Question Of The Week

Truck Camping Wheel and Tire Poll Results

This week we polled Truck Camper Magazine readers on six wheel and tire questions.  The results reveal which wheel and tire brands, models, and sizes are popular with truck camper owners.

It’s not unusual for readers to ask us about aftermarket suspension enhancement products.  They’re hoping we can make a blanket recommendation to address the rear sag, side-to-side sway, highway porpoising, or overall handling problem they might be experiencing.

Our response is to first ask them about their truck and camper match.  If their rig is significantly over the payload marked on their truck, no aftermarket products are going to fix that problem.  Only a more capable truck, or a lighter weight camper can help.

The next question we ask is about wheels and tires.  If their truck and camper is properly payload matched, the stock wheels and tires should have the required capacity, and then some.  However, upgrading the wheels and tires is an often overlooked opportunity to improve handling and driving safety for any truck camper.  From experience, higher capacity wheels and tires can make a huge difference in handling.

Finally, we advise folks to fix the problems they have.  If your rig has side-to-side sway, get a sway bar.  If your rig has rear sag, upgrade your rear spring pack, or get a product that engages your overload springs.  You get the idea.  Unless you enjoy spending money unnecessarily, don’t fix problems you don’t have.

Getting back to where the rubber meets the road, we are approaching 30,000 miles on our stock Nexen tires and looking to upgrade the tires and possibly the wheels.  As part of our research, we conducted a wheel and tire poll this week to learn about what our readers have done for their rigs.

Here are the results:

OEM Wheels Are More Popular For Truck Campers
I have kept my stock OEM wheels -73.2%
I have upgraded my wheels – 26.8%

New Tires are most popular with truck campers
I have upgraded my tire brand and/or model – 74.2%
I am using the stock OEM tire brand and model – 25.8%

Wheel size for truck campers

17-inch – 29.8%
16-inch – 27.2%
18-inch – 19.9%
19.5-inch – 15.8%
20-inch – 4.8&
16.5-inch – 1.5%
15-inch – 0.4%
19-inch – 0%
Other – 0.7%

4. What size tires do you have?

The tire size results were tabulated and ordered by section width.  The first number is the quantity of results we received for that tire size.  For example, in “23 – 235/80 R17”, we had 23 respondents with this tire size.

1 – 205/70 R19.5
4 – 215/85 R16
19 – 225/70 R19.5
11 – 245/70 R19.5
1 – 225/75 R17
1 – 235/80 R17
2 – 235/70 R16
1 – 235/75 R16
1 – 235/75 R17
2 – 235/80 R16
23 – 235/80 R17
12 – 235/85 R16
1 – 235/85 R17
2 – 245/70 R16
4 – 245/70 R17
1 – 245/70 R18
11 – 245/70 R19.5
5 – 245/75 R16
9 – 245/75 R17
1 – 245/75 R19.5
2 – 245/80 R16
1 – 245/80 R17
1 – 255/80 R18
1 – 265/60 R20
1 – 265/65 R18
6 – 265/70 R17
7 – 265/70 R18
3 – 265/70 R19.5
17 – 265/75 R16
1 – 265/75 R17
3 – 265/75 R18
1 – 265/80 R17
2 – 275/65 R18
7 – 275/65 R20
1 – 275/70 R17
16 – 275/70 R18
1 – 285/55 R20
2 – 285/65 R18
2 – 285/65 R20
6 – 285/70 R17
8 – 285/75 R16
5 – 285/75 R17
2 – 285/75 R18
3 – 295/70 R18
1 – 315/75 R16

Michelin is most popular tire brand for truck campers

Michelin – 35.6%
BF Goodrich – 12.2%
Goodyear – 9.3%
Firestone – 8.2%
Toyo – 6.3%
Cooper – 4.1%
Continental – 3.7%
General – 3.7%
Nitto – 3.3%
Bridgestone – 1.9%
Hankook – 1.9%
Yokohoma – 1.5%
Dunlop – 0.7%
Kumho – 0.7%
Uniroyal – 0.7%
Rexen – 0.4%
Pirelli – 0.4%

Other – Pro Comp, Hercules Tera-Trac, Sumitomo, Les Schwab, Continental HDR, Mastercraft, GripMax, and Aeolus were listed in the other responses.

Tires changed about every 30,000 to 40,000 miles

Between 30,000-40,000 miles – 32.7%
After 50,000 miles – 30.4%
Between 40,000-50,000 miles – 25.9%
Between 20,000-30,000 miles – 9.5%
Less than 20,000 miles – 1.5%

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