When reading tires, is the tread rating supposed to be the higher the better?
Like I have Kuhmo 712 and the tread rating is 280. I plan on getting Toyo Proxes 4 and there tread rating is 300. Will the Toyo wear down any less faster than the Kuhmo?

On a side note, does anyone have any experience with Toyo Proxes 4?

 

There is no "standard" for tire wear rating. Each manufacturer comes up with their own rating numbers. So in your example, you can't compare Kuhmo to Toyo with any kind of reliability. Perfect example: my stock Bridgestone RE92's were rated 160. I got rid of them at 27k miles and they had 7/32 tread left. Replaced them with Bridgestone S-03's which are rated 220, and at 15k miles they are slicks. Sorry for the bad news.

 

Even if you could compare them, 20% isn't noticable.

 

the treadwear ratings work relative to other tires; this is actually EXACTLY what they are meant to do. a tire with a 200 treadwear rating will wear approximately half as fast as one with a rating of 100. of course, this doesn't happen every time, but the numbers are supposed to be relatively accurate, and universal between all manufacturers. if tire companies could just put whatever number they wanted on there, none of them would put really low numbers, would they?

PS. bman, that's a SIX percent difference, not a twenty percent difference. not to rag on your math, but a twenty percent difference would be significant.

 

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/general/utqg.jsp

treadwear is supposed work that way but is not overseen by the DOT and thus you can't necessarily compare the ratings from one company to another, because they companies themselves are the ones who assign the ratings. Whether or not they are assigning them accuratly or falsely is up to the company, no oversight committee tests the validity or accuracy of their ratings.

 

UTQG treadwear ratings are expressed more or less in a "percentage" style. A reference tire is rated at 100, so a tire rated at 300 lasts 3x or 300% as long. My math might be a little off depending on where you think "zero" starts, but it was just a quickie number I came up with (20 being the difference between 300 and 280).

EDIT: changed "longer" to "as long"... because it matters.

 

No where is there law, stipulation, or requirement for manufactures to have "universal" tire wear ratings. That is just what people assume.

Even tread wear ratings by the same manufacturer can be irrelevant. You can compare Birdgestone Potenza's but not Bridgestone Turanza'a. And Firestone and Bridgestone will not even be the same. If you want to use the tread wear #'s to compare tires you have to be looking at the same manufacturer as well as the same line of tires.

What is universal is speed and load ratings. Those are regulated by the DOT and will be the same from tire company to tire company.

 

The man who works for a tire company (bridgestone/firestone) has spoken!