load range E or the stock P metric on a half ton, and what i should run this winter

he is moving what is on the shelf, and E tires are also not wrong, and both of those can be true at once. here is how to decide it with arithmetic instead of a counter pitch.

your stock tire is a P metric. a P metric tire fitted to a light truck does not get to use its full rated load, you divide the number on the sidewall by 1.10. that factor exists because trucks carry load differently than cars do. so a P metric with 2,601 lbs on the sidewall is good for about 2,365 on your truck, times two on the rear axle, which is 4,730, and your rear axle rating is somewhere around 3,900 to 4,100. the stock tire already has more capacity than the axle it is bolted to. a GM engineer picked that size for a 7,000 lb truck with a hitch on it, and your trailer tongue is maybe 650 lbs of that.

what an LT E tire buys you: more sidewall capacity you are not using, a tougher carcass that resists a sharp rock or a curb cut, and more weight. an E in your size is roughly 10 to 12 lbs heavier per corner, which is unsprung weight and you feel every ounce of it in the steering and in what the truck does over a frost heave. empty, an E range tire at the pressure it needs rides like a hay wagon. people who go to E and come back always say the same thing, it was fine loaded and miserable the other six days.

in between there is load range C, and there are XL or Reinforced P metrics, which get you a stiffer sidewall without the full ten ply penalty. for a half ton that tows a tractor on weekends, that is usually the honest answer.

and the thing that actually matters in Nebraska in january is none of this. it is whether the tire has the three peak mountain snowflake on it. an all terrain with the snowflake will do more for you on glare ice than four load ranges will.

i did the thing wendell is describing and i am the cautionary tale, so here it is for free.

put a set of E range all terrains on the Ram three years ago because i pull a 5,200 lb boat and i had read enough internet to be dangerous. loaded, they were excellent, the truck felt planted and the sidewalls did not squirm backing the trailer down a ramp. the other 95 percent of my driving they were loud, they tramlined in the ruts on I-10, and my wife asked within a week what i had done to her truck.

mileage went from 18 and change to a little over 17. that is about 300 dollars a year of gas for a sidewall i was using eleven days a year.

went back to a reinforced P metric when they wore out and the boat has not noticed. it is the same hitch, the same tongue weight and the same ramp.

i buy about 140 tires a year, so i will give you the money side, which is the part the counter will never explain.

we split the fleet. trucks that work on dirt sites and job roads get load range E, no argument, because the failure out there is not a blowout from overload, it is a sidewall cut from a rock or a piece of rebar, and an E carcass survives things that fold a P metric. trucks that run pavement and a trailer on weekends get SL or a reinforced P metric.

the cost: an E set in a common half ton size runs us about 1,240 and a comparable SL set about 920. the E tires last longer in rotation, maybe 15 percent, so on a per mile basis it is closer than it looks. then you give back half a mpg to a mpg, which on a truck that runs 30,000 miles a year is 350 to 400 dollars of fuel, and the E set stops being cheaper.

your truck is a pavement truck that pulls a tractor on a trailer. you are the SL or reinforced case, and you should put the 600 dollars you did not spend toward a tire with the snowflake on it and a real tread depth instead.

one more thing. whatever you buy, write the pressure on a piece of tape in the glovebox for loaded and empty, because the number on your door jamb is for the tire that came on it and if you change type that number changes with it.

different answer from the mountains, for whoever reads this and lives where the roads are not flat.

i run two sets. all terrains with the snowflake from november to april on a second set of steel wheels i paid 240 dollars for at a salvage yard, and the highway tires the rest of the year. the swap costs me an hour in the driveway twice a year and no mounting money, and both sets last about twice as long because each one only sees half the miles.

the reason it is worth it here and maybe not in Lincoln: the road up to our camp is a dirt switchback with a creek crossing, and the difference between a dedicated winter tread and a good all season on a frozen rut at 7 in the morning is the difference between going and not going. on a flat highway with salt trucks running, a good all terrain is plenty.

and on load range, i run SL and have pulled that 4,800 lb trailer up and over the mountain for eleven years with no drama. the tire was never my problem. my problem was the 240 lbs of gear over GVWR that i found out about in the payload thread.