Tires: Road Noise, ford freestar, rotating tires

Question
We recently had the tires rotated on our Ford Freestar.  Ever since we are experiencing much more road noise.   Is this common when rotating tires or was something done wrong by the dealer?

Answer
Rich,

What you probably have is irregular wear, which is caused by mis-alignment and aggravated by insufficient rotation practices and insufficient inflation pressure.  

What happens is that irregular wear will be generated while the tires are in an insensitive (to vibrations) wheel position.  The vibration will be there, but its position on the vehicle hides it.  Then when the tires are rotated to a more sensitive (to vibration) position, the vibration is now sensed.  Irregular wear comes out as noise or a tactile vibration or both.  In either case, we are talking about an out of round tire causing a vibration at a certain frequency.

So first step is to get an alignment.  

The next step is to decide what to do about the tires.  You can hope that the new position will wear a new pattern into the tires, but there is a strong chance it won't work.  So the decision at this point is: Are you willing to live with the vibration, or do you replace the tires?