Recaps or New Tires?

[kryten]

Up until about 8 years ago I ran mostly Bandag recaps. Of the first 2 sets one was good one not so good. The one not so good only 3 tires of the 8 wore the tread out. This set was also from a different retread plant than my tires normally came from. After this I had started building up a large enough supply of virgin casings that I could send in my own casings and get them back. If I didn't have a casing and had to buy one or more I made it clear that I wanted matched "A" casings (first time capped).

Now with the national account of my current carrier virgin Michelins are only a few hundred bucks more than recaps. The spokesman for the retread industry always said the miles to removal is the same for retread or virgin. I only ever managed to get 2 recaps to go over 500000 km (barely) but my virgin XDN2's when I put them on a couple of weeks ago for their last summer they had 585000 km and still have 7-9/32". With the extra miles I'm getting from the virgin rubber my cpm is lower than retreads.