New Tires

Replacing six of Eight tires

The tires we originally chose for the truck were the Michelin XZL 395/85 R20 on/off road all terrain tires. They are the preferred tire by many of the world’s military operations, and are also used on many heavy construction vehicles world wide.

Not generally available for retail sale, if they are to be found, they’re hellishly expensive with the price coming in north of US$2,200 per tire. Fortunately, the overland heavy truck community has a friend when it comes to tire pricing. That friend is the U.S. military establishment. As with all government enterprises, they buy far more supplies than they would ever use, and then in short order sell off the surplus at a deep discount.

There are a variety of vendors selling military surplus tires, but the challenge is to find one that sells new, or near new tires. Most of them are selling tires with 80% to 90% tread depth. Some even claim their tires have 100% tread depth. Despite this fact, however, they almost all have the same problem… their tires are old. I contacted four different vendors, and all of them said their tires were ten years old. Sure the prices were cheap, coming in between $260US to $400US per tire. But ten year old rubber is well beyond its expiration date. Many tire shops won’t even install tires of this age for customers. It’s too much of a liability. Our five year old tires were already showing cracks in the rubber at the base of some tread blocks.

Many of the areas that we travel to with our truck are remote, with extremes in climate and terrain. To have a tire failure in a location like that could be a serious problem indeed. The last thing we want on our truck is old rubber.

Fortunately for us, when we ordered our military bolt together aluminum wheels from Hutchinson Industries, they also supplied us with the original tires, pre-installed on the rims. These tires, identified as two years old or newer with the nibs on, ensured that we would get what was essentially a new tire at a “surplus” price. The first tires from Hutchinson only cost US$500 each. This second set from Hutchinson was also at a good discount. But at two-thirds the cost of retail, not nearly as good a deal as the first set when bought with the wheels. Despite this, we still got a good price compared to retail, and the tires delivered to us were manufactured in October of 2018. So only one year old.

Kal Tire Commercial Truck Division

Changing the old tires for the new, while technically something we could do ourselves, wasn’t a job we wanted to tackle. Fixing a single tire out in the bush is one thing, but removing and disposing of six 115kg tires was something else. So before we purchased the tires from Hutchinson we contacted the local commercial truck tire branch of Kal Tire, a nationwide Canadian tire store. After seeing the truck, and the type of wheels we had, Kal Tire manager Matt Gielens agreed to help us with the re-and-re of the old and new tires. Having them do the work was a very good decision.

Although none of the staff at Kal Tire had any experience with Hutchinson wheels, the two technicians that were assigned to the job had open minds and a willingness to learn new things. So with my guidance, the three of us tackled the project. The first wheel took the most time as we figured things out, but each subsequent wheel was completed in much less time.