Quote:
Originally Posted by rmay635703
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Allow me to both explain and give a similar story.
In the early 1990's. (The news article is dated 1995!), I participated in a conference call between Ford and Florida Bell (or whatever the phone company was in southern Florida). I was the technical rep for one of Ford's tire suppliers.
They were purchasing new E-150 vans for their service trucks and in southern Florida they were getting less that 5,000 miles on the tires coming from the vehicle assembly plant. This was a drop from the 7,500 miles previously.
They explained that they knew that their trucks were being used for installing phone lines for new housing so that meant new concrete pavement and many turns relative to the amount of miles they drove - and that the new pavement had sharp shells in the limestone aggregate. Those 2 things were causing wear issues.
It wasn't that the wear was fast, but that the wear was faster than before. Their expectations weren't high to begin with.
They were told that they could specify the tire they wanted since they were buying so many vehicles (They didn't know that!).
Interestingly, the referenced news article specified moving from 6 ply to 8 ply tires - which not only indicates that the reporter was talking to someone low on the totem pole as the proper terminology is Load Range C to Load Range D - but also missed that fact that they compared different brands. It's quite possible the Load Range C tires were OE and had reduced treadwear properties due to rolling resistance requirements - the same problem Florida Bell was having!