Beware of Tire Discounters Offering Cheap Tires
When the average person thinks about the term “tire discounters”, the first thing that is likely to come to mind is that they have finally found a place to buy cheap tires and in some ways they are right. There are many discounters who do just that, they sell the cheapest tires they can find at ridiculously low prices and seem to have no concern about whether or not the tires they are selling last a day, a week or a year.
However, this is only one side of the discount tire market, albeit the seedier side of the business. The problem is that if you think you are saving money buying your car tires at a store like this, you need to stop for a minute and assess the situation before you spend a dime. This is the time to go over the term “cheap tires” as this is a very confusing term and can be used by different retailers to describe more than one type of tire.
The average use of the term cheap tires is to describe tires that are low in price, but unbeknownst to the customer, also very cheap in the way they are manufactured. In the United States, the Department of Transportation has established certain minimum standards that all tires sold for use on the road must meet. Among these standards are the number of plies in the sidewall of the tires, the treadwear, the traction rating and the load rating.
While all tires must meet these standards, there is nothing in the regulations that says any manufacturer must build their tires to go beyond these minimums. In essence, as long as a tire meets these minimum standards, it is considered to be a safe tire for use on the average car. These are the “cheap tires” that so many of the different low budget tire discounters sell. They are the same tires that you keep ending up replacing every year because they either fall apart or wear out very quickly.
Either way when you stop and think about having to pay the cost of these tires once a year and compare it to buying one good quality set of tire from reputable tire discounters, it doesn’t take long to see which tire are going to save you money in the long run. However, there is so much more to buying a set of tires than just the cost. Even if you are on a tight budget, there is no reason to ever buy a set of these “sure pop” tires, so named by mechanics because they are sure to pop or blow out in a very short period of time.
When you are buying new tires for your car, you might be thinking in terms of cost, when you should be thinking in terms of both longevity and safety. You need to keep in mind that your safety, that of your family and of everyone who happens to be sharing the road with you, is dependent on the quality of the tires you have installed on your car.
Cheap tires have several strikes against them when it comes to safety, starting with the fact that they are almost all made from inferior quality components. This can cause them to heat up beyond the temperature they are supposedly rated for and this will cause them to blow out or suffer catastrophic failure. If this happens at highway speeds, your car, with you and your family inside, is likely to become an out of control, high speed projectile that is going to collide with anything and everything in its way. The end result can be nothing short of disastrous and in many cases fatal.
If this is not what you have in mind when it comes to buying tires for your family car then you need to skip those tire discounters who sell only low quality tires. This does not however, mean that you should go out and spend a fortune paying full price for top quality brand name tires, it just means that you have to learn to shop smart.
At Discount Tires you will find the other side of tire discounters. We carry the best brand names in the tire industry and offer them at cheap prices. These are the only types of “cheap tires” that you should ever consider trusting the safety of your family to as they not only meet but far exceed the minimum standards as established by the Department of Transportation.
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