Military Tires on Civilian vehicles

[treegump]

My apologies if this has been posted/questioned already, but why don't we see more NDT or NDCC military tires on civilian trucks?

It appears that some military tires, specifically the tires that are envisioned when a person thinks of old willy's jeeps, trucks, and deuces, can be found cheaper than civilian tires.

 

[Will L.]

I run military tires/ rims on my hummer. Here is the issue: never a constant source of quality. They are tires being sold at auction that someone buys up and resales for a profit. So whatever some base somewhere decides they don't want sitting around anymore.
I have had several tires that were only 2.5 years old by d.o.t. code and they looked perfect. Then after about 2 weeks of driving all the fine dryrot cracking shows up.
Where I was doing a lot of offroading on rock that cut the heck out if tires, it wasn't unexpected to eat a tire or two in a few months. But when they start going bad in 1/4 of it's expected life- that makes them not such a good deal.

Overall quality is another concern. Think some 2 striper gets to complain that the ride quality isn't that good or learns from others on a forum that tire life is way less than what most similar tires get so they're going to change tire brands? The truth is a lot of the stuff that are sold of the military is far inferior quality than that you would normally buy. A bunch of people run around thinking it's for the military so it has to be great. It's completely inaccurate. Many of the military rigs run 16.5 tires just so that it curbs theft. The problem with that is what you're committed to their tire size finding aftermarket tires in16.5 sucks.

For me there was a tire that was amazing. Goodyear G.S.A. tires. Reportedly they sucked on pick ups and jeeps, but they were great on the heavier hummers. Until the military decided they wanted all the Hummers running offer only based tires. So they quit making that tire. Then demand for that tire was still high enough from civilian Hummer owners that they started making the tire in 17 inch rims, but of course you cannot use those on a 16.5, so I am out of luck. Now after having burn through a few sets, long afternoon not driving on those tire killing rocks, just normal use another words: I would have had been better off to buy 17 inch rims and switch over to the more expensive upfront tires long ago.

No clue what the scenario is for pick ups but that's the scenario with hummers.

 

[treegump]

Thank you Will!