Wheel alignment

I've driven 400K miles in two different vehicles ('92 Subaru & 07 Prius) in the past 20 years and never once was tire wear bad enough, nor was the steering wheel pulling enough to justify an alignment job.

 

I got quite uneven wear on the front tyres of my 2017 X3, and a set of tyres only lasted 20,000kms / 12,000 miles. So I got an alignment, and the new tyres have lasted longer, but they're going to need replacing soon after only about 30,000kms / 18,000 miles.

 

Over the last 15 years my CFO and I have put about 500,000 miles on 4 cars and we’ve never had an alignment done on any of them.
When I drove G3s for Ma Bell (>200,000 miles in 2 Priuses over 10 years) I never needed an alignment on either on for any reason.

My mileage.
Yours will vary.

 

Materials have improved, and clearance tolerances have gotten tighter. So the alignment could be staying in spec better.

What I recall, is only really needing an alignment after hitting a deep pot hole at speed. It's a good idea after front suspension work. I do see enough cars on the road with the wheel camber off to suggest wheel alignments probably need to be done more often.

How often to people rotate their tires? An argument against rotation is that it masks the uneven wear from alignment issues.

 

Ditto, OP. I used to do alignments every 2 years or so in my 1990's vehicles. I haven't done an alignment since the early aughts. That includes a 2003 Civic, 2005 Prius, 2009 Sonata, 2009 Escape, 2012 PiP, 2016 Outlander.

I don't know if cars are better made today or I was just an ignorant kid that did unnecessary alignments. I did see uneven wear on the tires back then but I also bought those vehicles very well used being a poor kid. As a mature adult with resources, my vehicles were purchased less used. Tire wear has been consistent enough that I never saw a need.

The inside tread wore out sooner than the outside tread on all 4 tires on my PiP. But since the OEM EP20's lasted some 90k miles, I'm not going to bother with an alignment.

 

I rotate every 5-7K on all 4 vehicles.....more or less depending on the number of long distance trips.
My OMs seem to agree on a 7500 mile periodicity for this maintenance item

IMHO, unless you own a tire franchise, there IS no argument for failing to rotate tires regularly, and 3/4 of my personal vehicles are RWD.
For a FWD vehicle tire rotations would seem to be even more critical since the back half of the car is just a place to hang the other two tires.

My beloved company mostly uses trucks, but they do bring all vehicles to the barn every 5k miles for maintenance, which may or may not include tire rotations,
Judging by the sing-song WA-WA-WA-WA that my all company vehicles exhibit at speed, I'd say that they are not concerned with tire rotations.

AMMV....