Find where a tire is made

[idroba]

How to find where tires are made:

Look on the tire. Look at the molded in DOT code. The first two letters/numbers after DOT are the country of origin and the plant which made them.

Go to All the D.O.T. Tire Plant Codes to find the information based on the code you found.

This was published in Trailer Life recently. Thought you might like a record of it here on the Forum.

[Tireman9]

Anyone with a tire failure needs to post the name & address of the tire plant that made the tire or at east the full DOT serial so others can look up the information.
Simply saying it was made in China does not help us understand the problem as it is unlikely that every plant has similar levels of quality.
To do otherwise would be like claiming that all problems with AS RVs would be solved if they moved the factory to another state as all the problems posted here are about poor quality of RVs made in Ohio which is false assumption based on poor understanding of causation vs correlation.

[HowieE]

Your comment is interesting and if someone were able to over a long enough time period to collect the data it would be useful. Since that data is not available I take the easy approach and never buy a tire made in China. The complete lack of dedication to quality on the national level is not worth the risk.

[Tireman9]

Originally Posted by HowieE

Your comment is interesting and if someone were able to over a long enough time period to collect the data it would be useful. Since that data is not available I take the easy approach and never buy a tire made in China. The complete lack of dedication to quality on the national level is not worth the risk.

Howie, While I agree it would be best to have maybe a 1,000 reports I am not willing to let "Good" get in the way of 'Best".

In any month there seems to be maybe a dozen posts of tire failure. I would like to do two things. Have a picture posted so we can learn which failures are the result of air loss, i.e. "Blowouts" and which are the result of older tire technology and possibly poorer quality. If we ended up with a half dozen tread separations all from the same plant then we have a good reason to be suspicious of tires from that plant.

There are dozens of tire plants in China I doubt that all are making tires that fail in the first year simply because the builders speak Mandarin. It is much more likely that one plant is the "low price leader" and that plant is the primary supplier of sub-par tires to the RV industry. Maybe it would make tire purchasing decisions easier if we knew which plant to avoid.

[Ray Eklund]

My 2006 23 foot Safari had five 14 inch Marathon Load Range C tires. My first trailer and experience with Goodyear tires for Airstream.

The Dealer in Denver, Colorado put that black gunk on the outside of the tires. They looked like fresh tires made a few hours before I arrived. They weren't....

The spare had a grey color to it. When I had a flat tire, the tire was grey. But I was impressed. Imprinted in the sidewall was: Made in New Zealand.

Airstreams are assembled in Jackson Center... in the USA. WHAT? This had to be a very 'SPECIAL DEAL' from New Zealand Goodyear, for a tire that was a non performer made anywhere in the USA or Canada.

No codes here to read and decipher. I understand New Zealand is just off the coast of California and south of the Equator maybe 6,782 miles. Lucky me.

The tires were then shipped to Jackson Center, Ohio from a port in, maybe Timbucktoo, California... another 2,254 miles.

These tires did not last one year in the Northern Hemisphere. And when they failed... it was MY FAULT. Just great, I say. They were shipped 9,036 miles and on my trailer for less than 1,000 miles. Not KM, Miles. No doubt the wear was from traveling outside the USA.

Maxxi and Tow Max tires in the 14 inch C Rated ST tire did well and lasted seven years without any... ITS YOUR FAULT failures. One brand was from Costco and the other in Salt Lake City, Les Schwab Tires (from our first year with Marathons).

When experts say how wonderful the Marathon Endurance improved ST tires have become... they made plenty on the Marathon sales. If they serve Airstreams well, it is about time and maybe not from some place far, far away.

[CapriRacer]

Just an update on identifying the manufacturing plant for tires.

There are now both 2 digit and 3 digit plant codes (unlike what was stated in the original post. Initially the 3 digit plant codes will start with the number 1, but over time ALL the letters and numbers will be used (except O, I, Z, and Q, because they look like numbers).

After April 2025, 3 digits plant codes will be required. That means tire DOT codes (aka TIN - Tire Identification Number) will be 12 or 13 digits long. (the "Type Code" can be either 3 or 4 digits)