Firestone steeltex R4S tire failures: what 219 owner reports say
Every complaint filed with NHTSA against the Firestone Steeltex R4S, 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.
The evidence base
Crash, injury and death figures are the counts owners themselves reported to NHTSA when filing.
What owners described
Tread or belt separation appears in 42% of these reports; about 3.1× as often as across all tire complaints. Percentages are shares of the 219 reports filed against the Firestone Steeltex R4S 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tread or belt separation | 42% | 13% | 3.1× |
| Blowout or sudden deflation | 35% | 20% | 1.7× |
| Sidewall failure | 17% | 15% | 1.2× |
| Cracking or dry rot | 7% | 9% | 0.8× |
| Bubble or bulge in the tire | 7% | 6% | 1.2× |
| Loss of control, rollover or collision | 5% | 8% | 0.7× |
Mileage at failure
91 of these reports state an odometer reading. The middle report is at 19,000 miles, with 8 in 10 falling between 4,000 and 38,000 miles.
In owners' own words
Verbatim excerpts from complaints filed with NHTSA about Firestone Steeltex R4S. Reports are published by NHTSA as filed and are lightly cleaned here only to remove intake codes.
RIGHT FRONT TIRE TOTALLY DISINTEGRATED,TREAD CAME LOOSE FROM TIRE,IT WAS BEING HELD ON BY COUPLE OF SPOTS. SIDEWALLL WAS TOTALLY SLICED WHILE DRIVING AT APPROXIMATELY 70 MPH, AND FOR ABOUT 300 MILES. CONSUMER WAS ABLE TO PULL OVER ONTO SHOULDER. TIRE SIZE 26575R16, DOT VNW81XM359, ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT ON FORD, F350, 2000 WITH APPROXIMATELY 38,000 MILES.
HAD BLOWOUT THAT DESTROYED TIRE AND TIRE SPIT ON OUTSIDE AND COULD NOT BE FIXED. SOMETHING WAS INSIDE TIRE AND THERE WAS A LARGE HOLE. FIRESTONE IN COLUMBIA SC REPLACED TIRE FREE AND INSTALLED ON OUR TRUCK. (TIRESIZE: LT26575R16)
BLOW OUT AND TREAD SEPARATION ON A 2000 FORD E-350 AMBULANCE WITH PATIENT ON BOARD. AMBULANCE IS OWNED BY HOSPITAL. I HEARD THAT THIS MODEL OF TIRE IS ALSO UNDER INVESTIGATION. FEEL FREE TO CALL, THANKS. (TIRESIZE: 225/75R16)
TREAD SEPARATED, LEFT REAR INSIDE TIRE. IN MAY OF 2000, TREAD SEPERATED ON RIGHT REAR INSIDE R4S TIRE, SO I HAVE A 50% FAILURE RATE ON REAR TIRES. DEALER SAYS RIGHT OUTSIDE REAR R4S TIRE SHOULD BE REPLACED---HAS CRACK ON OUTSIDE WALL BELOW TREAD.*AK (TIRESIZE: 225/75R16E)
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
- Tread or belt separation; 3.1× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
- Blowout or sudden deflation; 1.7× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
- Firestone Wilderness; 1,134 reports
- Firestone Steeltex; 708 reports
- Firestone Wilderness AT; 679 reports
- Firestone ATX; 435 reports
- Firestone Firehawk; 204 reports
- Firestone Affinity; 192 reports
FAQ
What goes wrong with Firestone Steeltex R4S tires?
Is the Firestone Steeltex R4S recalled?
At what mileage do Firestone Steeltex R4S tires fail?
Have Firestone Steeltex R4S failures caused crashes?
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.