Treadwear rating

The Treadwear Grade of a tire is the numeric portion of the Uniform Tire Quality Grade Standards (UTQG) that are printed on the sidewall of a tire. These standards were enacted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is part of the United States Department of Transportation. Higher treadwear numbers indicate that the tread of a tire, and hence the tire itself, should last longer, although this is more true within a single product line than when comparing the product lines of different manufacturers.

Methodology

The wear on tires that are being tested ("candidate tires") is compared to the wear of Course Monitoring Tires (CMT), which are sold by the NHTSA at its UTQG test facility in San Angelo, Texas. Both types of tires are mounted on vehicles that will be driven in a convoy during the test, thus ensuring that the candidate tires and the CMT tires experience the same road conditions. The convoy, typically one of four or fewer vehicles, will drive 7200 miles on public roads in West Texas. Candidate tire wear will be checked during and after the test, and compared to the wear on the CMT tires from the same convoy.

The first CMTs were commercially-available Goodyear Custom Steelguards, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company produced all CMT tires from 1975 until 1984. From 1984 to 1991, the CMT tires were produced by Uniroyal. CMT tires are now "specially designed and built to American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standard E1136 to have particularly narrow limits of variability." [http://mailgate.supereva.com/gov/gov.us.fed.dot.nhtsa.announce/msg00523.html 1] .

Treadwear Grade Number

The "treadwear grade" describes how long the tire manufacturer expects the tire to last. A Course Monitoring Tire (the standard tire that a test tire will be compared to) has a rating of "100". If a manufacturer assigns a treadwear rating of 200 to a new tire, they are indicating that they expect the new tire to have a useful lifespan that is 200% of the life of a Course Monitoring Tire.

Limitations

The DOT does not test tires. It depends on manufacturers to test their own tires and report the results. Unfortunately, this system has made treadwear ratings far less useful than the DOT had originally intended because tire manufacturers are able to use the treadwear grade as a marketing tool.

It is legal and permissible for a manufacturer to give their tire a 240 rating when their competitor's equivalent tire has a 220 rating; thus creating the false impression that the 240 tire is a better purchase because it will last longer. This tendency to inflate treadwear numbers has become so common that some manufacturers may report that ALL their tires have above average treadwear grades. Some are taking normal tires and reporting a treadwear of 600 or more, or giving a 220 rating to maximum performance tires with a reputation for poor tire life (e.g. [http://www.tirerack.com/tires/surveyresults/surveydisplay.jsp?type=MP the Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar EMT] ).

TreadWear Grade

Below 200= 15% of Tires

201 - 300= 25% of Tires

301 - 400= 32% of Tires

401 - 500= 20% of Tires

501 - 600= 6% of Tires

above 600= 2% of Tires

Source: [http://www.safercars.gov/Tires/pages/TireRatTreadwear.htm safercar.gov]

Trends

In general, manufacturers tend to overstate the treadwear of their tires in an effort to create the impression that their tires last a long time. The exception to this is in competition racing tires, which customers expect to have very soft rubber compounds and very short lifespans. Manufacturers tend to give their race tires low treadwear numbers (often zero) to emphasize how soft and sticky their rubber is.

Uses

The ability of manufacturers to report their own numbers makes comparison of treadwear ratings between companies useless. Ratings may still be useful within a manufacturer's own line of tires. For example, a customer can reasonably assume that the higher treadwear rating on a Dunlop SP 60 means it will last longer than the Dunlop SP Sport.

References

* [http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/TireSafety/ridesonit/brochure.html UTQG ] explanation at the US. Department of Transportation.
* [http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=48 UTQG] explanation at TireRack.com
* [http://www.safercar.gov/portal/site/safercar/menuitem.13dd5c887c7e1358fefe0a2f35a67789/?vgnextoid=9f4baa8c16e35110VgnVCM1000002fd17898RCRD Lookup Brand Ratings] - U.S. Government service to look up treadwear grades on different tires.
* [http://ciir.cs.umass.edu/cgi-bin/ua/web_fetch_doc?dataset=ua&db=agendaApril1997&doc_id=2329&query=and Fee Change] for course monitoring tires
* [http://mailgate.supereva.com/gov/gov.us.fed.dot.nhtsa.announce/msg00523.html detailed description of tire testing]