Tires: Tire Direction, Directional Tires

Question
Are the BF Goodrich TA long trail radial tour tires directional or can they be mounted with the white letters inside?  What is the mileage warranty for these tires?

Answer
Eleanor,

General Principles:  

If a tire has an arrow on the sidewall indicating a direction of rotation, then it is a directional tire.  Mounting the tire in the opposite way only affects its wet (and snow) traction.  It does not affect wear, pull, dry traction or any other characteristic.  If you have one of those, then the problem is not in the direction of rotation.

If the tire say "This Side Out" - or words to this effect - it is an asymmetrical tire.  Mounting the tire the opposite way may affect the dry, wet, and snow traction properties of the tire - and perhaps the wear properties, and this depends on what the intent of the asymmetry is.  However, it does not affect pull.

But when I look up on Tire Rack's web site, it says the tire is symmetrical and doesn't mention directionality at all.  But that doesn't mean the particular tire you have might not be directional - as sometimes a vehicle manufacturer might specify that the tire they want is to be directional (for marketing reasons) and tire manufacturers might take an existing tread pattern and alter it into a directional pattern.

I also looked up the tire on BF Goodrich's web site and found the same thing.

So the key is what is written on the sidewall.

Mileage warranty?

Both BFG and Tire Rack say the wear warranty is 60,000 miles.  However, you should be aware that this warranty does not apply to tires that come as original equipment (on a new vehicle) and the warranty specifies that the tires must be worn evenly and rotation intervals and inflation pressure must be maintained to spec.