Carlisle radial trail tire failures: what 88 owner reports say

Every complaint filed with NHTSA against the Carlisle Radial Trail, read and classified: which failures owners actually describe, how that mix compares with all tire complaints on file, and at what mileage the tire let go.

By Mark Bishop · Last verified 2026-10-07

The evidence base

88Written owner reports

Crash, injury and death figures are the counts owners themselves reported to NHTSA when filing.

What owners described

Blowout or sudden deflation appears in 58% of these reports; about 2.9× as often as across all tire complaints. Percentages are shares of the 88 reports filed against the Carlisle Radial Trail across every vehicle it was fitted to that include a written account; a single report can describe more than one problem, so they do not total 100%.

Reported problem	This subject	All tire complaints	Relative
Blowout or sudden deflation	58%	20%	2.9×
Sidewall failure	20%	15%	1.4×
Tread or belt separation	17%	13%	1.3×
Bubble or bulge in the tire	14%	6%	2.3×
Loss of control, rollover or collision	6%	8%	0.7×
Cracking or dry rot	5%	9%	0.5×

Mileage at failure

37 of these reports state an odometer reading. The middle report is at 4,000 miles, with 8 in 10 falling between 1,000 and 7,684 miles.

In owners' own words

Verbatim excerpts from complaints filed with NHTSA about Carlisle Radial Trail. Reports are published by NHTSA as filed and are lightly cleaned here only to remove intake codes.

IN SEPTEMBER OF 2012 WE EXPERIENCED A TIRE BLOW OUT ON OUR VINTAGE AIRSTREAM TRAILER. OUR TIRES, HOWEVER, WERE NOT VINTAGE. THEY WERE 25 MONTHS OLD AND HAD LESS THAN 10,000 MILES ON THEM. WE WERE GOING 45 MPG AND HAD JUST LEFT HOME; ABOUT 20 MILES AWAY FROM HOME. THE OUTSIDE AIR TEMP WAS ABOUT 75 DEGREES. WE PUT THESE TIRES ON OUR TRAILER NEW IN AUGUST 2010. SPECIFICALLY, WE PURCHASED THEM AUG 28 2010. THE PAIR OF TIRES IS RATED FOR 4300 LBS. OUR TRAILER WEIGHTS ABOUT 3500 FULLY LOADED. BEFORE THE INCIDENT, WE USED OUR TRAILER ABOUT ONE WEEKEND PER MONTH; WITH EXCEPTION ON WINTER MONTHS, WHEN IT SAT UNUSED FOR ABOUT 4 MONTHS STRAIGHT.

NHTSA complaint 1002369

TRAILER TIRES WERE USED APPROXIMATELY 5000 MILES/YEAR. INFLATION KEPT AT MAXIMUM SIDEWALL LISTED, COVERED WHEN NOT IN USE, WEIGHT REMOVED IN THE OFF-SEASON. INSPECTED TIRES IN EARLY AUGUST 2013 AND FOUND RUBBER WAS STARTING TO SPLIT OPEN BETWEEN THE TREADS ON 3 OF 4 TIRES AND TREAD WAS RAISED UP IN SOME AREAS. TIRES ALL PURCHASED AND MOUNTED AT THE SAME TIME AND THE TIRES ARE DATED 18TH WEEK OF 2010. TIRES ARE BEING REPLACED. I HAVE PICTURES OF THE FAILURE AREA.

NHTSA complaint 1004230

I EXPERIENCED A TIRE BLOW OUT ON MY 2010 KEYSTONE SPRINGDALE RV. THE TIRES HAVE LESS THEN 1000 MILES ON THEM. THE TIRE IS A CARLISLE ST225/75R15 RADIAL TRAIL. I NOTICED A "BUBBLE" IN THE SIDE WALL JUST PRIOR TO THE BLOW OUT. THE TIRE SEPARATED AND BURST. THANKFULLY I WAS TRAVELING AT A LOAD RARE OF SPEED AND NO ACCIDENT OCCURRED. I WAS ABLE TO CHANGE TO MY SPARE. UPON INSPECTION OF THE REMAINING THREE TIRES, I NOTICED ONE MORE WITH A "BUBBLE" AND THE OTHER TWO WITH CRACKS IN THE SIDEWALLS. I WILL BE HAVING THEM REPLACED UPON MY RETURN HOME.

NHTSA complaint 1082262

WHILE TRAVELING SOUTHBOUND, JUST CROSSED MASON-DIXON LINE ON THE INTERSTATE, HAD A BLOWOUT ON THE LEFT FRONT OF MY 5TH WHEEL CAMPER. THE BLOWOUT CAUSED DAMAGE TO THE WIRING GOING TO THE SLIDEOUT AND PART OF THE STRUCTURE. THE TIRE APPEARED TO SEPARATE AT THE TREAD AREA WHICH SHOWED ALSO TO APPEAR TO NOT BE SEALED TO THE CARCASS AND WAS NOT CLEAN BETWEEN TREAD AND CARCASS. THIS HAPPENED AGAIN ON 06 JULY 2014 ON MY RIGHT REAR. ACCORDING TO THE MECHANIC THAT PROVIDED ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE INDICATED THAT IT APPEARED THAT THE TREAD SEPARATED AT CARCASS AREA AND APPEARED TO NOT BE PROPERLY SEALED. THE TIRES ARE CARLISLE RADIAL TRAIL ULTRA CRT ST205X75X15

NHTSA complaint 1083904

How to read this

Complaints are voluntarily submitted to the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation and are not verified by NHTSA. They are owner-reported problems, not proven defects, and volume tracks how many of a tire were sold as much as how often it failed. What is comparable is the mix: which problems owners describe here versus across every tire complaint on file. That comparison, the mileage distribution and the mode rankings on this page are our analysis of the public record.

Related analysis

Blowout or sudden deflation; 2.9× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
Bubble or bulge in the tire; 2.3× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index

All Carlisle tire failure analysis

FAQ

What goes wrong with Carlisle Radial Trail tires?

Across 88 written complaints, the most common description is blowout or sudden deflation, in 58% of reports; about 2.9× as often as across all tire complaints. A single report can describe more than one problem.

Is the Carlisle Radial Trail recalled?

Complaints are not recalls. A complaint is a voluntary, unverified owner report; a recall is an official campaign requiring a free remedy. Check the current recall status by DOT date code at the NHTSA recall lookup; that is the only authoritative answer for your specific tire.

At what mileage do Carlisle Radial Trail tires fail?

Of the owners who stated an odometer reading, the middle report is at 4,000 miles, with 8 in 10 between 1,000 and 7,684 miles. These are failures, not typical tire life; nobody files a complaint about a tire that wore out normally.

Sources

Last verified 2026-10-07 against the sources below.

NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation; owner complaints dataset (unverified owner reports, US federal government work, public domain).
NHTSA Recalls database, nhtsa.gov/recalls.
Corpus baselines computed over 58,390 complaint narratives longer than 200 characters.