The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Old Farm Trucks...Highway Tires on Front, Mud tires on Rear?

Hello everyone. Random question. I eventually need to get some new tires for my '71 Chevy C10 stepside. I've seen some old farm trucks to have two mud tires in the rear and two highway tires in front. Was this fairly common? i wanna go old school and I'm thinking this might a cool idea. Appreciate it.

Front tires: Power Kings Super Highway
Rear tires: Power Kings Super Traction

I had a setup like that on a '79 F 100. I hated it. The mud tires handle like crap on the road (where I actually drive). They're noisy, too.

If you're using your truck on a farm to pull stumps or whatnot and not using it on the road, then go for the mud tires.

Thanks for the feedback Otto. I heard similar thoughts on the mud tires. I just love the look of them. Unfortunately, that comes with sacrificing a smooth ride and less cabin noise for sure.

They were on the truck when I bought it and looked pretty cool because the rears were also slightly larger diameter. I never drove it off road and used it as a daily driver. It was annoying, noisy, and I didn't like the way they handled, especially in wet weather. Trucks are light enough in the back end and those mud tires were just too "hard" to grip the road properly.

Otto Skorzeny - Great points. I guess I can always just try and find some more 16" rims and have a bonus set with mud tires.

I still do that on my 2001 Dodge Ram w/Cummins. It's 2WD and in the winter, I use studded snow tires (pretty aggressive tire bite) on the rear and regular highway tread on the front.

In the old, old days (1964 or so) I would use sawdust or walnut shell tires on just the rear of my 2WD cars in Wyoming but that was before metal studs were invented.

(I'm not recommending this to anyone.)

Mud tires are extremely open tread, maybe you could compromise with snow or aggressive all-season tires. One drawback of having different tires front and rear is reflected in tire rotation.

Most commercial Trucks use Highway style tread designs today. With the use of radial tires the offroad tread designs are a lot quieter, and handle better.

The look is spot on for these old Trucks..

I had the look of highway and mud tires on my '38 when I rebuilt it. They were 750x17 bias-ply and rode very hard. The front wanted to wander over the grooves in the road. I also found out that almost no tire store would deal with my 17 inch 2 piece rims.
I changed to standard 16 inch rims, and 235/85/16 radials. The ride is so much better, no wandering.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Love to hear some tire suggestions for my truck. I think the mud tires would look fantastic but the ride would not be the smoothest to say the least. Might just have to go with the Power King Super Hwy tires all around.

Pretty common set up back in the day, on 2 WD trucks.

Of course when these trucks, even into the 70s, were new, they actually were used on farms. They had bias ply tires and the farmer wasn't driving on the highway at 60 or 70 mph. They didn't even have many highways in the 50s anyway so ride quality or wandering or noise or whatever was not a consideration.

The farmer drove on rural roads into town at 30-40 mph.

When I put in the order for my new 1976 Chevrolet K20, it arrived with Goodyear 9.50-16.5 Extra Grip bias ply, they were noisy but great tires.

I just had the same choice to make. I wanted to keep my barn find, patina truck as close to original as I could. I went with the Power Kings. The look was perfect but the ride was not. I did not notice the noise issue. The wandering, I could deal with, as long as the speed was low. 55 to 60 mph on the highway raised the pucker factor off the charts. The biggest issue was the constant vibration. I was using the original 2 piece rims and the tires were a pain to balance. Plus the tires need to get warm to smooth out the flat spots if you don't drive it regularly. I went with radials and I love driving my truck now. The highway is no longer intimidating.
PS. I might know where you can get a set of Power King tires with less than 150 miles on them for a great price.....

Great info for sure. What kind of Power Kings did you end up getting? I'm thinking Power Kings Super Hwy for all four wheels

When I put radials on, I could finally bring a cup of coffee with me to work.

The fronts were the highway tires. Does not say super highway on the sidewall or my receipt. The rear were traction tires. All were 8 ply.

I put Power King Super Highway tires all the way around on my truck. It rides well and I didn’t notice much objectionable tire noise even up to 65 MPH.

Awesome. Do you have a picture by chance? Love to see them on your truck. :-)

Here you go.

Fantastic. Man...your truck is incredible. Those tires look perfect on it. Thank you very much for posting pics. Pretty much sealed the deal for me.

Awesome on both counts - Kevin's truck, and your choice of tires.

When I bought my 1-ton it had 7.50x17 10-ply Armstrong traction tires on the rear. Some private-label 7.00x17 steer-axle tires on front. The previous owner used it for hauling firewood. My first load was fire bricks loaded to the top of the box. In 90 miles of I-5 it rode just fine, if a bit slow on the hills. I continued hauling firewood out of the woods and needed the heavy lug tires. I'd occasionally get pulled up on the road by a D8 cat working nearby. With a cord of wet alder on board it rode a bit too soft so I bumped the tire pressure up to about 90 PSI. With 8,000 lbs of rockery rocks on, the issue was having to use both feet on the brake pedal at times. A Hard ride wasn't an issue in those days but it did bounce around when empty. Now a days I have radial tires and drop the pressure to about 50 when the camper is off. Still bounces around empty with the tires at 85 PSI. Cardboard on its way to the recycle center is all I'm willing to lift anymore.

I am 81 years old and grew up in a rural area. When I was growing up county roads were not paved. Almost all pickups had mud tires on the drive and highway tires on the steer. And we drove them 60 to 70 MPH on paved roads.