Review: Best Tires for Towing Fifth Wheel Trailer

Best Tires for Towing 5th Wheel Trailer
This GMC Duramax is ready to pull a goose-neck hitch fifth wheel RV travel trailer. Photo courtesy Larry & Teddy Page via flickr. Used under a CC BY 2.0 license.

Question: I have a fifth wheel RV travel trailer and need a new set of tires. What are the best 5th wheel tires for towing a RV travel trailer with a goose-neck hitch? Also, I have a budget and need the best fifth-wheel tires for the money.

Bestseller No. 1
Bestseller No. 2
Suntek HD Trail + All Steel Heavy Duty Premium Trailer Radial Tire-ST235/85R16 235/85/16 235/85-16 133/128M Load Range H LRH 16-Ply BSW Black Side Wall
  • Treadlife: N/A
  • Season: All Season
  • Performance: Highway
  • Car Type: Trailer
  • Load Range H, 16-Ply Rated, 16-PR
Bestseller No. 3

Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

Guide to buying the best tires for a fifth wheel gooseneck trailer

When shopping for travel trailer tires, one of the considerations you should make is the time it will take you before you need to make a replacement. Depending on how often you hit the road with your trailer, the tires can serve you for quite a while.

How long do 5th wheel tires last?

Trailer tires are known to last up to six years before needing a replacement. On average, 5th wheel travel trailer tires are best replaced in a span of between three to six years. This, of course, is not the case for extreme cases where the tires are regularly used and tend to wear faster.

It is highly recommended that before you head out for that trip on your trailer, inspect your tires and look out for any signs of uneven wear. The three to six years replacement span is not cast on stone, and therefore you should attempt to disregard it and make a replacement whenever the need arises.

How Long Are Your Trips?

The tires you choose to buy for your 5th wheeler depend a lot on the length of your trips.

Even when new, fifth wheeler tires are known to wear quite a great deal when exposed to the road’s pressures continuously over long periods.

Before you decide to buy the tires, you should check to see whether it’s vital to buy them right now. In most cases, your old tires will still have some life in them to take you for that weekend camping trip. But if your planning to go for long distances, it’s never too early to buy those new tires.

This being said; however, it helps a great deal to ensure your tires are in near-perfect condition before you head out, be it for a weekend out or a coast-to-coast trip.

Do I need special tires for towing?

There has been a never-ending debate on which tire tires are better suited for the job in 5th wheeler travel trailers, between specialty tires and light truck tires.

Depending on who you ask, both tires perform great and are superior to one another. But the superiority contest aside, there are some principle truths about how the tires perform in a travel trailer environment.

As the name suggests, specialty tires are designed to perform optimally in the conditions they are meant to operate. In comparison, light truck tires are designed as a sort of ‘one size fits all for the different conditions for the tire’s operations.

The trailer variant of the specialty tires is built specifically for travel trailers, and they consist of thicker sidewalls. On the other hand, light truck tires are built with a standard fitting of sidewalls, not considering special use cases such as those presented by travel trailers.

The tires’ sidewall makeup is important for a travel trailer since this means that the tires can hold and support vertical load far much better. A thinner sidewall is more prone to tire bursts when exposed to too much weight and pressure.

Considering that the tires’ sidewall is of great importance in terms of the tire and general trailer safety, it is safe to say that specialty tires are more superior to their light truck counterparts.

Bestseller No. 1
Bestseller No. 2
Suntek HD Trail + All Steel Heavy Duty Premium Trailer Radial Tire-ST235/85R16 235/85/16 235/85-16 133/128M Load Range H LRH 16-Ply BSW Black Side Wall
  • Treadlife: N/A
  • Season: All Season
  • Performance: Highway
  • Car Type: Trailer
  • Load Range H, 16-Ply Rated, 16-PR
Bestseller No. 3

Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

What are the roads like?

The best tires for 5th wheel trailers depends on where you go. Roads or lack thereof are a factor that most times goes disregarded when choosing and shopping for trailer tires.

Though all tire manufacturers adhere to the set standards and make their tires fit for all sorts of roads, some do it better than others by adding added protection. Some off-road terrains and surfaces can be more trying than others, and your trailer tires should come prepared.

Some tire manufacturers reinforce their tires’ inner linings to give them added protection against piercing by sharp rocks or metal pieces. Depending on the manufacturer, off-road travel trailer specialty tires can also have deeper treads to give that added grip when the need arises.

How to choose the best tires for towing a RV: Tire load rating and ply matter

Tire ply refers to the number of layers or plies of rubber attached to the construction of a tire. There is a direct correlation between the number of plies in a tire and the tire’s strength, in that the more plies a tire has, the stronger it is.

The load rating is an indication of the range of weight which the tires are designed to handle.

The information of the load range and ply rating of the tires is usually indicated on the side in a combination of numbers and letters.

Depending on your travel trailer’s weight and carrying capacity, there are different load ratings and ply combinations, and your tire dealer should advise you on what works best for you.

I hope this helps with the following questions:

What are the best tires for my 5th wheel RV?
What is the best truck tire for towing?
What are the best truck tires for towing a travel tire?
What is the best 5th wheel tire for the money?

Find a set of the best tires for towing 5th wheel RV trailers on Amazon in 2023.

Originally posted 2023-01-06 18:54:54.