Jeep Tire Buying Guide

Highway Tires

Highway tires, like the Nitto Dura Grappler, are one of the more common tire types, traditionally installed from the factory on passenger cars, base model Jeeps, and two-wheel-drive pickups. These tires are geared toward on-road comfort, traction, and longevity, featuring multiple small tread blocks, elaborate siping, mild sidewall patterns, and firm tread compounds.  

Manufacturers extensively test highway tires to ensure a smooth, quiet, and comfortable product that lasts tens of thousands of miles, typically in the range of 55,000–65,000. However, these tires do come with notable drawbacks, especially for Jeeps. 

Highway tires don’t provide much traction off-road, making them a poor candidate for Jeeps that regularly see dirt, mud, sand, and other challenging terrains. They also typically utilize thinner sidewalls with fewer plies, making them more prone to tears and punctures on the trail. 

While ideal for daily driving and dedicated street use, our next style is far superior for mixed highway/off-road driving.

All-Terrain Tires

All-Terrain tires, like the Toyo Open Country A/T III, are popular and highly versatile, commonly installed on pickups, SUVs, and–you guessed it–Jeeps. These tires excel in nearly all terrain conditions, including wet/dry pavement, loose dirt, gravel, and snow. While they aren’t known for providing exceptional traction in deep mud, they’re an excellent option for mild wheeling. 

All-terrain tires are characterized by their moderately aggressive tread patterns and sidewalls, allowing them to claw through challenging terrain more efficiently than similar highway-terrain tires. However, they also feature some qualities that overlap with highway tires, such as smaller tread blocks, siping, and relatively firm compounds. The result is a tire that’s competent off-road but also provides excellent on-road performance and longevity–typically around 40,000–45,000 miles.  

All-terrain tires are ideal for daily drivers, mild wheelers, and weekend warriors; they’re perfect for those who drive primarily on the street but enjoy occasional wheeling.

Mud-Terrain Tires

Mud-terrain tires, like the Falken Wildpeak M/T, are engineered for use in the harshest terrains, like trudging through deep mud and bouncing over boulders. This style is characterized by large tread blocks, aggressive shoulders, minimal siping, and thick puncture-resistant sidewalls, making them a must-have for dedicated wheelers; however, on-road performance typically suffers. 

Mud-terrain tires are considerably louder than all-terrain and highway tires on the street, causing moderate humming and even vibrations at high speeds. They also utilize softer compounds, resulting in dramatically quicker wear than the previous two styles–typically 30,000–35,000 miles. 

Mud-terrain tires are ideal for the dedicated wheeler, show rig, or weekend cruiser; however, we’d opt for an all-terrain if you frequently drive on pavement.

Hybrid-Terrain Tires

If you noticed, there’s a significant difference between mud-terrain and all-terrain tires, producing a gap in the market for those that want a stickier tire than an all-terrain but better longevity and road manors than a mud-terrain. While this was the case for decades, the past ten years have shown immense improvements in tire tech, and with these improvements came hybrid-terrain tires, like the Nitto Ridge Grappler. 

Hybrid-terrain tires blend the characteristics of these two common tire types, featuring aggressive shoulders and sidewalls like a mud-terrain, but a more compact center tread section with numerous smaller tread blocks, like an all-terrain. The result is a tire that easily cuts through extreme terrain, but offers excellent driving characteristics on the street!

These tires are ideal for Jeeps that see around 50/50 street and trail usage.