Hi. My original BF Goodrich tires on my Dodge Ram are coming to the end of their tread life so I am in the market for some new tires. On the rear I have 275/60/17 and on the front I have 255/60/17. I have been trying to find some tires manufactured in USA and having a lot of trouble locating anything. Does anybody know if Goodyear still manufacture in the USA, or any other tire manufactured in USA still? I want to support american workers. Thanks, Glenn.

 

I'm not sure about USA workers, but your cousins to the north would appreciate your patronage. The Good Year plant in Medicine Hat Alberta has been making tires for years.

 

Yes I would love to support Canadian workers and buy some Goodyear tires made with their labor, but they do not exist in the sizes that I need. Every time I enquire, Goodyear say that they are not available until 3 months time. They have been saying that for 2 years....!
Perhaps you could do some local research for me and find out who might have these tires in these sizes?
I would truly appreciate it.
Glenn.

 

A lot of Michelin tires are made in Spartanburg. South Carolina

 

Curious what you went with Fury..

 

The rears (275/60/17)'s I managed to find some new Canadian manufactured Goodyears through Tire Rack. The fronts (255/60/17)'s, I never managed to find any brand of tire in that size manufactured in Canada or USA. How sad is that?! So I went with a German manufactured Goodyear in that size which I was able to purchase locally. At least they are not asian! The moral of this story, is that it is getting difficult to the point of being impossible to even purchase Canadian or USA manufactured tires to support your economies, because the demand is not there anymore due to you guys buying all that cheap asian crap like Hankook and Toyo. You guys have got to wake up and start actively supporting your own country's economies/workers while there is any chance left of the manufacturing plants in your countrys surviving. Once they have all closed due to your sending all your hard earned cash to asia to buy the cheap rubbish that they peddle, where it will never come back, we will all be that one step closer to being their slaves with no means of supporting ourselves.
Wake up and seek out and support USA and Canadian manufactured goods while there still is some to buy.....

 

You could have tried Cooper tires ... Tire Rack doesn't sell 'em though.

Also, Kelly Tire is owned by Goodyear (for about 75 years).

 

So do you know these sizes are actually available from Coopers or Kellys, or just having a bit of a guess...? From what I have been able to research, neither of these companies sell tires in this size, as obviously I would have checked the obvoius choices before wasting my time mentioning it on an internet forum....
So can you tell me who I might call, who stocks these sizes in american made tires...?

 

Well, you didn't say what kind of tire you were looking for ... 'Goodyear' is just a brand. To me the compound and intended use is most important (all-season, winter ice, winter mud and snow, on-off road, mudder, etc). Plus, I'm a little picky about my tires, so even though I don't have a hard-and-fast rule about where they were made, when you don't shop at Wall-Mart for some reason you end up with stuff not made in China or (with tires) Korea. Go figure.


Once I decide on a few tires I can afford and fit my needs, then I dig deeper into the specs. For you that would be checking country of origin, something I also do if I'm importing the tire into Canada because a Canadian or US made tire saves me $10 a tire there. The $10 isn't a deal-breaker by any means, it just goes to my total cost calculation to help me decide.

I'm also going to check the diameter and section width, which is info that's published by the manufacturers, because pretty much every tire varies there. One guy's 255-60-17 is going to be different from the other guy's 255-60-17 if you measure the actual tire; it varies even from model to model of tire from the same brand.

And I use that info more than the tire size designation to choose one; I may move up or down a bit since I now know whether and how it will fit or not.

Having said all that a quick check at Tire Rack by size for 255-60-17 gave me 24 hits for truck tires (some were "SUV tires" which are P or "Passenger Car" tires; I only get LT-designated tires with a load range I want for my truck), and it was about 40-60 US/Foreign made, one Michelin was Canada.

There weren't many tires there I would actually buy for my Ram, though ... I go at it from the other direction: the right tire first, the size that fits second.

