Tires, is there a right answer?

[straight5]

3500 miles? Sportbikes often get 4k to 6k on tires!
Around my neck of the woods, I suspect that mail delivery is hard on the tires. They drive off the edge of the pavement, and then back up onto it at each mailbox.
As I said, my thinking was wrong about the LT tires. I'll be buying passenger rated.
Again, Thanks everyone.

[Hersbird]

Just to follow up on 3500 mile LLV tires, everything is used much harder on these things. It is possible one truck will do 800 start and stops and steering maneuvers in just 15 miles of travel a day. Another may start and stop the motor 200 times only traveling 10 miles. My particular truck I figured is started 75 times, and does about 400 braking, maneuvering into a box, and accelerating away in 18 miles total a day. The tires are rotated every 6 months but the newest trucks are 1994s (mine is) and alignment has become something of an eyeball thing at this point. I help manage the fleet of 50 of them and haven't seen an alignment authorized on any of them in over 2 years, even after replacing every part imaginable in the front end. I personally get 1.5 years on my tires before they go to 4/32 which is considered unsafe for winter which is about 7,000 miles so better than average but I do have the LT Goodyear Wanglers which might be the 8 ply the article spoke of back in 1995.
I have read each LLV costs about $4000/yr each in maintenance to keep them running at this point. I know we spend $2000 each in contractor labor alone not counting any parts or labor done by postal employees.

[rmay635703]

I have to think a “Volt style” LLV would reduce maintenance even if never charged due to reduced maintenance, brake and drivetrain wear.

Unfortunately that probably isn’t the direction they will go.


Hersguy do you belong to this forum?

https://m.facebook.com/groups/152981...?ref=bookmarks

I keep an eye out since I’m affected but don’t see much development lately and have heard of potential of multiple contract types.

Ah well

[Hersbird]

No, not a member of any Facebook groups but local friends and family. The next gen postal winner has been pushed back to fall now at the soonest, which is at least a year behind. That is just to announce the winning design, then that company needs to go into production which could involve building new plants and hiring workers. I bet we don't see any real deliveries made for 3 years, and it will take 5 more from that point to replace the entire fleet. Basically I may be retired before we get them up here. There are a few electric versions. I personally think Mahindra will win, if not the Ford. Mahindra wants the US market intro, and what better way than one of their trucks at every home, every day. And Ford has the simplest design ready to put into production. I think the others were a bit gimmicky, more an exercise in "what if?" I suppose the 80's LLV was a bit radical for it's day as well, but all that was radical had if anything proved to be the worst aspects of them LOL! Keep it simple IMO is the key to success.

[slowmover]

Originally Posted by CapriRacer

Most tire wear occurs in cornering. Drive in a straight line and there is hardly any wear. For example, local delivery trucks don't get as good of wear mileage as city to city trucks. What both the Post Office and Florida Bell were doing was on the extreme end of making a lot of turns in relatively short trips.

I've seen the same tires get as little as 10K, and over 100K on the same type of vehicle and the difference was what service the vehicles were used for - local delivery vs city to city.

And driver motivation. IMO, the real culprit given spec is otherwise to standard.

Was reading the blurb for the MICHELIN AGILIS yesterday. Sized for my Load Index 121 needs. “Commercial”. “Loaded vehicle” “Euro” all mentioned more than once in a retailer ad.

The expectation that it won’t be best for an empty 1T pickup. $319.00 per tire.

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