Trailer Tires Wear Out on the Center Tread on a Rally Wagon Trailer Towed Behind a Motorcycle

Question:

I have a trailer called a Rally Wagon. It’s made to pull behind your motorcycle when headed out on long trips to motorcycle rally’s like Sturgis or Daytona. The trailer has 10” wheels on it and 20.5 x 8 – 10” tires. The tires are Load Range C. The tires work fine, but when I put the maximum pressure in the tires, the wear only on the middle tread. This trailer is only rated for 500 lbs, but I don’t even get to 400 lbs usually. If I went with this Load B tire, when inflated to maximum pressure…would this tire wear evenly? I think my problem with the other tire comes from not having enough weight on it. Am thinking the lower load tire would be better. Also considering maybe going to a skinnier tire and rim, 4.80 x 12 or 5.30 x 12. I am open to any recommendation. I need this to be stable at high speeds…80-90 mph and be able to handle a lot of miles. We are taking the trailer on a 5000 mile road trip and I don’t want to have any issues.

asked by: Ron

Expert Reply:

First of all, the trailer tires that we carry are rated for a maximum of 65 miles per hour unless otherwise noted on the tire sidewall. Going faster than this will cause rapid heat build up in a trailer tire (which has a thicker sidewall) and can lead to failure.

When tires wear out in the middle that means that they are over inflated. You can try taking out about 5 psi or so until you get even tread wear. If a tire is inflated to the max psi, it should not wear unevenly. You may want to check the pressure gauge you are using because if it is reading low then you would be over inflating tires.

I recommend sticking with the tire size recommended by the trailer manufacturer. Going to smaller capacity or different size may change the ride quality which is a fairly major factor when towing a trailer behind a motorcycle.

expert reply by: Michael H