Brian Jones
Wheeling, Technical, Advice, Staff Stories
Brian Jones
Wheeling, Technical, Advice, Staff Stories
Nothing compares to heading out on the trail in your truck or Jeep outfitted with mud tires, but what do you do when you use the same vehicle for your daily commute?
Do mud tires still make sense at this point, or should you consider all-terrain tires instead? Let’s examine the difference between mud tires and all-terrain tires and see what makes the most sense for you.
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First, let’s define what we mean.
Mud tires feature an aggressive, heavy block tread pattern that’s designed exclusively for off-road use. They are ideal for uneven, rocky and muddy terrain. You will find mud-terrain tires in larger sizes with reinforced construction for maximum durability.
Some people also purchase mud tires just for the aggressive appearance although most users need them to head off-road. You know who you are.
Yes, many mud tires are street legal and can be driven on the road while traveling highway speeds.
But just because you can do something, doesn’t mean it’s always the best option. If you don’t spend a lot of time driving in the mud, you might do better with all-terrain tires for your daily commute.
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It’s going to depend on your driving style, the tires you choose and the driving conditions. If your vehicle isn’t heavily modified, you might get around 40,000 miles with a mixture of street and off-road travel.
Depending on modifications though, you’re likely to see less than 20,000 miles out of some brands of mud-focused off-road tires.
Mud tires are designed to work best off-road within mud, sand, loose soil and jagged rocks. They come with a large tread block design which has deep and wide voids between them. This provides the room to dig into most off-road surfaces while the spaces between the knobs clear gravel, debris and mud.
Mud-terrain tires can often be heavy, noisy, and difficult to balance. They also provide clumsy handling and a rough ride on pavement. For people that only need to drive on the road for short distances, this won’t be a big deal. If, however, you drive often, you might not like the feel of mud tires on the street.
All-terrain tires feature smaller tread blocks and narrower voids. They are ideal for snowy, icy and wet conditions where mud tires don’t perform as well. Obviously, there isn’t as much raw off-road traction with this type of tire, but they run better on-road as a result of this design.
AT tires offer a smoother on-street ride with less noise and better handling.
Any serious off-roader is going to discover serious disappointment when pushing the limit of an all-terrain tire’s traction. Still, they might be the best option for any vehicle that goes off-road and on the highway on a regular basis.
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There are several disadvantages to driving mud tires on the street.
The large tread blocks and depth will not help you to achieve a quiet ride. To see the proof of this, just look at what they do in Europe.
In some European countries, tires are evaluated by their noise level. Mud tires are exempt from this testing because they are significantly louder than on-road tires.
Of course, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out; you’ve probably heard the roar of a mud-terrain tire on the road at least once in your lifetime.
To keep the mud tire rolling forward, there’s a lot of energy required. This leads to a decrease in fuel economy. If you want off-road performance plus additional fuel savings, then an all-terrain tire might be a better option.
Mud tires have a heavy-duty construction that adds thickness to the sidewall size. This increases abrasion resistance but creates a firm, hard ride. The rubber compounds are designed to wear far differently than, say, a performance summer tire on a performance car.
You may think the wide scoops of a mud tire would help in snow, but in anything less than feet of snow they will actually be a detriment.
You won’t have decent traction on ice or snow with the blocky tread. If you plan to drive in these conditions, you might consider the smaller blocks found on an all-terrain tire instead.
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While there’s a vast selection of mud tires to choose from, some brands and models excel above the rest.
Some highly-rated mud tires include:
Goodyear Wrangler MT/R with Kevlar
BFGoodrich Mud-Terrain T/A KM2
Firestone Destination M/T
Dunlop Radial Mud Rover
Kumho Road Venture MT KL71
AT tires offer the best of both worlds. You can find a set that looks equally as jagged and rough as your favorite mud tire with more on-road capability. The most significant difference will be that the all-terrain tire provides you with additional stopping power. This set also provides a more comfortable and quieter ride for your everyday commute.
All-terrain tires have more tread edges so they can grip surfaces better. In addition, all-terrain tires also provide better traction on snowy and wet roads. If you plan to drive both on-road and off-road, the all-terrain tire is usually a better option.
If tire shine on a Jeep floats your boat, we can’t stop you | source
If you don’t spend the majority of your time driving through sand and mud, then mud tires might not be the right addition to your truck or Jeep. Of course, many people will still opt for the mud tires because of the rugged, aggressive look, but there are other alternatives.
