I've HAD IT with Carlisle Trailer Tires!

R

rwilhite

Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2001
RO Number
3478
Messages
155
Jun 27th on the way home from a trip to Islamorada, 225 miles into a 270 mile trip and at 10 PM on I-95 one of the rear tires on my 10,000 pound rated trailer (carrying 6,300 pounds total weight including the trailer itself) has a catastrophic failure. The entire tread rips off leaving only the shredded side walls on the rim. This causes the rear leaf spring hanger to break. $400 dollars and nearly four hours later General Tire Service has welded the hanger back on and mounted the spare and we end up at home at 2:30 in the A.M.

These tires have no visible sidewall cracking, less than 1,000 miles of total distance on them and I checked to ensure each was fully up to the 65 pounds of air as specified on the sidewall. True, these tires are about five years old, but still! What really frosts my rear is that we had encountered several stretches of the Florida Turnpike and I-95 that had roughs spots, major league bumps and construction areas and made it through them fine. The tire fails on a perfectly flat stetch of I-95 with excellent quality pavement and no road debris that I saw.

After a night's sleep I do some on-line research and not surprisingly find that Carlisle tires are infamous for this exact scenario. Grrrr!

This past weekend I replaced all five tires (including the spare) with Denman ST 23575R15 radials, which with mounting, balancing, high-pressure stems and Florida tire disposal fees sets me back $560.

I also have Carlisle tires on my "little" boat trailer, a Shorelander galvanized model rated for 2,000 pounds that hauls my 16' center console that I use to fish the Indian River Lagoon. These tires are 13 inch and over the course of three years I have had to replace three tires, all due to catastrophic blowouts. Luckily none of these blowouts resulted in trailer or boat damage, probably because the boat and trailer are so light. I attributed these to running over something causing the failure, but my research indicates otherwise.

How in the world does Carlisle stay in business with junk like this? An eye-opener for me was that Goodyear Marathon trailer tires are apparently no better, with many of the RV bulletin boards reporting similar issues with what I always thought of as a top-quality manufacturer.

I did notice that Wal-Mart, who has to be one of the top retailers of trailer tire/wheel combos in the nation, only sells wheels with Carlisle tires mounted on them.

I've already committed to the Denman's, but does anyone have any other recommended trailer tires?
 
Carlisle has always been a cheap tire..period.
 
What were you pulling? I have a 10,000# two axle trailer for my Bayliner 265 and the trailer, alone, is almost 2,000#. Doesn't leave you much boat.

I dragged mine from NYC area to Key West and back without incident.
 
Tires which are five years old will be very suspect. Even though they did not have a lot of miles on them and tread was fine, the rubber ages and weakens as they sit. This is especially true should they be exposed to direct sunlight. Putting all new tires on the trailer prior to your trip would have been prudent.

I have Goodyear tires on my vehicle and have had two tire failures in the last 2 years. When I get new tires, I'm going back to Michelin's!
 
Before you buy ANY brand of tire find out the country of origin. If it came from China don't buy it. I have had many problems with Chinese tires and now if I buy any type of trailer with them on it I remove theme before using it. If Walmart sells something chances are it came from China and chances are Walmart worked hard to help the Chinese build a factory and obtain the equipment to set up an operation to put an American company out of business.

I seriously doubt that tires coming from China have to meet the same D.O.T. requirements as do the tires manufactured here in the U.S. I have a 33' fifth wheel that came with Chinese tires (E rated in stead of D rated) and two out of four of them failed in less than a year with less than a thousand miles on them.

I haven't had any luck with anything from China except some good food now and then. And chances are the ingredients came from the U.S.
 
I haven't had any luck with Carlisle tires, I replaced them all on second season with TowMaster and been happy with them, 'til this day, I still don't understand why there are two different tire companies that has the same tire size but one is bigger and taller than the other when mounted on the wheel.
 
I agree - no more of those crappy tires for me. I went through SIX on a tandem axle trailer for my Wellcraft. I switched to 15" rims and to load range D rather than C from Goodyear two years ago. No problems after over 3,000 miles on those tires.
 
Something else to consider is the age of the tires when they are first purchased. One of the news channels did a special on the problems people were having with catastrophic failures on auto tires that, while sold new, were actually as much as 10 or more years old. They reccomend checking the date before buying which is a little difficult to read. It is normally located at the end of the Dot info. and will be in an oval and read something like 4104 which means the tire was manufactured in the 41st week of 2004. Some dates are located on the inside of the tire. I would stay away from any tire not manufacturted within a couple years of purchase. People have died due to purchasing tires that they had no idea were too old and the tread failed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top