Firestone wilderness tire failures: what 1,134 owner reports say

Every complaint filed with NHTSA against the Firestone Wilderness, 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

1,134Written owner reports

99Reported crashes

108Reported injuries

17Reported deaths

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

What owners described

Blowout or sudden deflation is the most common description, in 20% of these reports. Percentages are shares of the 1,134 reports filed against the Firestone Wilderness 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	20%	20%	1.0×
Sidewall failure	16%	15%	1.1×
Cracking or dry rot	15%	9%	1.6×
Tread or belt separation	15%	13%	1.1×
Loss of control, rollover or collision	12%	8%	1.4×
Bubble or bulge in the tire	3%	6%	0.5×

Mileage at failure

241 of these reports state an odometer reading. The middle report is at 20,000 miles, with 8 in 10 falling between 3,000 and 45,000 miles.

In owners' own words

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

TREAD SEPARATED FROM RIGHT FRONT TIRE, CAUSING DAMAGE TO FENDER WELL AND EMISSION CONTROL COMPONENTS. UPON INSPECTION OF OTHER TIRES, STEEL BELTING COULD BE SEEN ON TWO OF THE REMAINING TIRES EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS AT LEAST 3/16 OF TIRE TREAD ON EDGE OF TIRE. ALL TIRES WERE REPLACED. HAD THIS TIRE FAILED IN HEAVY TRAFFIC, THE CONSEQUENCES COULD HAVE BEEN SEVERE.

NHTSA complaint 206216

PE 00 020/ FIRESTONE WILDERNESS TIRE TREAD SEPARATION: VEHICLE EXPERIENCED TWO DIFFERENCE BLOW OUTS, OCCURRING AT 48,000 MILES ON 19 JUL 2000, AND A TREAD SEPARATION OCCURRING AT 35,000 MILE IN APR 2000. WHILE TRAVELING AT HIGHWAY SPEED OF 55-60 MPH BOTH TIRES CAME WITH THE VEHICLE, DOT # VDHL1PY367/ P235/75R15. ONE BLOW OUT TIRE IS AVAILABLE FOR ANALYSIS. BOTH TIRES ARE ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT THAT CAME WITH THE FORD EXPLORER 1998. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PROVIDE ANY FURTHER INFORMATION.

NHTSA complaint 222825

FROM 2 FRONT RIGHT TIRES TREAD CAME OFF. BUT, CONSUMER WAS ABLE TO MAKE IT HOME, TOOK VEHICLE TO DEALER, AND THEY SAID THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE TIRES. SECOND TIME TWO WEEKS LATER, FROM REAR LEFT TIRES TREAD CAME OFF. CONSUMER FISHTALED/LOST CONTROL/ROLLED OVER, AND WENT DOWN INTO AN ENBANKMENT.

NHTSA complaint 223187

PE00-020; TIRES ON A 1998 FORD TRUCK F150, SIZE P2357R16. CONSUMER NOTED THAT ALL FOUR TIRES WERE CRACKED AND COMING APART. ALSO, A HOLE IN ONE OF THE TIRES. TIRES HAVE 26 THOUSANDS MILES ON THE TIRES. PLEASE PROVIDE ANY FURTHER DETAILS.

NHTSA complaint 223546

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

Cracking or dry rot; 1.6× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
Firestone Steeltex; 708 reports
Firestone Wilderness AT; 679 reports
Firestone ATX; 435 reports
Firestone Steeltex R4S; 219 reports
Firestone Firehawk; 204 reports
Firestone Affinity; 192 reports

All Firestone tire failure analysis

FAQ

What goes wrong with Firestone Wilderness tires?

Across 1,134 written complaints, the most common description is blowout or sudden deflation, in 20% of reports; about 1.0× as often as across all tire complaints. A single report can describe more than one problem.

Is the Firestone Wilderness 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 Firestone Wilderness tires fail?

Of the owners who stated an odometer reading, the middle report is at 20,000 miles, with 8 in 10 between 3,000 and 45,000 miles. These are failures, not typical tire life; nobody files a complaint about a tire that wore out normally.

Have Firestone Wilderness failures caused crashes?

Owners reported 99 crashes and 108 injuries when filing. NHTSA publishes these as reported and does not verify them.

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.