We called an office meeting to come to a consensus among ourselves, and most of our staffers agree that mud tires on a roadgoing vehicle are a waste for several reasons:
fuel economy is drastically reduced
noise is drastically increased
handling is compromised
In addition, full-on mud tires often cost far more than their A/T counterparts yet they often deliver 2/3 to 1/2 of the miles of a more traditional pavement-focused tire. That means you’re spending more to buy tires that last for fewer miles.
Every mile you spend driving a mud tire on pavement is money out the window. In many cases you could actually buy a second set of wheels just for your mud tires, drive on A/T tires daily, switch the sets when you go off-roading, and you’d still save money in the long run.
Hot take: Keep the mud tires for dedicated off-road vehicles instead. The mud-terrain tires provide the best ride while driving off-road but are far from the best option for highway travel.
What’s your experience with mud tires?
Do you have a vehicle equipped with mud tires? We would love to hear about your experience taking your truck or Jeep with mud tires on the road. Let us know how comfortable and quiet the ride is.
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Tagged: Daily Driving on Mud Tires is a Huge Waste of Money
I finally got a set of mudding tires for my truck this last winter so that when the snow started melting I could take it out for a spin. I have been tearing up some trails so I wonder how these tires hold up. How long do mud tires typically last?
Abbey Orzech · Answered on May 05, 2022
Reviewed by Shannon Martin, Licensed Insurance Agent.
Typically, mud tires can last about 40,000 miles—similar to regular pavement tires. However, your driving conditions can impact your tires’ lifespans. Here are some things to consider when it comes to your mud tires:
If, by unfortunate circumstances, your tires get damaged because of an accident, a good car insurance policy will cover the repairs. To make sure you have the best insurance for your situation, use Jerry!
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Every driver, buying a set of tires, whether it's winter or summer, is faced with the fact that tires may not always be "fresh". The concept of "freshness", of course, each person has his own. Often tires are stale in warehouses for various reasons. In the practice of our online store, there are similar cases that lead to some not always pleasant discussions with a client or supplier. Therefore, we turned to the leading, in our opinion, manufacturers in the Eastern European segment of the tire market. We chose four manufacturers, in each price category:
Budget tires - Rosava ;
Average price category (Europe) - Nokian (Nordman) ;
Average price category (Far East) - Nexen ;
Premium tires - Goodyear .
It should be noted that the Nexen Roadstone company (or rather the representative office) asked not to publish their answer in this article.
In addition, we looked into the State Standards of Ukraine, the Russian Federation and turned to the quality standards of the European Union.
Budget tires (Rosava)
Of course, there are cases when rubber lasts more than five years, but in such cases, the largest domestic manufacturer Rosava does not guarantee the preservation of all operational standards and advantages.
That is, roughly speaking, if you plan to use tires for 3 years, then be sure to make sure that the tires you buy are under 2 years old. The rest is at your risk.
Nokian mid-price tires
Since Nokian tires are mainly made in Russia, in this case we contacted the local representative.
Roughly speaking, the manufacturer claims that for 5 years Nokian tires practically do not lose their properties, after this period the tires, alas, no longer meet the original standard. That is, rubber of the middle price segment is used much longer than state employees.
Goodyear Premium Tires
Goodyear, famous not only for its products, but also for its sub-brand tires (Dunlop, Sava, Barum, Fulda, etc. ), did not provide exact service life of its wheels, but did provide a few signs when the rubber produced by this company needs to be replaced.
Regarding the service life, a rather vague answer was given:
If we turn to numbers, the shelf life of premium class rubber cannot be lower than the service life of an average price segment, so you can calmly focus on 5-10 years. For example, Toyo, on its official website, gives us a figure of 10 years of safe use. Roughly speaking, having bought a five-year-old rubber, you can safely use it for another 5.
The information we received during the analysis, you can see on the following graph:
Of course, the above information is not true in the last instance, and rubber storage conditions play a big role. However, we hope this article will give you at least an idea of the tire life of the and will show you in general terms what the differences are between tires of different classes.
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Today we will talk about the choice of tires for off-road travel.
What is off-road travel, how is it different from simple tourism or sports? For off-road travel, you need tires that can easily cope with many thousands of kilometers of asphalt, and after that they do not give up on off-road. Any universal rubber, in general, any universal thing is a thing that is capable of a large number of things and does them equally badly. This is a folk truth, which must be understood as if the rubber is suitable for both asphalt and off-road, it is not too good either there or there.
Under the criteria that we are interested in, tires with the marking AT and MT (AT MT), all-terrain and mud, are suitable. In fact, don't be fooled by these juicy epithets. Both of these tires are asphalt, they are not mud.
