RV Tires and Date Codes

by Don Bobbitt

Probably one of the most ignored parts on an RV is the tires.

I had another camper tell me one time that; “If it’s still round and holds air, that’s all that I need”

Sad to say, he is one of those people who are highly likely to end up sitting on the side of the road, eventually, with a flat tire, or worse.

You see, the reality is that “ALL  TIRES AGE and DEGRADE from the MOMENT they are Manufactured“.

If you go to a tire manufacturers site in the web, and search, you will eventually find their admission of this.

That’s the bad part, the good part is that the manufacturers take this “constant degradation” into their tire design criteria and you actually have at least five years, under normal climate and operating conditions, of life to the original specifications.

But, walk around your typical campground and you can easily find several RVs that have tires on them that have a date code older than the five year mark.

Is this a bad thing? Well, Yes, because the manufacturers strongly recommend that these older tires are probably not safe and should be replaced with new ones, always, and regardless of how they might look.

What is a tire date code? Where do you find it? How do you decipher it? Click on my Article on HubPages using the link below;

RV TIRES and SAFETY

I Mean, Really? Do you want to tempt fate while driving on those old tires on a lonely road in the middle of nowhere, just ?

DON