On a recent trip to the coast (and the return trip), I was faced with a wide variety of weather conditions. It started with near freezing in the Okanagan Valley, progressing to -10 in the mountains with wild side winds and snow covered roads, to near 0 again and big snow fall in one bad area, down to the coast where I had everything from deep puddles to dry roads.

When it comes to off-roading, we put a lot of stock in the tires we use. Some of the best Internet discussions are about tire preference, and they get quite heated to say the least.

Tires come in all types, sizes, tread patterns for many different purposes. Today there is a specialty tire for almost every use to cover the wide range of weather and uses. Many of us have all-seasons on our daily drivers. To be honest, if I was manufacturing tires, this would be the scariest segment to me. An all season is supposed to handle all of those conditions I listed above. Now consider that I hit all of those conditions in a mere four hours and the tire had to keep me on the road through it all!

We all know (or should know) that huge compromises need to be made in areas of these tires' design to make them work within reason in all of these conditions. I know I need better tires than the stock all-seasons on my Chevy, (and I have them stacked up in the yard waiting for a lift kit), but I will be sacrificing other things, like road noise, to use those new tires.

Many of us have two sets of tires for our daily drivers - summers and winters. This allows us to use a better, quieter, better handling tire in the summer and a set of dedicated snow tires with tons of siping and softer rubber compounds for better grip in the winter. This can take care of most of our street driving needs. On the coast with the wet spring and fall, tires designed to handle wet roads and cut through puddles to control hydroplaning are very important year round, but in the interior regions are not needed.

On the other hand, most of us only have one set of tires for off-road, and we expect them to do everything we need. Off-road tires may well be the most important part of your 4x4, and so is the way you use them and air them down. We use them on our 4x4's to add ground clearance, since a lift doesn't add axle clearance until you add bigger tires. We expect them to handle being jammed into rocks, roots and sticks and not deflate or cut. We also expect them to handle having the air let out and the sidewalls twisted and wrapped around everything we may hit, and then get us to work on Monday! When a mud terrain gets packed with mud we get mad - heck they are a mud tire right? And when a Bogger howls down the road, it may be music to our ears, but others glare and shake their heads at the noise.

The past few years have given us a huge array of good quality tires to pick from, but picking the right tires for what you are doing is more important than brand, whether they are for your car, pick-up or 4x4. Every time we get better product we seem to raise the bar of expectation even higher. We can be glad the manufacturers are doing their best to meet those expectations while still giving us many choices. Besides, it's a great reason to write and talk about their tires and get into great heated discussions over which one is the best.

As for me, I believe in buying the right tire for the application. I have BFG A/T's on my truck (well, in the stack behind the house), as it needs to handle the ice and snow plus get my junk up gravel roads when I want to go play. I have BFG Krawlers on the Toyota because it spends almost all its time in the rocks. I run Mickey Thompson Claws on the Krawler because, well, they are the biggest tire I can fit and work well in the rocks too. And fnally, I have Michelin all-seasons on the wife's PT Cruiser (but no winters yet, as she like to remind me!).

I get the opportunity to try out a lot of tires, and believe me cheap is not the way to go when it comes to keeping you safe on the street and performing off-road. Make sure you take all of these things into account the next time you just think of your tires as those round rubber things under the car...

Albert Vandervelde
Editor, 4WD Magazine