RV Tires: What you need to know

RV Tires are perhaps the most essential but overlooked parts of an RV. Failure to pay attention to the care and maintenance of your RV tires is a significant safety risk, and today we share the basics that every RVer needs to know.

This week on Episode 421 of the RV Podcast, we talk to Certified RV Tech and RV Industry Consultant Chris Daugherty.

You can watch a video version of the RV Podcast on our RV Lifestyle YouTube Channel by clicking the player below.

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Important Advice about RV Tires

Chris Daugherty

Chris Dougherty is the former technical editor of MotorHome and Trailer Life Magazines, RV Enthusiast magazine, and RVTravel.com, an RVDA/RVIA/RVTI Certified RV Technician and life-long RVer. He's been RVing with his family since 1973 and today trains other RV techs and presents seminars on RV technical matters at RV shows and exhibitions.

Below is an edited transcript of our interview with Chris.

Motorhome and Towable RV Tires are Very Different

Mike Wendland:

Chris, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Let's start off talking about the two different kinds of RVs with two different tires, the motorhomes with their tires, and then the towables, the fifth wheels, and the trailers. People think tires are tires. Maybe you could start us with a little education about that.

Chris Daugherty:

Well, definitely not Mike. Different tires for different applications, which is an important thing to keep in mind.

So when we're dealing with motorized RVs, motor home tires, we're looking at truck tires generally. Anywhere, if it's a smaller Class C or class B motor home, they're appropriate for the size and weight of the vehicle. But you have steering tires and you have drive tires.

So if it's a two wheel drive, you can put snow tires on in that type of thing. There are some RV application tires that are out there, specifically Goodyear, that have special additives in the rubber to help protect them from ozone degradation and that type of thing.

But you're basically looking at a tire that's appropriate for the use that you're going to be putting it to and making sure that it is sized properly, both in its physical size but also in its weight carrying capacity.

Towable RV Tires

Mike Wendland:

So these are motor homes for all different classes of class A, B, and C. Tires that are meant to be on a vehicle that is controlled by the engine on that vehicle. So what's the difference then in tires that we find on fifth wheels and trailers?

Chris Daugherty:

So trailers use a different type of tire. It's a special trailer tire, ST tire, for Special Tire. And there's different grades of those tires depending on-

Mike Wendland:

Special trailer, ST. And that will be on the side wall of the tire?

Chris Daugherty:

Yes, it will be. So when you're looking for the size, it would be an ST and the size of the tire. Okay. And so those have a little bit different design to them. They're designed for the weight that they're designed to carry.