Originally Posted By: MNgopher
I wish you luck finding a Wilderness LE in a P235/75/15, a P235/70/16, or a P235/70/17, as those are the applications I work with.
Is it so hard to believe that someone has had a different experience? I trust that you have had a fine experience and don't think you haven't. I have not, and that's OK. You also note that there performance in bad weather is better than any OEM tire, and that may be true. However, there are other tires out there as well besides the OEM.
Tirerack, for all their strengths and weaknesses in the reviews, notes that the Destination LE is the 9th best Highway All Season Tire, which is pretty good. The Treadlife rating is the 19th best though. It would seem to me the broad opinion is that these tires do well, but that treadlife is not a strength compared to its competition.
On pricing, if your retailer is docking you 40 to 50 bucks a tire between an AT and the LE, you are getting robbed. Tirerack in the sizes I work with is always within $10 a tire, and our wholesaler actually prices them lower in the AT, as they move in higher volumes (Besides the light trucks in the fleet, we also have over 40 buses of various sizes, a snowplow fleet of over 20 trucks (Sterlings, Macks, and Internationals), and a small army of crown vics, so we go through a lot of tires...). Back when I priced the replacements for the Explorer, I was quoted $2 lower a tire on the AT than the LE. I chose the LE for an all season tire with better fuel mileage,lower noise, and longer treadlife. Got 2 out of three...
I was just curious if you had maybe made a mistake and were talking about the Wilderness LE's and not the Destination LE's. The Wilderness line is a cheaper quality OE tire line and they are not very good. I could see what you are saying if talking about those.
If it were your own vehicle experience vs my own personal vehicle experience, and one set of tires for each, it wouldn't be hard to believe that you saw A and I saw B. However I have a lot of personal experience and hands on experience with them and you are talking about fleets of vehicles with bad performance. We are talking 50-60 some vehicles here between us with a HUGE split between what I have seen and what you have seen. How do you reconcile that?
I have run 3 sets of them personally, on 3 different vehicles as well, and have many friends and family members now running them( on my suggestion )who love them as much as I do. Only one issue from all of that. Early wear for a friend but he does not take care of his vehicles and never rotated or checked PSI and needed an alignment. Hardly the tire's fault. You have always claimed poor performance period. I just find that hard to believe.
Wear can vary due to use, driver habits, and maintenance. Snow traction however is what it is. How you can claim the LE's perform poorly in the snow is a mystery to me however and while I don't mean to be disrespectful I have a really hard time with that part of your story. For you personally on your own vehicle ok but not for an entire fleet with so many different vehicles and drivers. Nope, no way.
I have run countless tires and tire types in the bad weather and the LE is easily one of the top handful of tires I have ever used. Right up there with the best. Off hand the only tires I can come up with that have done better are Bridgestone Dueler AT Revo's and BFG AT's. Let me also add that while better in the snow than the LE's those 2 tires are not so much better that they are worth the extreme $$$ difference p/tire.
My comments about the LE's being superior to OEM tires was a specific reference to them being better than the OEM all terrain tires I have had( 99% Goodyear [censored] ). Most people just assume that an AT will always be better in the snow than an AS. Not so. The LE's have even done better than the OE AT's I have had and even better than some non OEM and popular AT's in the snow for me.
When quoting Tirerack reviews make sure you pay attention to how many miles of reviews are associated with the ranked tire. The LE's have an established reputation as they have been out for a while. 22 Million + miles worth of reviews. You can be safe taking what is said there about them as being accurate for the most part with that many review miles. A few of the tires ranked higher however are new/newer tires( one only has 340K worth - what good is that for any real reliable info ). New tires will always get better reviews as a tire will always perform better when it is new(er ). I place more faith in high mile reviews where you get a better sample of reviews and not just people reviewing some new tires they just put on or that came on the vehicle when they bought it new.
Overall the LE is 9th but you have 4 tires ranked higher with fewer than 6 million worth of reviews = LTX M+S2(2.9M), Geolander H/T(340K), and the Road Venture APT(5.4M). Even the HTS only has 8 Million. Just not enough miles worth of reviews, IMO, to say they are a better tire. Now the original LTX M+S w/ 79 million miles worth of reviews is the real #1 on that list IMO. I personally like the LE better( have run both )but if you want to use Tirerack to help decide the original LTX is the real #1 on the list.
The treadlife is actually 17th ranked not 19th just FYI. I would again tell you to look right and see the number of review miles. 3 tires have fewer than 1 million review miles, 2 have fewer than 2 million, 2 have fewer than 3 million, 1 has fewer than 6 million, and 1 fewer than 9 million. Only 6 tires have more than 10 million miles worth of reviews on that list. Hardly a true indication of how the LE ranks for treadwear IMO.
Out of curiosity why did you not mention how the LE ranks for snow traction? Light = 8th and deep = 10th. These lists are a bit more accurate if you go by review miles. Even so I would bump 4 from the deep snow list and 1 from the light snow list due to low review miles. If you want to use Tirerack to defend your claims the bad snow performance claims don't hold up.
They rank 11th for would you buy again. Once again however you have 4 tires with low review miles. 2 under 1 million so they really should be ranked higher.
You can't compare wholesale tire prices for a garage to what we the average consumer would pay. For John Q public the LE is cheaper than the AT.