Cheap Tires – Are They Safe?
By guestposter Oct 27, 2010
Of course, some people might wonder if you should even think about saving money on your tires. Most people do, of course, but only by looking for sales or coupons or rebates. They don’t go too crazy about it. I know, because that is pretty much the way I used to think about it. It seems like a safety feature, something you don’t want to be cheap with. But since I’m a bit of a tightwad, especially as my age increases, I’ve begun to look into it. Actually, it might have been the last set of tires that caused it. Over six hundred dollars for four pieces of rubber on a measly little Kia Rio. Every time I look at the receipt I can’t figure out how I spent that much!
Now back when the wife and I rode motorcycles we often bought tires online. This saved us quite a bit of money, plus our club president worked for a garage and could mount them for us somewhere between cheap and free. Unfortunately this is a lot harder to do with car tires. 
By the time your favorite discount tire place does all their mounting and balancing and lifetime replacement warranties you’ve lost all your savings and then some, not to mention the shipping costs. Wheels, yes. Tires, no, not so much.
But now we are about to need cheap tires like we’ve never needed them before. We just bought a monster truck. OK, so it’s not *really* a monster truck, but it feels like it, especially compared to the Kia! Crewcab, longbed, 4X4, 1-ton pickup. That’s just insanely large for us. And it came with really big fat tires too. And what on earth possessed us to buy such a large truck? Well, because we needed something big enough to pull a 5th wheel RV trailer. Yeah, more tires. So we will eventually be rolling down the road with eight tires. Maybe now you can see why the whole idea of cheap tires is appealing to me!
And talk about not cheap, have you priced truck tires before? WOW those are expensive! So I’ve been doing some reading and researching and investigating. Hey, it’s what I do. So far I really like the tires at TreadWright.com. They sell retreads, just like all of the fleet and big-rig trucks use. I could replace my existing tires for $100 $87 each. Impressive! I like the reviews that Petersen’s Off road and 4-wheel Magazine did on them.
And speaking of reviews, these tires are safe. American Airlines changes 25,000 tires a year, and most of those are retreads. They recap the main gear tires 5-9 times and the nose-gear tires 3-15 times. Strangely enough, they suffer more wear from taxiing around the runway than from the actual landings! So think about that. Airplanes use retreads. Why wouldn’t you put them on your vehicle?