Michelin Tires...Maybe Not

[Gil_J]

It seems that Michelin must be having a bigger problem with the RV tires than I had originally heard. The problem with availability seems to extend well beyond just the 315s many of us run to their 295s and 275s. On another site it was reported that Spartan had to delay rolling chassis shipments due to the lack of tires. Regardless of the number of tire sizes affected, Michelin, a well respected manufacturer of quality tires, has left their customers stranded. If you need tires, due to scheduled replacement or roadside failure, you need the tires now. With our automobiles we would not generally be too worried about brand X not being available. We would simply move to brand Y. For many of us, individually and as manufacturers, we simply insist on Michelin for our motorhomes.

Most manufacturers of almost anything don't take the risk of a single source supply chain. Even if we have a prefered supplier, we always have a secondary supplier; a supplier that always gets a piece of the business. Hopefully this is wake-up call to Prevost, Newell, Spartan and Freightliner that they should have two tire suppliers, if they don't already. With the possible exception of 365s, there are competing tires to Michelin's RV series of tires. I prefer Michelin for everything I have, but I won't be held hostage to non availability.

[lbriant]

Gil,
Yes I ran into that problem a few months ago last winter I belive it was on another forum,
I bought from Loves Truck stop there were no milage max tires available so I received 4 of the other 315s as I said I loved there warrentee, I only paid about $200 for two of the tires, but the manager at loves said they were very hard to find , they said because of there volume of tires they got priority over allot of other places that could not get them, I called Michelin at that time and they said they would be back up to normal soon ?
Looks like they still have some bugs ? I wonder what the problem is ?

[lbriant]

I wonder my tires that started weather checking at 4 1/2 yrs were 2010 year, and they were under warrentee, I had 5 year on the 315s my buddy's on his winnabego elipse were smaller but also 2010 and his were bad also He had a factory 7 year warrentee maybe they have had to replace allot of tires under warrentee ? Maybe 2010 was a bad year for them

[JIM KELLER]

Wonderful ! I need 8 - 315 80 R22.5 tires. TCI in Tampa said they have none. Been on back order since February. Last 315's they got in, and they got only 4, went to Greyhound. He said they need thousands of them and can't get any.

Where do we go for support on this one ?

[JIM KELLER]

Contacted the Michelin Customer Service at 888-622-2306. After numerous rounds of back and forth phone calls I am defeated. I'm sure they were politically correct and withen corporate guidlines but they were not helpful.

[dale farley]

The more I read about the Michelin problems, the more thankful I am that I got 8 new ones from Fleet Tire in Knoxville with fresh dates in December. I gave them a week's notice and told them I wanted fresh dates, so maybe they rounded them up from other stores. Since they are selling as fast as they can produce them, I suppose fresh dates is not currently an issue. Of course, I do realize this doesn't help any of you guys today.

[JIM KELLER]

Man O Man. This gets worse as I continue to do research. Looks like my option is 8- G670 RV Goodyears at 8957 !

[coreygrubb]

Jim, what's the 8957 ? Surely not $.

[Joe Camper]

An uninformed person my think after reading this thread that Mr Michelin is the only guy who makes tires.

[mike kerley]

Guys, I just checked with my source here on the east side of Florida and the Michelin's are three months out. Plenty of Toyo's in stock. In the For what its worth column, he said the GoodYear tires ride rough. Truckers hate them.
I was really missing my bus. For the moment, I'm now OK.