I posted this in the 'tires' section and haven't gotten a single response, so hopefully someone here can help out since this forum's a bit more travelled...

My current do everything rig is a '99 F350 extended cab long bed dually 4x4, and by do everything I mean it isn't on the road unless it's pulling our gooseneck horse trailer, bringing home 24 bales of grass in the bed, or (here's the tricky part) towing our dump trailer to the local orchard to dump off a few tons of horse poop.

When we bought the truck used it had some very worn tires of a brand I'd never heard of, and I replaced them with factory sized 235/85-16 Yoko Geolander AT-S tires, thinking that even though the truck is 4WD, I needed the extra traction for the days when the orchard is wet and muddy and I'm dragging 4 tons of trailer and poop through the muck. The tires work great and are wearing well, but I've noticed that the truck just feels squirrelly sometimes.

Had the truck aligned and then aligned again (nothing done the second time, everything was still perfect) and it does pull straight and brake straight, but it just doesn't feel stable like my last dually, plus the steering just feels numb and twitchy.

My uneducated opinion is that the tires are just too... not soft, but the tread blocks are too small and loosely configured for the truck and load and the tires themselves are causing the non-surefooted sensations. Thoughts?

So back to the drawing board, what's a good tire or set of tires to put on the truck that would suit my needs? I'm thinking a tire more along the lines of the Cooper AT3 on back and maybe the HT in front? The truck sees a lot of highway miles with the horse trailer so I don't want to put mud tires on the thing, but it's also a mile walk back to my house to get the John Deere to go pull my truck out of the orchard if it gets stuck, and I swear everyone that drives by is laughing at me, lmao.

Also, what are your thoughts on a 265/75 tire out back? I know they fit, but not real well... besides crappy wear patterns with the larger tires, any real advantage to traction? Does it make the truck more or less squirrelly on the road?

Thanks for your help!

 

BFGoodrich commercial traction tires are said to be really good. I know the regular commercial tires are pretty good. http://m.bfgoodrichtires.com/tire-se...mTdWidget=true

On my F-100 I'm running these. They get amazing traction and carry loads well.
http://www.herculestire.com/tire-gal...rac-rs/#loaded

 

Have had very good experience with Firestone Transforce AT.

 

Any chance those tire you put on are underrated. Are they e-rated 10 ply tires?


I have BFG's decent but Coopers would be better. That is what I would consider when mine wear out.

 

If it were me I would go back to the stock 235/75-16 tires, make sure that they are E-rated tires and do that for all six tires. Don't mix tread patterns, manufactures, or sizes.
I would recommend looking into Cooper Discoverer tires, they are priced well, wear good and are made in the good ole USA. I have run them on trucks in the past, and currently run them on my 2013 40' 5th wheel.
As you are finding out, dually trucks can be a little different in finding what works and what doesn't when it comes to tires.
Another thing you want to remember is that DRW trucks can pack mud between the dual wheels when running in the muck. When you pull back on to a hard surface don't jump right up to highway speeds until you have given your tires a opportunity to free itself of any mud stuck between the wheels. If you get up to speed and the mud releases you could find your self looking for replacement DRW fenders.

 

Thanks for the replies. To clarify, the tires I have on there now are factory size 235/85 in E-load range Yoko Geolander AT-S tires, not sure where the notion they are underrated came from.

For those not familiar with the AT-S, it's one of the new generation on/off road tires that I think really has too light of tread for this particular application with little tread blocks and no real rib compared to the Cooper H/T or AT3 or the Michelin LTX M/S 2. I talked to a mom and pop tire store guy up the street and he agreed that I bought the entirely wrong tires for this truck, lol. Ah well, guess I've got 6 nearly new all terrains for my square body...

Leaning towards the Cooper HT because of it's tread design, solid rib, and seems to have really good reviews in the towing forums.

That said, I've seen a few places where folks are doing the 'big rig' thing and putting traction tires on the rear and a good driving steering tire on front, even for the 4x4 trucks, which is why I was asking about putting a more aggressive tire on back where most of the driving is done, and then a more stable tire in front, ie AT3s on back and HTs in front, or something similar.

Again, thanks for all the input!

 

Could it be you are "feeling" a light front end? Is it any different loaded and unloaded? Just a thought. Good luck.

 

Any time I put new tires on my work trucks, all duallies, they act squirrelly for a couple thousand miles. I have run both the Cooper A/T3's and the Yokohama Geolanders A/Ts. I would check air pressures all around. And, as stated already, since it's a 4x4, run the same tire all around. Same tire, same thread, same weight rating.

 

I had the cooper AT3 on my SRW and liked them so much I will be putting them on my dually. In fact I want to run the 265-75-20 so today I was making calls to find Eagle 58 20 inch wheels and can't seem to find them, they are on national back order. I might stick with 17's if I can find the Eagles with a 7.5 width. But the Coopers are an excellent tire and I highly recommend them.

 

We have the A/T3 on the back of our SRW. Only a couple thousand miles but so far they're great!

 

I ran the AT3's on my old Dodge dually and liked them. Only squirrely issues came from the wandering dodge front end/ steering box. All my buddies are now running them on their SRW trucks. Another buddy just put a set on his 2011 F350 dually. He's got a 38' KZ Durango 5ver but has yet to tow it with the Coopers on. I doubt he'll be disappointed. The AT3's are the first tire I'm going to look at when my stock BFG's dryrot. Yeah, I drive it that much.

 

Thanks for the input everyone. I went ahead and had a pair of Cooper H/Ts put on the front, kept the Yoko AT-Ss on back, truck drives MUCH better now, loaded and unloaded, and even got to drag the poop trailer through some mud in 4wd and the truck worked flawlessly.

FWIW, I had the old Yoko AT+IIs many moons ago and they were great tires, but they had the old blocky all terrain tread type. The AT-S just seems more like a SUV or SRW/light truck tire... they're working great on the back so far, but I guess we'll see how long they last. Plus I've got new spares, lol

 

The Yoko AT-s and the Cooper A/T3's are a good mud/snow tire. They are not real aggressive for mud, but do a decent job.