I dug out my snow tires from Dad's garage this morning.

I noticed that one of them is worn considerably more on one edge than the other. Unfortunately I don't know which side of the truck it was mounted on, but I do know it was mounted toward the inside of the rim (white stripe in).*

So...on a truck with a solid rear axle, what would cause more wear on one edge of a tire than the other? I should look more closely at the ones that are on there; see if I see anything there.

*Yeah, I know I should probably pay attention to which side they go on so I can swap 'em every year. But I'm a cheap and lazy SOB when it comes to tires.

Loose or bent leaf spring mounts, bent axle, loose ubolts at axle/springs. Has the truck ever been in a wreck and suffered damage to the rear axle or frame?

everything black hat said and you might not have had the correct air pressure in that tire thus making it wear oddly.

Ummm....never wrecked bad. Parking lot dings all around, some bad enough to be fixed, some not (all before I owned it).

Years ago (before I owned it), a tire shop didn't tighten the lug nuts down properly and a rear wheel fell off after a few days of driving.

I've been over the suspension a number of times, everything's tight. New shackles (rotted) two years ago. I guess I could have bent a spring in that process (they aren't exactly heavy-duty).

What you say is what I was thinking...and to be honest, at this point on this truck, none of it's worth fixing as long as it's not a safety concern.

EDIT: Wouldn't the tire pressure cause equal wear on both edges of the tire? This is one tire I'm talking about- the "inside" has the sipes all worn down, but they're still there on the outside.

john112deere said:

Years ago (before I owned it), a tire shop didn't tighten the lug nuts down properly and a rear wheel fell off after a few days of driving.

Click to expand...

Wonder if there are some bent or damaged lug nuts still on the truck from this and/or elongated bolt holes in the rim. Resulting in the wheel being angled. (Improper Camber Angle) will cause a tire to wear like this.

The last set of rear tires I really wore down, one (the good one) was just about legal, and the other one was noticeably more worn. If memory serves correctly, it was still worn evenly across the tread, though. I just assumed it was a difference in manufacturing. (Both tires had somewhere close to 60k on them, though, so I can't really call it a defect. And they were either the set that was on there when one fell off, or the set after that.)