Our team at SimpleTire has gone through the catalog and rounded up some of the best tires for a GMC Yukon 1500, including all-season, all-terrain, and winter light truck tires. We then ranked them in Best/Great/Good order and used our SimpleScore system to assign a numerical value for traction, handling, and longevity for each one, making your buying process a little easier. Ready? Let’s dive in for a closer look:
1. Bridgestone Alenza A/S Ultra: Best All-Season tire
Let’s get our list going with the Bridgestone Alenza A/S Ultra, a highly versatile all-season tire that consistently has been making a great impression for its year-round traction on dry, wet, or snowy roads. It’s a very capable tire that’s notable for its low highway noise and forgiving ride quality, the kind you’d expect with a Grand Touring tire, as well as for the value and long wear you need. The Alenza A/S Ultra is a fairly new model in Bridgestone’s successful Alenza tire family and is designed with the goals of long, even tread wear and precise handling in mind. Bridgestone designed the Alenza A/S Ultra with an advanced silica-based tread compound that features great wear properties and dependable grip in wet or wintry conditions as well as reduced heat buildup and low noise generation. When the pavement’s wet with rain, the Alenza A/S Ultra’s asymmetric all-season tread pattern channels water away with wide circumferential and angled grooves to fight a tendency toward hydroplaning. For wintry conditions and snow on the roads, there’s Bridgestone’s Snow Vices, grooves that are designed to pick up and retain snow to develop snow-to-snow friction, for safe, reliable traction. A dense pattern of sipes adds hundreds of extra biting edges and multiple traditions through snow and slush. You’ll love the whisper-quiet ride of the Alenza A/S Ultra; Bridgestone’s Quiet Track technology package cancels certain frequencies and reduces pattern noise for a ride that’s peaceful and serene. The internal construction of the Alenza A/S Ultra is designed around a polyester casing held together with two steel belts and a spiral-wound nylon cap layer, for the long wear, durability, and reassuring, dead-solid stability you’re looking for. Bridgestone is confident enough to stand by the Alenza A/S Ultra with an 80,000 mile limited manufacturer tread life warranty. After running all this information through the SimpleScore system, the Alenza A/S Ultra registers an overall average of 9.6, with marks of 9.55 for handling, 9.7 for longevity, and 9.7 for traction. Long, even wear, dependable grip in a variety of weather conditions, and handling that’s accurate and immediate – that's what the Bridgestone Alenza A/S Ultra brings to the game.
2. Toyo Open Country A/T III: Best All-Terrain tire
The Toyo Open Country A/T III is an excellent choice for a 4x4 GMC Yukon 1500; whether you’re headed to a fun adventure or a muddy, rough job site, this is the kind of tire you can count on for the grip and durability that will safely get you there and back. That kind of performance doesn’t necessarily mean you have to live with a tradeoff in ride comfort, sharp handling, civilized road manners, and low noise – in other words, the kinds of things you’ve become used to with premium all-season tires. That might sound like a lot to hope for, but the Toyo Open Country A/T III is a tire that can deliver in all those categories with versatile and capable performance. Internally, the Open Country A/T III features a polyester casing, two steel belts, a spiral-wrap polyamide cap layer, and a tough damage-resistant tread compound. Toyo covers the Open Country A/T III with a 65,000 mile manufacturer tread life warranty, and after running the numbers we figured this tire registers a SimpleScore of 9.6 for longevity. The high void ratio of the symmetric all-terrain tread means it easily ejects stones, mud, and debris as the wheel turns so there’s always a clear section of tire for traction. The Open Country A/T III also features an extra-deep tread that enhances traction as well as ensures long wear. As you might expect with such an aggressive tread, the Toyo Open Country A/T III has the Three Peak Mountain Snowflake certification for severe winter service, all adding up to a traction score of 9.7. Cornering, braking, and steering response are all predictable and direct without being overly sensitive, thanks to the shoulder design, sipe pattern, and stable internal construction of the Open Country A/T III, which adds up to a 9.3 handling score. All told, the Toyo Open Country A/T III is a tough and capable tire for you with long wear, durable design, and great year-round performance.
3. Goodyear Eagle Enforcer Winter: Best Winter tire
Now we come to our pick for the best winter tire for a Yukon 1500, the Goodyear Eagle Enforcer Winter. The Eagle Enforcer Winter is a police-grade winter tire (not surprising since so many Tahoes and Yukons are used as police vehicles) and has been shown to deliver top performance in police tests. The Eagle Enforcer gets a very strong SimpleScore of 9.8 for traction, with its proven winter tread compound and directional V-Tred tread pattern that features angled grooves and sipes to cut through snow, slush, and standing water for dependable grip and braking properties. Handling is equally capable, with a SimpleScore of 9.8, with Goodyear’s ActiveResponse Technology that enhances cornering and response with a custom tread formulation that’s distributed in zones along the tread for wet or dry pavement performance. With a SimpleScore of 7.5, the Goodyear Eagle Enforcer Winter falls a bit in longevity, but it’s important to remember this is a dedicated winter tire for cold-weather use only. Like all winter tires, the tread formulation of the Eagle Enforcer Winter is softer to stay flexible in subfreezing weather but will wear quickly in warmer conditions. Winter tires shouldn’t be used if temperatures are above 45 degrees F.
While these are the best GMC Yukon 1500 tires on the market, there are plenty of other options to consider:
4. Kumho Crugen HP71: Great All-Season tire
Let’s close out and wrap up our list with a next-generation all-season tire, the Crugen HP71 from Kumho. We’ve been impressed with Kumho products for a long time, and the Crugen HP71 comes in with a very respectable SimpleScore of 9.1 for longevity. Kumho designed this tire with an advanced tread compound and stands by it with a 65,000 mile warranty. Steering feedback, response, road manners, and cornering are more in line with what you’d expect from a performance tire, with a rigid center rib and shoulder blocks that resist tread squirm and deformation with the stresses of braking and cornering, for a handling score of 8.6. We give the Crugen HP71 a SimpleScore of 8.4 for traction with its circumferential grooves, micro-serrations, lateral voids, and full-depth sipes that help deliver dependable grip in wet, dry, or wintry conditions and on a variety of pavement surfaces. The Kumho Crugen HP71 is also engineered for a ride that’s quiet and refined thanks to a randomized tread pitch and computer-tuned to cancel certain frequencies, keeping highway noise to a minimum.
Order GMC Yukon 1500 Tires Online
Buying tires online can be a stressful process, but it really doesn't need to be. SimpleTire offers a simple approach to finding the tires that are best for you and your GMC Yukon 1500. Select your GMC Yukon 1500 below, then tell us a few more things such as year and trim level to determine your tire size. From there, we'll show you tires that fit your vehicle and are the best match based on performance characteristics, but you can also look for the best value tires, tires that are on sale or part of a promo, have the longest tread life, and much more