Am I looney -- or have tire prices gone crazy

My tire suppliers tell me that the prices for tires rise with gas. The way the everything else is right now who knows!!
The market is what is looney.

 

I agree with you. Same with gas. Crude oil goes up and gas goes up the next day there’s no way oil has been made in gas already. That is one of the main reasons why I want to get off my dependence for gasoline. But electric vehicles are way too expensive right now. At least I’m no longer driving the suburban. The Prius helps a lot.

 

Pandemic, supply chain disruption, war, oil price hike, and inflation. Many other things doubled in price in the last two years. I have not bought tires for my car but helped my son get two new winter tires recently. The Sumitomo Ice Edge price has not changed much from two years ago. So, look around, you can still find some brands that have kept the price down.

 

Tires are made with petroleum products and steel. it also takes a great deal of energy to make a tire.

 

Latex rubber commodity prices have increased a bit in 2022 but still below peaks in earlier years. So prices are being driven elsewhere.

This may not be the place to discuss vehicle tires as absurdly not-recyclable things, long overdue for engineering innovation. Companies with pronounceable names are 'working on that

 

I bought some cheap Chinese tyres for the Chrysler that I use to pick up my wife's antiques: I didn't need anything particularly fancy. But actually, they're OK - grip is good; they're fairly quiet; and they still look almost new after 10,000km.

The brand name is definitely one that non-Chinese-speakers can pronounce. But while you can pronounce it, I'm not sure that you'll want to....




"Yeah, you can get a Goodride for about $100 round here" just doesn't sound great.

 

This just in.

Everything is more expensive now and salary is the same.

 

The very small 13” tires that are almost small enough to fit my antique Comutacar are $800 for a set previously they were $35 tires

Funny part is the first generation tires (natural rubber) were mostly environmentally friendly

Our synthetic models could be re-used for many things but our industry mostly blocks re-use

Given the high cost and propensity to cracking
tire crumbs make a logical addition to improve asphalt durability and you can use the crumbs with building rubble to melt your own conglomerate concrete road.

too bad nobody wants to improve the lifespan of roads.

And yes the “tire recyclers” do actually use used treads for something, sadly demand is much lower than supply

 

Yep, inflation is raising the price of everything. I keep maintenance notes on my cars and the last time I did a brake job on our old 2008 Corolla, pads and rotors were $180, five years ago. Now, $240. Brakes for our larger vehicles (Tundra and Sienna) are well over $300.

 

Hate to bust your bubble but salaries are indeed not the same.

Perhaps you've noticed all of the new "Help Wanted" signs out there?
I live in the Deep South and local small business are starting people out in the $15/hr range.

@ Tyres.
They've been going up-up-up instead of round and round for a while now.
Current automobile styling trends call for larger rims and tires, and labour costs, as mentioned above, are not static.

 

double-tap.

Note to self....
AMMO IS EXPENSIVE!!

Don't do that.

 

... I've driven on bona fide competition rubber (e.g., the weight of one tire, on its wheel, you could lift with your child's pinky-finger). What race teams now race on is anything, but. Things are so azz backward in the automotive industry, they've got marketing people mandating vehicle specifications.

The most peculiar problem we have with the tire monopolies is, their wholesale corruption of organized motor sport.

Indycar for Bridgestone, F1 for Pirelli, WEC for Michelin, NASCAR for Goodyear, over the last 30 years they've sliced and diced organized motor sport, divvied it up amongst themselves, carving out their little turf to make fake racing tires. To cover this up, they simulate what was once was a tire war between the tire-makers, by imposing tire compound restrictions upon drivers, mandating them to race on at least two sub-optimal tire compounds.

Similarly so, they've done likewise with our automakers. Wheel diameter politics, monopoly power problem looming, the tire-makers gone berserk, elongating our braking distances, arbitrarily mandating 20" plus SUV wheels on everything they see, bent upon making our cars look like the grotesque little Mattel Hot Wheels we played with, K-6.

Given a clean sheet of paper, no engineer worth his salt would ever spec a 22" diameter wheel, controlled by a 14" steering wheel. Only stupid marketing dweebs pull stunts like that.

Which is what killed actor Paul Walker, here in Santa Clarita.

Were it not for regulatory capture at the NHTSA, we're otherwise long overdue for a government intervention. Wheel diameter so sub-optimal, people can no longer drive these cars, in severe winter weather. Quarter inch of snow, CHP has little choice but shut down entire freeways, here in California.

In my once proud '99 Subaru Legacy GT wagon, on 15" wheels, I drove Santa Fe to Colorado Springs, 4 hours, passing 4 snow plows, no chains. Epitome of corporate irresponsibility, 700 horsepower supercharged ZR1 Camaro, on 22" wheels, wouldn't make it as far as Raton - Samuel, '04 Ruthiemobile.

 

Store prices are generally set to cover the cost to replace sold stock.

 

... for the very first time, drivers in Formula 1, trying, but miserably failing, to control their 18" diameter wheels, with their 9.75" steering wheels:

That car would be 5 seconds a lap faster, on 13" wheels. And, far more forgiving. On a 15" diameter wheel, this toaster oven special might actually stand a fair chance, actually making its stipulated range:

Venture Forward | FF 91 | Faraday Future

So much reciprocating mass from those hopelessly overweight 22" SUV wheels, not downhill in a tailwind would that car ever make it 400 miles on its initial charge.

10" steering wheel? 22" diameter wheels? 1100 hp? The thing's going to wind up on its lid.

Just 18 mpg, my '07 LL Bean Outback has 17s, and it takes forever, woeing it to a complete stop. On 15s, on every criterion, with exception to cup holders, was my '99 Legacy Wagon superior.

15s on my '99 Legacy, lasted forever. Just 44k miles on my Outback, I'm already on my 3rd set -


Samuel, '04 Ruthiemobile

 

Walker died from terminal dumbassery.
The good news is that he didn't take any innocents along for the ride.
The bad news is that he probably inspired more than a few deaths because of (other) idiots who think that the FAF movies were documentaries.
Our entertainment "betters" know almost as little about cars as they do about firearms.

Huh?
Fraid you lost me on that one.

I have thousands of miles in M998 HMMWVs, and they have 37" tires, and comically small steering wheels.
I've steered a 350+ foot, 7,000 tonne submarine at speeds requiring seat belts with a yoke that's less than 14'"
I'm thinking that REAL engineers might just realize that you CAN design systems to control large forces with smaller ones.
You just can't be stoned out of your gourd when you do it.
(that's good advice for posting online too!)

California is a shining example of "government intervention" being even further detached from reality than their entertainment industry.