Mud tires have completely different markings, firstly, and secondly, they are not intended for use on asphalt. You can ride them on asphalt, but it makes a lot of noise, doesn’t steer at all and wears out very quickly. This tire is suitable for short-term travel on roads and constant off-road driving.
Similarly, regular road tires are not suitable for off-road travel for two reasons. First, these off-road tires do not work at all. On dry sand, they can still do something, because they let the tires down there, and the car drove off. And on clay or just a slippery hard surface, they pass very strongly. At the same time, when driving on graders or rocky mountain roads, the probability that you will break a tire is almost 100%. Therefore, road tires are best considered only if you are going to drive only on asphalt. In all other cases, AT and MT.
What is AT. In fact, this rubber is fundamentally different from the road cord and the thickness of the tire itself. It is easy to work at low pressure, it is not so easy to gouge with stones, but at the same time, it has a tread close to highway rubber so that it rides well on asphalt. This means that in the mud these tires perform very poorly. Better than road bikes, but don't expect big miracles from them. They are very well suited for non-mud travel where you go somewhere where the roads are very bad. The AT does a great job with this, they resist wear well and generally last quite a long time.
MT marked tires are much less used because they don't have that much life, it depends on lug height, compound and everything.
You must first decide what kind of rubber you need. In terms of the size and diameter of the disc, try to choose rubber that fits the minimum size of the disc that can generally be put on your car. If your car allows you to fit a 15" rim, go for it. The higher the height of the rubber, the better it will work off-road. Unfortunately, modern cars usually do not allow wheels below 16 inches, quite modern ones have already gone 17 inches. But always aim for the smallest possible drive.
How MT tires behave off-road. Of course, the thinner the tread, the higher it is, the better the rubber will work. But this is not a mud tire, so if you see forest ruts filled with water, in which clay is mixed with silt, peat and everything else, you should not hope that these tires will allow you to move there without problems. It is clear that this rubber does not have total flotation, but it has a very good balance between asphalt and off-road performance.
Usually off-road expeditions are a lot of asphalt driving, they are not off-road. Usually on expeditions, if you can go on a good road, go on a good road. It makes no sense to lay out a car 5,000 km from home for the sake of a spectacular shot with a cabin recessed along the steering wheel. But it often happens that there is simply no good road to the object to which you need to get, you have to go along a bad one. And here the MTs work perfectly fine.
There is another problem with large lugs. It is common to all mud tires or near mud tires. Since the tread blocks are very large, they wear out unevenly, that is, the block is erased less on the side of contact with the asphalt than on the side where it comes off, and teeth are obtained. This leads to the fact that the rubber starts to make a terrible noise, and most importantly, as soon as the tread has lost a third of its height, the off-road performance of the tire is lost. They are, but not far gone from AT. Selling such tires with an almost worn out tread only if for a very low price, you should not buy it for off-road use. Therefore, the resource of these tires is not from the beginning of the tread to the bald tire, it is 30% wear.
How long it takes to wear out this amount of tread depends very much on the quality of the mixture that was used in the production of rubber. As a rule, in almost 100% of cases, the cheaper the rubber, the faster it wears out. The low price of rubber can be associated primarily with the composition of which the rubber is made, and secondly with the cord. In the question - the economy should be economical, our Chinese brothers have been very successful. Savings on materials, they are of poor quality and, of course, they cannot work properly. As soon as the materials become of high quality, the price of the tire immediately rises. And the price of a quality tire from China and a quality tire from America differ by 20-25 percent of the cost, not higher, this must be understood.
Kumho Tires Kumho from a Chinese manufacturer can easily last a season, two, no more, you need to be aware of this. Another example, Yokohama Yokohama MT, excellent tires, works well on asphalt and off-road 2 seasons. There are also quite expensive tires, for example BF Goodrich BFGoodrich, very good tires, good cord. The Goodyear brand broke into the off-road rubber market, it has crazy wear resistance, but weak sidewalls. Most often, this rubber does not live up to its old age due to the fact that the sidewall is pierced or something else bad happens, but not because of wear. In fact, in the segment of expensive tires, everything can be taken. How long it will last depends on two things, firstly, on the mass of the car, and secondly, on how aggressively you drive this car. If you go into corners every time, loading the sidewalls of the wheel, it will not last very long, because you wear it yourself. If you calmly accelerate, brake and coast into corners, then it will serve for a long time.
In general, tires of an expensive segment serve to the point that they need to be changed for something else, and these are sold, ideally they still look like. 50-60,000 km, this is completely normal for them. Tires of the middle segment, their limit is 30-40,000 km. These, probably, from the more popular ones include Cooper Cooper S\T, STT. Tires from the cheap segment, 20,000 km maximum.
