Off-Road Tires

Engineering tires for street use isn’t an easy task, but it’s simplified in at least one way because, except for the occasional pothole, the pavement presents a fairly uniform contact surface for the tire. Not so with off-road tires, because when you leave the road with your 4x4 truck or SUV, you may encounter loose or hard-packed dirt, sand, gravel, rocks, or mud. Without the right tires you could quickly get stuck. Luckily, the brands you’ll find on our digital shelves have engineered off-road tires, including all-terrain and mud-terrain tires, for all of these conditions and the way you drive.

Off-road tires have more aggressive tread than all-season tires for better grip on dirt trails and snow-covered roads. A typical highway all-season tire has closely spaced tread blocks separated by shallow voids, organized in groups divided by continuous grooves that wrap around the circumference of the tire. This makes for a smooth, quiet ride and good handling on dry and wet pavement, but poor traction on dirt and deep snow. In contrast, an off-road, all-terrain tire has independent tread blocks separated by wider and deeper voids, with many traction edges and sipes to dig into the surface.

But as you can see from the many different off-road tires displayed on this page, the shape and arrangement of the tread blocks, and space and depth between them, can vary a great deal. All-terrain tires with tread that is more conservative – tread blocks that are spaced closer together, and with circumferential grooves – perform satisfactorily on hard-packed dirt trails but also work well on pavement, and are a good choice if you spend most of your time driving on streets and highways, with only the occasional foray off-road. Such tires also are generally the quietest and longest lasting all-terrain rubber. Where the tread blocks are spaced further apart, with wider and deeper voids, the tread is more aggressive, with the most aggressive generally being the tread on mud-terrain tires.

With less rubber on the road, off-road tires with aggressive tread don’t work as well on pavement, and they tend to be noisy and wear faster. But they excel off-road, where the larger voids allow more of the tread blocks to be exposed to the surface for better bite on rocks and irregular terrain. The large voids on mud-terrain tires keep them from becoming packed with mud, so instead of spinning the tires are able to grab. Many all-terrain and mud-terrain tires also have tread lugs that extend onto the sidewalls, for even greater traction. All-terrain and mud-terrain tires designed for heavy-duty off-road use are also built tougher to withstand the beating, with more plies in the tread and the sidewall. Stiffer sidewalls also lend themselves to airing down for more traction when off-roading.

No matter what type of surface you drive on with your 4x4, deep snow, sand, rocks, hard-packed dirt or mud, we have the off-road tires for the job. Of course, we also know that for many of you a set of the biggest and knobbiest off-road meats is more for completing your lifted showpiece with the off road lights, off road bumpers, winch, etc. and we have them too. In addition to off-road tires for trucks, Jeeps, and SUVs, we also carry all-terrain tires for heavy-duty truck, fleet and commercial applications. These tires combine the traction you need for wherever the job takes you, with the toughness to handle heavy loads mile after mile. And if you’re into vintage trucks and military equipment like Jeeps and Power Wagons, we have off-road tires with an authentic appearance and modern construction.