Tires: Michelin Harmony life expectancy, vehicle fleets, toyota corolla

Question
With regular rotation what is the normal life expectancy of Michelin Harmony tires on a Toyota Corolla? The set that I purchased in 2005 had about 118,000 miles on them when I replaced them a few weeks ago -at the recommendation of the dealer. My dealer thought this was way out of the ordinary and that I should submit a testimonial to the company. Your thoughts?  THANKS.

Answer
Daryl,

I used to do testing with vehicle fleets.  I had a a guy in St. Louis, who drove to Kansas City and back every day.  He could get over 100K out of any set of tires, not matter how cheap they were.

For comparison, I had the same tire in service in Florida and could barely get 10K out of them.  The difference?  St. Louis drove basically in a straight line, where Florida (already known as a tire eater) was doing home delivery - lots of turns.

So if you were to give me a set of tires and ask me to get as much mileage out of them as possible I would drive on the interstate in as flat and as straight of a location as I could find.  The fact that you put 118K in 3 years (that's over 30K a year) points to your spending a lot of time driving interstate highways.

To put this in perspective, there are also going to be people who get very poor wear out of their tires - lots of turns, abrasive pavement, vehicle out of alignment, etc.  This means you will find wear complaints on almost every tire made.  A lot of this is "expectations".

So "No", I think Michelin already knows all this and your letter would be interesting, but nothing more.