Plus, you have to remember that when you have a large tread height, a lot of tread wear reduces the diameter of the wheel. The 35th wheel with a worn tread is already 33.5. At the same time, what is written on the wheel does not always coincide with its actual dimensions. Therefore, choosing rubber, it is better to first measure it on the car. The Chinese usually run small.
About taking tires with a tube, without a tube. For an expedition, for long distance runs, it is definitely better to take tubeless tires. Yes, it is more often disassembled, but it is not a big problem to board it. Its main plus is that when you catch a nail on the track, your car does not fall on one flat tire, it just starts to slowly descend, while most of the punctures are very easily eliminated with a regular harness.
Discs. Disks are important, they are really the main thing. It would seem that the whole thing is in rubber, but a lot depends on the disk.
For off-road expeditions, alloy wheels are not recommended for the following reasons. The first and probably the main one is that alloy wheels usually have a very low hub. This is a tubercle that the tire should hold onto inside the disc. When it is low, the tire is easy to remove and just as easy to put on. The second reason is that some stones or other solid protruding objects often come across off-road, on which the disk can be crushed and split. It will not work to straighten the cast disk, after that it will not work, the geometry is broken and the tire blows off.
An intermediate option is forged wheels, they are not bad.
And the best off-road rims are forged aluminum split rims. They are very light, amenable to editing, you can insert limiters inside them so that they do not allow the wheel to be disassembled. But they have a drawback, they cost space money. Therefore, according to the balance of price / quality / availability, stamped disks are in the lead.
They are heavy, this is their disadvantage. But they also have some very significant advantages. One of the pluses is a high hub, it is quite difficult to disassemble the wheel on them. Secondly, they are completely calmly corrected with a hammer, and it is not so easy to bend them, and they serve for years. From whom to take, there is not much difference, there are not so many manufacturers. As for the hump, how to determine that the hump is good, and the rubber and the disk will make friends. When you bead a wheel at a tire fitting, pay attention to how much pressure it jumps over the hump, beaded. If this pressure is up to 2.5 atmospheres, the rubber will be disassembled very easily. The pressure should be higher, generally super, if it is in the region of a three-ruble note.
There are also forged wheels that are being made somewhere around here. Half of the hump is cut off on them so that the tire rests against the wall, but there is nothing to say about them.
Regarding the obstacles to disassembly, there are two options. These are either bedlocks or timelocks.
Badlocks are an iron oval that is screwed to the rim from the outside, and the tire is not tucked into the rim, but is clamped between the rim and this washer by a bunch of bolts. For sports off-road, this option is not bad, but in principle not the best, because they are heavy, and for expeditions, the weight of these discs with beadlocks is generally sky-high. They are also expensive.
That's why time-locks are usually used for the expedition, this is an insert inside the disk into which the camera is inserted. The shape of this insert does not allow the chamber to inflate to the entire inner surface of the tire, it fills only the inner part, pressing the tire against the disk from both sides. The timelock is a useful thing, firstly, when you lower the wheel, the tire still sticks out a little behind the disk, even when it is lowered to 0, it does not crumple the disk, but touches the inflated chamber inside. Secondly, they weigh quite a bit. But they have their own shortcomings. The first drawback is that in order to install them, you need to drill another hole in the disk for the nipple of this chamber, and at the same time, the main nipple of the tubeless tire sticking out in the disk is pinched, so the rubber is rather poorly inflated and poorly descends, this time takes. But the main drawback is that sand and abrasive get between the disc and the rubber, and gradually this frame under the camera is rubbed and torn. This does not happen instantly, but periodically they have to be changed. Plus they are quite expensive. There are domestic analogues, and there seem to be no negative reviews on them.
In principle, there is always a chance that you will break a tire on the road, so you should always have a full-size spare tire. In case you are going somewhere far away, it makes sense to take two spares. Moreover, in order not to carry extra weight, take one on a disk, and the other without.
In general, when buying off-road tires, the best option is to buy 6 tires. In the case of off-road, the Soviet method of changing wheels so that they wear out correctly does not work, because you either blew a tire, or something else happened, and no one usually bothers with this. Therefore, the front wheels wear out faster than the rear ones, and there comes a time when your rear wheels are still alive, and the front ones are not very good. And you, as already mentioned, 6 wheels. They changed the worn front ones, put them on the spares, and drove like that for some time. In good tires that have some kind of resource, if you drive tight and actively, you can drive 4-5 seasons in this format.
Sometimes there is such a problem that tires are not sold, they are rare, they are sold in multiples of two or four.
