Tires: cuffed tires, cupped tires, worn tires

Question
Rear tires are cuffed makes a loud sound ,will that hurt my car,do I need to put new tires on? I'm 63yrs and don't know what cuffed tires mean or what they do, I was told my tires are cuffed,please help,the thread on tires are still good.
  Would appreciate your your advice.
                                          Margaret

Answer
Margaret,

I think you mean "cupped" tires - and that's really a wrong interpretation of "irregularly worn" tires, which is caused by misalignment and aggravated by insufficient inflation pressure and insufficient rotation practices.

If these tires used to be front tires and were rotated to the rear to improve a vibration, there is an outside chance that a new wear pattern with develop, erasing the old irregular one.

But if these are tires that spent a lot of time on the rear and you've just noticed the problem:

1) you could rotate them to the front and live with the vibration until the new wear pattern erases the old irregular one.

2)  or replace them with new tires.  If you leave them in place, then the situation is going to get rapidly worse.