Or maybe the question should be “Should you try to save money on tires?” I ask this because I am becoming a bit of a tightwad cheapskate as I get older. Up until recently I would never have considered anything but brand new tires for my vehicles. My only attempt to keep the price reasonable was to look for an advertisement for a sale price, or perhaps a rebate. Back when we owned motorcycles I ordered tires online for some savings. But other than that we didn’t really do anything drastic. And then I purchased a set of brand-new tires for my little Kia Rio and was given a bill of over $600. Holy cow!
To make matters worse, shortly after this astounding purchase we decided to pull the trigger on a long-anticipated purchase of a truck for our eventual RV plans. We got it very used and very cheap, but it at least had decent tread on the used tires. However, I will probably replace them by the time we start hauling our trailer around just to start off with the best tread possible. But this time I am going to find cheap tires! No, not cheap in quality, cheap in price, especially since this is a large 4×4 truck. Have you ever priced truck tires? Good grief!
So far I have found at least one good source of cheap tires online, and that is TreadWright.com – they sell retreads! I can replace my big fat off-road tires for about $100 apiece. No, I’m not kidding. No, wait, before you start spewing all of the tired cliches you’ve ever heard about retreads, keep in mind that they probably aren’t true. Yes, big rigs use retreads, almost exclusively. No, all those blown-out pieces of tire tread you see all over the nation’s highways aren’t from those retreads. They are mostly likely due to under-pressured tires. Besides, if retreads were so bad, why would Goodyear and Michelin make or authorize them and sell them with a warranty?
So there ya go. Cheap tires. Safe tires. Not mutually exclusive!
