but it may have been harder on the tires than road travel. Seems whenever I'm on the driveway I'm making a turn.

At the end of 10 years there was probably 40% left on the fronts and the rear showed very little wear.

The Ford 1210 has R1's and made the same trip before I got the first Kubota. The R1's ribs wore down to nubs in about half the time. When I replaced the R1's I wanted the same tread and had a very difficult time finding tires. I located rear tires near Ephrata PA and fronts near Altoona. The old design was replaced with something flimsy-looking. That was 10 years ago, so I don't know if Firestone came out with anything better or not.

 

[kiotiken]

I'm on the road all the time and there's no noticeable wear on my tires at all. I'm not a super patient guy, so the faster I can go the better, max RPM in high all the way. I don't think speed will make any difference to you, but check the alignment, my JD955 was way off by the time it made it's way to me, it was very easy to fix.