Tires: bad tires, 4 digits, passenger tire

Question
i just went on a trip with desert dog tires on my 1994 f250
about 180 miles into the trip my front passenger tire blew. a few miles later my front driver tire was hopping up and down. i bought 2 new tires at sears and at about 600 miles my driver rear tire was hoppping. who is the manufacturer? will they stand behind their tires?

Answer
Eric,

On every tire is a serial number.  It is located in the vicinity of the letters "DOT" and should be near the bead on one side.  The serial number will be between 10 and 12 digits long.

The first 2 digits are the plant of manufacture.  Here's a place to decode that:

http://www.harriger.com/tires.htm

The next 2 digits are the tire size (in a code).

The next 3 or 4 digits are the type code as assigned by the tire manufacturer.

The last 3 or 4 digits are a code for when the tire was manufactured in a week/week/year or a week/week/year/year format.  So a date code of 239 would be manufactured in the 23rd week of 1999 (or 1989 or 1979), and a date code of 4504 would be the 45th week of 2004.  You should be aware that date codes prior to 199 are all 3 digits and date codes after 2000 are all 4 digits.