For what it's worth, these are all the tires I've bought over the last 4 years:

Dunlop Direzza Sport Z1 Star-Spec x4 195-50-15 for the Mazda Miata.
Not a street tire, unless you like buying tires; these are basically a DOT legal track (road race) tire. Stick like glue; I'm not kidding. Easily the stickiest tire I've ever driven. Amazingly, they're good in the wet as well. Useless on anything but pavement, though. Good for about 10,000 Km (6,000 miles) before they're bald, and even when they're bald, they STILL stick like glue. They're just not legal to drive on anymore. Dunlop is a UK tire company owned 75% Goodyear (US) 25% Sumitomo (Japan). These were made in Japan, but it's a specialty low-volume tire.

Note: A lot of Dunlops available in North America are made at the Goodyear/Sumitomo joint venture factory in the US.

Nokkian Hakkapilitta LT x4 235-75-15 for the Chevy C15
An ice radial Light Truck (Load Range C) tire that worked well on ice, but wore out quickly. After two winters they were done. Won't buy again; next time I'll go back to the Cooper Weatherall's which are just as good on ice, better on snow, decent on dry pavement and dirt, and lasted 4 seasons. The Chevy was replaced by a 96 Ram 1500 this fall.

Nokian used to be Finnish (tires are the original business of Nokia the phone guys) but were partly sold the second last time Nokia almost went broke about 25 years ago and then partly dumped again the last time Nokia almost went broke about 15 years ago; biggest shareholder now is Bridgestone (Japan). Plants in Russia, Finland, but these are US made, so must have been at the Cooper tire factory which makes Nokians for North America under license.

Continental ExtremeWinterContact x4 225-75-15's x4 for the PT Cruiser.
Excellent ice and snow tire. Couldn't be happier. On the third season and still grip extremely well on ice and snow, handle very well on wet and dry pavement ... better than any ice rated tire I've used that way. Don't go off-road in the PT. Will buy again. Made in either the US or Germany, but I imported these and didn't pay the $10 so they must have come from the US factory.

Cooper Discoverer AT/3 LT235-85-16 x4 for the Ram 1500. About 450 km (300 miles) on these so just getting to know them. Fit nice, no rubbing, stock 2wd suspension, and they're just barely under 32" diameter. Like 'em so far, not an ice tire but I knew that when I bought them. Good on deep snow, light packed snow, dry pavement, wet pavement. No idea about off-road yet, since all the "off-road" is "on-snow" right now, but generally a M+S rated tire is at least decent there. US made.

So, as it turns out, I buy a lot of US made tires. But, I don't set out to do that. What I *do* set out to do, no matter what I'm buying, is to buy quality goods. I'm an old fart and it's a lesson I hate to re-learn ... buy cheap junk and you'll buy it again before you're done with it, and 2x 20% off is 60% more, and you're still stuck with a cheap piece of junk. Or buy quality the second time around and you're out 80% more. Even at 50% off, you're stuck with cheap junk after having to replace it because it's inadequate for the task, and you paid as much as the good stuff you could have bought the first time around. Save yourself the grief.

I don't actually care where it's made, if it's made well. China, even, isn't a bad word. Cheap Junk is a bad word. Don't get me started on the very worst ... Expensive Junk.

I'm old enough to remember when Japanese goods were cheap junk. That changes, and that will change for China goods too, but you have to live in the here and now, and right now, there is a lot of crap on sale, and a lot of people eating it up. That's all I know.

Yes, I'll pay more, too. And if everyone did that, it wouldn't matter where some specific thing was made that you bought, because the quality factories would still be in your neighborhood. Cuz people all over the world would buy the stuff they made.

Buy quality and you will probably be using it the day they come to carry you to the 'home' for grampa's who can't remember where they live anymore. And that means, call me crazy, sometimes saving for what you want instead of just running out and getting crap "on sale". Crap on sale is Crap with a last laugh on you. Don't do it.

 

Guess I forgot the "rant warning" there. Oh well.

Good luck with your tires; and glad to see you care about quality goods.

By the way, what exactly did you buy?