Thread: Goodyear vs maxxis

My take on 4WD tyres, having done a lot of overlanding, commercial work (mining) and general day-to-day ute driving.

Tyre life has far too many variables to make one brand / spec stand out head and shoulders above the rest. They’re all pretty much of a muchness within the price tiers, premium, medium, cheap. Vehicle weight (constant vs variable load, load distribution), tyre & rim size, towing mileage, towing weight, tyre pressure, suspension geometry, rotation, driving style & right foot habits, ratio of road surfaces driven (bitumen vs unsealed, nature of each surface), degree of bendiness of regularly driven roads, etc etc… It’s all far too complex to say that one brand is that much better than the other.

@HUNTY has posted a very high mileage for MTs with significant amount of tread still available, which pretty much sums this up. That’s exceptional and I’d love to know how he’s done it.

If you read tyre reviews on the various websites around the world you can see how variable the reviews are from person to person. For any particular brand / model of tyre, you’ll get every star rating possible and the comments will vary from “great” to “absolute rubbish”.

Over the last 10 years the power output of the typical utility vehicle has increased substantially, Nm of torque in particular. A lot of drivers have not adjusted their driving style to accommodate the effect of this output increase on the tyres. Consequently they are complaining of poor traction in the wet and poor rear tyre life. When in reality trying to put 500Nm of torque down on a crappy NZ bitumen road in the wet is a big ask for any mud terrain tread pattern.