General grabbers tire failures: what 55 owner reports say

Every complaint filed with NHTSA against the General Grabbers, 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

55Written owner reports

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

What owners described

Sidewall failure appears in 24% of these reports; about 1.6× as often as across all tire complaints. Percentages are shares of the 55 reports filed against the General Grabbers 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
Sidewall failure	24%	15%	1.6×
Cracking or dry rot	18%	9%	2.0×
Blowout or sudden deflation	16%	20%	0.8×
Tread or belt separation	13%	13%	0.9×
Bubble or bulge in the tire	11%	6%	1.8×
Loss of control, rollover or collision	9%	8%	1.1×

Mileage at failure

24 of these reports state an odometer reading. The middle report is at 23,000 miles, with 8 in 10 falling between 2,900 and 57,000 miles.

In owners' own words

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

Tire Size: 265 70 16. While driving on a straight and level highway, the right rear tire sidewall completely shredded. Tire lost all air pressure and separated from the rim. I bought four General Grabber tires in July 2021. This is the second tire that the sidewall shredded. The first one shredded on the left rear side in July of 2024. There are a lot of General Grabber tires being recalled for over-cured sidewalls but it's strange that there are no recalls on this particular tire.

NHTSA complaint 2065388

General Grabbers AT Driving center lane on clear highway. Tire had a complete sidewall blow out total separation of sidewall and tread. Almost lost control of vehicle. Brand new vehicle with only 400 miles on it. Location on the outside of the sidewall. We saved the tire if you would like us to send it in for inspection.

NHTSA complaint 2174761

BOTH INCIDENTS BEING REPORTED INVOLVED "TIRE TREAD SEPARATION". FIRST INCIDENT OCCURED APPROX 12/99. NO INJURIES OR DEATHS WERE INVOLVED BUT DAMAGE TO VEHICLE IN AMOUNT APPROX 1000.00 DID OCCUR. TIRE TREAD SEPARATED AT APPROX 55 MILES PER HOUR ON INTERSTATE HIGHWAY. SECOND INCIDENT OF TIRE TREAD SEPARATION OCCURRED ON 7/11/2000 WHILE TRAVELLING ON INTERSTATE HIGHWAY. SAME OR SIMILAR DAMAGE TO VEHICLE IN APPROX VALUE OF 1000.00 WITH NO INJURIES OR DEATHS. *AK (TIRESIZE: P235/75R15)

NHTSA complaint 246809

ORIGNAL EQUIPMENT ON 2000, NISSAN, FRONTIER, TIRE SIZE 25565R16, GRABBER AW ALL SEASON. REAR DRIVER'S TIRE HAD A BLOWOUT DUE TO A CRACK WHERE TREAD AND SIDEWALL MET WHICH MAY HAVE CAUSED A CRASH. PLEASE PROVIDE FURTHER INFORMATION.

NHTSA complaint 264221

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

Sidewall failure; 1.6× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
Cracking or dry rot; 2.0× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
Bubble or bulge in the tire; 1.8× the corpus rate here; see which other tires over-index
General Ameri-trac; 86 reports

All General tire failure analysis

FAQ

What goes wrong with General Grabbers tires?

Across 55 written complaints, the most common description is sidewall failure, in 24% of reports; about 1.6× as often as across all tire complaints. A single report can describe more than one problem.

Is the General Grabbers 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 General Grabbers tires fail?

Of the owners who stated an odometer reading, the middle report is at 23,000 miles, with 8 in 10 between 2,900 and 57,000 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.