Milage is important.
Traction on wet roads is important.
Quietness would be nice, but not too important.
Traction in shallow mud is important.

-Blast, who needs to see which of these are available at his tire place.

The BFG AT's are quiet for the deep tread they have.

+1 on Michelin LTX and Tire Rack.

I have the LTX's close cousin -- Michelin Cross Terrain SUV tires -- and they are fantastic. Great ride, excellent in rain and snow (up to 14" of unplowed snow in my case). Have a little mud experience with them, but not much. My Element is AWD.

Tire rack is a great place for research. My Michelins were not cheap but they are terrific and slated to last for 70,000 miles, which I expect they will. I've had them on my Element for three years.

Good luck. There are lots of opinions on tires.

these are the tires I was talking about. Not too bad on ice, but very good in snow, rain, mud and crawling. Not to mention the warranty. Didnt effect my gas mileage but I went from 33 inch tires to 35 inch. just my .02

Maybe I should rephrase my question to be what tires shouldn't I get? Anything out there y'all regret buying?

-Blast

I am not a fan of the BFG all terain. I think they wear fast and are noisy.

YMMV

Blast,

Based on your requirements I think you would do well with a light truck Highway all season radial, like Michelin LTX M/S (Highway All-Season). These get good mileage, run reasonably quietly, last a long time and have good performance in light mud and light snow conditions. I wouldn't try driving in mud up to my axle with these, or take on snow up to my bumper but they will more than cover the needs you describe.

These run about $100-$120 per corner depending on sales etc. Bridgestone Dueler H/L Alenza run a bit cheaper most of the time and are very similar in overall capability.

I have never had any problems with either of these tires on my wife's SUV. I put the Michelin LTX A/T 2 on my Jeep since I tend to drive it in snow conditions that more reasonable people avoid.

- Eric

Uniroyal Tiger Paw, came stock on my wife's car when we got it at 14K, by 30K they would squeal going around turns no matter how slow you went.

Bridgestone Dueler AT's. The AT implies they are all terrain, but in their case it seems to just be blank letters, I pocked holes in two with sticks and had to plug them just driving on dirt raods in WV, switched over to the BFG's and haven't had any problems like that.

The Goodyear Tracker 2 @ walmart. I ran a set of these on my current truck, after about 30,000 miles they really sucked. I got stuck in wet grass (unloading a piano at my house, pulled into the front yard) snow was kinda nerve racking, no traction. When it rained (most of the spring) i lost traction taking off from a stop and spun a lot. I am not talking about a power take-off, i mean 2000 rpm and a slow let-out on the clutch. i ran them until the belts slipped and i got them adjusted out at walmart for the liberators i have now. (ps this all happened before i worked there)

I doubt you can get them for your truck, but the douglas brand name is REALLY substandard. they are cheap, but total junk. i would not even put them on a car to sell!

Edit: if noise is not an issue, and you need good mud traction look into mickey thompson and super swampers. Mickeys do better on the road, but swampers are kinda the go to brand for mud traction

Mileage: I'd suggest you reconsider this as an important criteria. IMO the cost factors are going to be negligible in the long haul; and the performance, and hence your safety are much more important. Not saying if all things are equal don't take the tire with better mileage, I just suggest you take the better tire over one with better mileage.

I consider tires a very critical component on my vehicles, and have been on the ongoing hunt for the best A/T for our Jeep GC (now Acura RDX) for a couple of decades. Since we live in the NW, wet performance is also key for us.

The tire I've fallen in love with is the Bridgestone Dueler A/T Revo, now being replaced by the Revo 2 (the "Revo" part of the name is important).

Bridgestone was one of the first to start using dual compounds to increase wet weather performance on their ultra high performance summer tires. Likewise, they were one of the first to take their dual compound technology and apply it to A/T truck tires.

I started using their high performance summer tires and found it really worked. The old S02 Pole Position tires (they now have better tires) were some of the first high performance tires that really stuck in the wet. Likewise, the Revos also work well in the wet.

On the Jeep:


On the RDX:


They have medium aggressive tread and are pretty good in most conditions. But be aware, A/T tires as a class are going to have some pretty significant performance limitations in mud.

I've also heard good things about the LTX and Yokohama Geolandar A/T, although I wouldn't pick either of them over the Revos. While popular, I haven't been won over by the BFGs, I suspect they are better in mud, but I feel like the compounds are too hard and you give up pavement -- esp. wet pavement performance. And I live mostly on pavement.

I've run the Pirelli Scorpion A/Ts and they do pretty well, although not quite as well as the Revos and IMO their sidewalls are a bit soft. I've heard the Scorpion ATR, although a milder tread, has traction to rival the Revo.

I've run the Goodyear Wrangler AT and felt the compound was too hard and gave poor wet weather performance. I would not consider them again.

The Wrangler MTR as suggested above, is somewhere between a mud tire and an AT tire. Certainly it is going to work better in mud than any of the suggestions in this thread, Revo included, but your on road performance is going to suffer, and considering you talk about wet performance, I suspect that is important to you.

One good resource would read the ratings and reviews on Tirerack. Of course you always need to take the user reviews with a grain of salt since their is no scientific process other than the benefit lots of data points.

Another thing is to hang out on a 4x4 site for a while and see what tires people like since they are more likely to more critically evaluate tires.

I've hung out for years on the GC forum of Jeepsunlimited, which is probably a pretty good match since most don't do real hard core stuff with the GC, but they are also more serious about off road performance that most other SUVs.

Good luck!

-john