Tires: Tire Replacement, city delivery, tire replacement

Question
How long should new tires last? We put about 5000 miles on our car a year; mostly city driving.

Answer
It depends on so many factors that it can't be predicted.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

There is a government required test that is supposed to compare the treadwear of a given tire to a control.  The control tire is assigned the value of 100.  So a tire with a value of 200 would last twice as long.  Tires have values from 160 to over 700.

Most tire wear occurs in the cornering mode, so city driving is the worst possible scenario - lots of turns compared to the amount of straight driving.  I've seen tires wear out in 3,000 miles, simply because they were used on a city delivery truck in an area where the roads were very abrasive.

Also alignment has a lot to do with it.  A vehicle should have a little bit of toe in for stability, but a lot of toe will cause one sided wear and irregular wear.  Even a little bit of extra toe in can drastically change the rate of wear.

So I'm sorry, but I can't give you an answer.