As full-time truck campers, our truck is a big part of our lifestyle and the tires on it are critical. We are about to put a new set of tires on our truck and before we do, we want to give a full review of our 2018 RAM 3500 factory installed tires, the Nexen Roadian AT Pro tires before they’re replaced . We will talk about how they’ve held up, their pros and cons and our overall thoughts on the tires. Let’s get started!
How we use our Nexen Roadian AT Pro Tires
Our 2018 RAM 3500 came with Nexen Roadian A/T Pro RA8 235/80R17 tires. We’ve put 42K miles on the truck and 37K miles of that were fully loaded with our camper and all of our stuff. These tires have definitely been put to the test, and we’re actually pretty impressed with them. I’ve read a lot of reviews stating that these tires had sidewall issues, blowouts, and crumbling tread. For the last 20k miles, I’ve been worried that I might have problems with our Nexen Roadians since we spend a lot of time driving down dirt roads and doing some mild off-roading. I’ve also hit curbs, sharp rocks and tons of potholes. Given all of the negative reviews, I feared that each impact would result in disaster. However, I have had no problems with the tires at all, they even exceeded their 40k mile tread life warranty. They’re not the greatest off-road tires, but for factory installed tires, they’ve done really well.
Our total rig weight varies between 14,000 lbs and 14,800 lbs depending on how much water we have on board and what we’re carrying on our front rack. Sometimes we load the *link this* front rack up with firewood, which can get heavy, so these tires have definitely been pushed to their limits for many thousands of miles. We’ve used the Nexen Roadians in heavy Florida rains, the cold snowy roads of the Northeast and in the hot arid climates of the South West, including a couple trips through Death Valley!
The Review
Our Nexen Rodian AT Pro tires are a mid-grade tire at a mid-grade price. The Nexens were quiet and comfortable on the highway, especially when new, and provided enough traction for our daily driving needs. I try to stay out of the mud for the most part, but every time I had to get them dirty, they did their job admirably.
The tires still have a little bit of tread on them, but they’re getting down to the wear bars. Some of the lugs are starting to shred and there are some chunks of rubber missing, but nothing that seems unreasonable. The sidewalls have held up perfectly and they still ride pretty well. When the tires were new, they were smooth and quiet, and got louder as they aged. One complaint would be how they transfer the texture of the road surface to the truck. You can always tell what the road surface feels like from the vibration transferred through the tires. There’s a little bit of imbalance, but it’s only noticeable at high speeds. We never saw the need to balance them and they stayed true for 42k miles, which is pretty impressive!
On the rear dual tires, the inside tire has been here in the same location for the entire 42k miles and there’s still a fair amount of tread on it. The wear pattern in the center makes it look like we’ve had our tires overinflated, even though we run under the recommended pressure. Our rig is usually a little bit overloaded, so for a while I was running them at maximum pressure. And I found that I need to soften them a little bit. The trucks manual recommends 80 PSI in the front and 65 PSI in the rear for max payload which is GVWR of 14K lbs. Right now we’re at 14,500 lbs and I’m running the rears at 60 PSI and the fronts at 75 PSI and I’m still having center wear, which indicates that they’re overinflated. Also, the tires on the passenger side seem to be more worn, it’s probably because we have more weight on that side. It’s where our campers’ battery bank, office and black tank are located.
This picture is the passenger side front tire and you can see it’s significantly more worn. The front steering tires take more abuse from cornering, especially the passenger side front, and you can see the tread is right down the wear bars. We have kept the front end aligned and you can see how much wear there is in the picture. The tread is startling to peel back and come apart. I think this partly because of the crown of the road, you’re always steering uphill, slightly towards the left. I’ve also read that this is a common problem with heavy trucks like ours. Some suggest having an alignment shop set the tires completely straight without any toe in adjustment. Some say that this will cause the vehicles to wander a bit. I’m not sure what the solution is except for keeping up with alignment and rotating the tires. On the drivers side, there is quite a bit more tread and it’s not polished all the way down yet.
Additional details
We’re always hunting for boondocking spots, you can read about how to find great boondocking here. We also drive on mountain roads, change climates and elevation and drive over rocks. And to our surprise, we haven’t had any problems. I’ve never even had to add air to these tires! I set them and I monitor them with our TPMS and they’ve stayed absolutely solid. The only time I added air is when it got really cold out and I had to blow them up a little bit, and when the temperature increased again I dropped the pressure down. I’m really impressed with how well they hold air!
Nexen Roadian AT Pro Tires. Pros and Cons.
Pros:
- Don’t lose air pressure
- Ride well
- Held their balance for 42K miles
Cons:
- Have negative reviews
- Not great for off-roading
- Too expensive for what they are
Our Final Thoughts
In conclusion, Nexen Roadian tires have been very good. We haven’t had a single issue with them. They don’t lose any air pressure, they ride well, and they’ve held their balance for 42K miles. But, based on the reviews and technical specifications, I would not buy them again, not for our purposes, especially for the price. There are better tires available in the same price range, however, if they were on sale they might be a worthy buy. The Cooper Discoverer A/T3 LT that I’m getting are about $23 more per tire, but they’re a much better tire. However if you’re getting a truck and it comes from the factory with these Nexen Rodian tires, just run them. They’re perfectly good, especially on the highway. They’ve exceeded their tread life warranty, which is 40K miles. We have 42K miles on them and if we rotated them properly, we probably could have gotten 5-8K more miles out of them. We’re pretty impressed with what they’ve done for us.
Side note about rotation with aluminum wheels
We rotated the tires about 20K miles ago and that was a big mistake. Sasha and I didn’t know what we were doing and we’ve learned from that mistake. We had these nice shiny aluminum wheels that are nice and clean on the outside. But the inside is not and here’s why. When you do heavy breaking, the break dust and the pieces of metal come off and they embed themselves into an aluminum wheel. We have scrubbed these and cleaned them, but nothing would help. The hot metal comes off the brake shoes and the rotor and it embeds itself in the aluminum. We’d like to find someone who can clean them properly. What we should have done is used a different rotation pattern: side to side. That way the inside and outside of those wheels wouldn’t have changed. I do like the look of the aluminum wheels, but the simplicity and strength of steel wheels is pretty appealing.
We also made a video, where we reviewed our Nexen Rodian tires, you can watch it below.