A Helpful Guide to Buying Tires

Right now is a great time to shop for new tires. With new tire models coming into stock at your local dealerships, you may be able to get a good deal on a set of four that you’d been eyeing all last year. Or maybe you’re just ready for an upgrade to a tire that’s more suited to your driving habits and needs. SimpleTire can help you narrow down what’ll work best.

Time for Tires

When it’s time for new tires, you don’t necessarily have to go with the same type of tire that’s currently on your vehicle. Here are some tire styles that you may want to swap for and the reasons why they might make sense for you.

All-season tires

Perhaps when you bought your current tires, speed was your thing. Now it’s three years later, and you’ve got a baby on the way. All-season tires often focus on providing a smooth, quiet ride, which is just what you’ll need to have your newborn sleeping like—well, a baby. Another great feature for parents is that they won’t have to give up precious storage space for an additional set of winter tires.

Winter tires

Speaking of winter tires, you might decide that you want a set after all if you’ve been slipping and sliding in the winter. While there’s much to be said for the convenience of using one type of tire year-round, drivers in cold climates may long for more traction on the snow and ice. You can change back to your preferred tires after things thaw out.

Performance tires

Okay, so maybe your kids are grown now, and you’re ready to go back to something zippy and fun. Performance tires usually have a shorter sidewall and fewer grooves in the tread, providing improved handling and a bigger tire contact patch with the ground; traits that provide better cornering at higher speeds. Performance tires can handle some rain, but you’ll want to switch to winter or all-season tires for that ski vacation in the mountains.

Honorable mentions

The above three are the main tire styles that best serve most drivers. In fact, the vast majority of new tire purchases are all-season. For drivers with more specific needs, however, we have what we’ll call our “honorable mentions”:

Off-road

Chunky tread blocks—the raised rubber portions of the tire—and big grooves help these tires bite into loose dirt and rocky terrain to get you wherever you’re going. But when driving on pavement, these tires will sing a high-pitched, ear-piercing hum.

Mud and snow

Mud and snow tires are a bit more rugged than all-season tires and are well suited for light off-road driving and snow and ice. And unlike off-road tires, they won’t punish your eardrums when you’re driving down the highway.

Whitewall

Classic car enthusiasts often opt for whitewall tires to honor the aesthetics of the early twentieth-century era.

We hope that we’ve helped get the gears turning about finding the right tires for your needs. Once you make up your mind about the type of tires you want, turn to SimpleTire for an easy tire buying experience where you’ll get free shipping and fast delivery on every tire.