Tires: Bald tire, jeep cherokee, rwd cars

Question
Hi.  I have a 97 Jeep Cherokee that I had all 4 tires replaced awhile ago.  Me and a friend decided to rotate them the other day (yes, I am very lazy about rotating them) and in doing so found that the rear passenger tire was half bald.  I need to explain this more.  Its not half as in the center of the tire to the car or to the street.  But the other way, like if the tire sank halfway into the ground, the half still visible would be bald and pretty well bald at that.  NONE of the other tires show any other type of wear other than normal.  This one was very obviously not right on that half.  I was just wondering what might have caused that?  Any ideas?  Thanks for your time.

Answer
Jeff,

If I am reading your description right, could this be called "center wear" - as in the center of the tread - as opposite to "2 sided wear" - wear on both shoulders of the tread and not in the center.  (and just for reference, there is "one side wear" where the wear is only on one shoulder.

If so, then you should be aware that the drive tires tend to wear in the center of the tread where steer tires tend to wear in the shoulders.

That means that RWD cars - and your Jeep would be RWD if not in 4WD mode - will have center wear in the rear and shoulder wear in the front.  FWD will tend to wear evenly front to rear, but at different rates - more rapidly in the front.

One other peculiar thing is that right rear tires tend to wear a bit more rapidly than the left rear on RWD.  This is because right hand turns tend to be sharper and 1)  more prone to spinning on the inside of a turn, and 2) the inside tire tends to be dragged around the corner - and the sharper the turn, the worse this is.