Commercial truck tires are an entirely different beast from light truck or even heavy duty pickup truck tires. They have to stand up to an entirely different level of abuse and commercial truckers need to be able to rely on them to get them to their destination, whether it's across town or across the country.
Commercial tires come in various sizes and tread patterns, just like the tires you would buy for any vehicle. The difference is in the construction of the tire itself. These tires are built to withstand much higher mileage driving, and higher loads.
Some manufacturers, such as Goodyear for example, even offer different types of commercial tires for different uses. If you check their website for commercial tires, you can choose from several different applications - emergency vehicle, long haul, school buses, etc.
Commercial tires can also often be re-capped (commonly known as retreads) so your service life can be a lot longer. Some brands have longer warranties on the tire casing so re-capping them means you will still be covered. Dunlop, for example, offers a 4 year or 500,000 mile casing warranty on some of their tires. If you put enough miles on them to reach 500,000 in 4 years, you could re-cap them two or three times and still be covered under the warranty.
While commercial tires are designed for heavy duty use on commercial vehicles, there is no reason they can't be used on light- or heavy-duty pickups. The big truck manufacturers - mainly Ford, Chevy and Dodge - are making some pretty powerful heavy-duty pickups these days, but they typically use underperforming tires on them.
There are conversion kits available to convert from the standard 8 lug configurations to the hub center or metric wheels that are used on most big trucks. Putting commercial tires on your pickup truck has several advantages:
- Much longer tire life
- Smoother ride
- Better gas mileage
- Larger tires will reduce the RPM at a given speed
- They look great
Whether you're looking for tires for commercial applications, or just want to get the advantages they offer on a smaller truck, make sure you do your homework before choosing a brand and model.