How Long Do Tires Last?

How Long Do Tires Last?

For many years, the only way to determine if tires needed to be replaced was the use the ‘penny test’, which involves sticking a penny (or a quarter) into the tread of a tire. If you can see the head of the person on the penny, your tires are too worn and the treads are too shallow, meaning that the tread depth is less than 2/32 of an inch and it’s time to replace your tires. If the top of the head on the penny is covered, it means that the treads in your tire are deep enough to continue the use of the tire and that you’ll have some time before you need to replace them. While this is a good way to tell if your tires are too worn to continue using, that’s not the only reason you might need to swap out your old tires for a brand-new set.

As a general rule of thumb, the tires on a vehicle you drive fairly often will likely last you about 3 to 5 years or approximately 75 000 – 100 000 km. The shelf life of a tire will majorly depend on how often the car is driven. The less often a vehicle is driven, the longer its tires will last. All tires expire eventually, which is why our Service Departments recommend replacing all tires once they get old (even if they haven’t already been replaced, aren’t fully worn down, the tire is a spare, or the tires are in storage), if they haven’t already been replaced for another reason. This is because as the tire gets older, the rubber starts to crack and cause parts of the tire to separate from each other.
With that being said, there’s no exact way to tell how long a tire is going to last since it almost completely depends on environmental and other external factors. This can include:

  • Climate: extreme temperatures, rain, snow, or ice, strong sunlight
  • Driving habits: speeding, driving on damaged roads, quick starts, emergency brakes
  • Road conditions: potholes, sharp objects, speedbumps
  • Neglecting tire maintenance: low or high tire pressure, not doing alignments or rotations, skipping professional tire inspections
  • Improper usage: using summer tires on snow or ice, mixing tire types, using a spare tire of a different size

At Ajax Hyundai, we have thousands of tires available to our customers. This includes summer, winter, and all-season tires, all of which can be found in our tire store. Our online tire store allows you to browse our entire inventory of tires based on your vehicle’s make and model. Ajax Hyundai, as well as the other dealerships at Drive Autogroup of a wide variety of tire brands including BF Goodrich, Bridgestone, Continental, Dunlop, Firestone, General Tire, Gislaved, Goodyear, Hankook, Kelly Tires, Michelin, Toyo Tires, Uniroyal and Yokohama Tires. We can also store your summer and winter tires during the off-season through our service department! For more information on our available tires or the importance of winter tires, check out the buttons below.

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