22.5 drive tire recommendation

[SquareOne]

Here's an update for anyone who may be about to scoop up an 8 pack of drives. I decided to go with the Yokohama TY517 MC2's rather than the Brigdestone M17's. These are the H rates tires so I'm running them at 115psi (120psi being for max load, but I'll never see that).

- Main reason for the switch, after much research, ultimately came down the price. Although the B/S provided me good service and a great average fuel mileage (also CPM), the $1500 per set over the Yokos would've been very hard to make up unless the Yokos lose me .2 mpg or so less than the M713's over there life. Understandably, it's going to take some time to see how the Yokos are going to wear, so that will certainly be a factor as well. Jury will be out for quite sometime for the CPM race between the 2 brands in my operation.

- For now, these Yokos have about 13k miles between my 2 trucks since install a few weeks back. I bought 2 sets of drives and installed them within a week of each other. Both trucks are driven very similar and both haul same similar loads and routes. The fill-up last yesterday on both trucks hand calculated as follows --- LT625 (8.75mpg), Cascadia (8.72mpg). That's about .25mpg than the M713's when I first installed them a few years back. It took the M713's about 80-90k to really get me back to the high 8-9mpg range.

- The Yokos have about 2/32 more tread than the M17's (which I don't really care for). They do tend to 'wander' slightly at highway speed. Maybe this is the tall tread, or it could be just me being used to a wore 5-6/32 tire for so long that felt very planted. I do remember the M713's do a similar dance when they were first installed.

- On another note, I do all my own tire work. Mainly because, although I like to save money, finding someone to do the work correctly around here is a joke. If I have to stare at everything they do, then I'll do it my damn self and save the money. The price difference between me purchasing/installing the 16 drives was nearly $1200. Although the shops quote $40/tire to install, the actual cost was closer to $80/tire once I broke it down for the entire quote...wasn't sure where they were hiding the additional cost and neither were they.

What I did notice is all 16 tires (after properly cleaning the rims) ran true. Not one was out-of-round nor did they have a weird shake at highway speed. Mis-mounting may very well be more of a cause of this than an actual out-of-round situation. Shops I've been to in the past just slam em' on and get you out the door. Attention to detail is few and far between around here unfortunately.

**For what it's worth to those who may want to know, my M713's held rocks horribly. We go on and off of farms daily, so we see some rock roads often. The M713's held rocks long enough to embed themselves between the tread and wear heavily into the case. Toward the end of their life you could really see the damage done by the rocks between the treads. Fortunately, with the tread design of the Yokos they aren't holding anything at this point. Again, only time will tell how they wear vs performance vs CPM (through mpg) when compared with the M713's. However, at this point I'm happy with the purchase.