General ameri-trac tire failures: what 86 owner reports say
Every complaint filed with NHTSA against the General Ameri-trac, 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 23% of these reports; about 1.7× as often as across all tire complaints. Percentages are shares of the 86 reports filed against the General Ameri-trac 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 | 23% | 13% | 1.7× |
| Blowout or sudden deflation | 21% | 20% | 1.0× |
| Sidewall failure | 16% | 15% | 1.1× |
| Loss of control, rollover or collision | 13% | 8% | 1.5× |
| Cracking or dry rot | 7% | 9% | 0.8× |
| Bubble or bulge in the tire | 1% | 6% | 0.2× |
Mileage at failure
45 of these reports state an odometer reading. The middle report is at 26,663 miles, with 8 in 10 falling between 10,000 and 65,228 miles.
In owners' own words
Verbatim excerpts from complaints filed with NHTSA about General Ameri-trac. Reports are published by NHTSA as filed and are lightly cleaned here only to remove intake codes.
THE CONTACT OWNS A 2005 FORD F-150 EQUIPPED WITH GENERAL AMERI-TRAC TIRES, SIZE: P255/70R17. THE CONTACT STATED THAT ALL THE TIRES EXHIBITED CRACKS IN BETWEEN THE TREAD PATTERN. THE TIRES WERE NOT DIAGNOSED OR REPLACED. THE TIRES WERE REPLACEMENT TIRES. THE MANUFACTURER WAS NOT NOTIFIED OF THE FAILURE. THE VEHICLE FAILURE MILEAGE WAS 116,000 AND THE TIRE FAILURE MILEAGE WAS 28,000.
SIDEWALL BLOWOUT OF PROPERLY INFLATED TIRE. FIST-SIZED HOLE RESULTED FROM FLAP THAT PEELED OFF, STARTING IN TREAD AREA AND EXTENDING INTO SIDEWALL AREA. TIRES HAVE MORE THAN HALF TREAD DEPTH LEFT, HAVE NEVER BEN RUN AGAINST CURB OR SCUFFED, ETC.
WHILE DRIVING ON THE FREEWAY AT 60 MPH, DRIVER'S SIDE REAR TIRE EXPLODED FROM THE SIDEWALL. WHEN THIS OCCURRED, DRIVER LOST CONTROL, AND WENT OFF THE ROAD. OTHER 3 TIRES AND SPARE WERE SPLITTING AT THE SIDEWALL. CAUSE OF THE FAILURE WAS UNDETERMINED.
THE CONSUMER STATED THE VEHICLE HAD PROBLEMS WITH 3 OF THE 4 TIRES WHICH RANGE FROM A TIRE BLOW OUT TO TREAD SEPARATION. *AK WHEN THE TIRE BLEW OUT THE CONSUMER WAS UNABLE TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE VEHICLE AND HAD AN ACCIDENT WITH ANOTHER VEHICLE.
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; 1.7× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
- Loss of control, rollover or collision; 1.5× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
- General Grabbers; 55 reports
FAQ
What goes wrong with General Ameri-trac tires?
Is the General Ameri-trac recalled?
At what mileage do General Ameri-trac tires fail?
Have General Ameri-trac 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.