Tirefolio Find my fitment

Premature or uneven wear: which tires owners report it on

The tire wears out well before its treadwear rating, or wears unevenly across the tread. Alignment causes some of this; construction causes the rest.

By Mark Bishop · Last verified 2026-10-07

How common is it?

Across every NHTSA tire complaint narrative on file, premature or uneven wear appears in 1%. That is the number every row below is measured against: a subject at 2× is one where owners describe this failure twice as often as the corpus average, whatever the total complaint volume.

Where it over-indexes

Tire or vehicleReports describing itShare of that subjectVs all tire complaints
Continental Contitrac TR 12 24% 18.5×
Cadillac Catera 6 16% 12.1×
Toyo Open Country A/T 5 11% 8.7×
Pontiac GTO 11 10% 7.8×
Mazda MAZDA5 5 10% 7.4×
Nissan 350Z 8 10% 7.3×
Bridgestone Turanza EL 400 8 9% 6.8×
Chrysler 300 5 9% 6.6×
Kumho Solus 5 8% 6.4×
Dunlop SP4000 5 8% 5.8×
Goodyear Integrity 8 7% 5.3×
Honda Civic 25 7% 5.3×
Continental Contitouring 7 7% 5.2×
Toyota Prius 9 7% 5.1×
Chevrolet Impala 11 6% 4.6×
Acura TL 5 5% 4.1×
Bridgestone Turanza EL42 5 5% 3.7×
Ford Focus 15 5% 3.7×
Toyota Highlander 5 4% 3.4×
Toyota Camry 16 4% 3.3×
Bridgestone Potenza 12 4% 3.3×
Honda Cr-v 9 4% 2.9×
Toyota Corolla 6 3% 2.6×
Toyota Sienna 14 3% 2.4×
Dodge Grand Caravan 5 3% 2.2×

Ranked by how far the subject sits above the corpus rate, counting only subjects with at least five reports describing this failure.

In owners' own words

Verbatim excerpts from complaints filed with NHTSA about premature or uneven wear across the NHTSA tire-complaint record. Reports are published by NHTSA as filed and are lightly cleaned here only to remove intake codes.

I PURCHASED THIS VEHICLE WITH A FULL SET OF THE EXACT SAME TIRE BRAND, TYPE, SIZE, AND LOAD RANGE. THE NEW TIRES WERE TO REPLACE THE DEFECTIVE TIRES WHICH HAD THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM AS THESE: BELT FAILURE. TIRE FAILURE: BELTS BEGAN TO SEPARATE LEADING TO UNEVEN WEAR AND EVENTUALLY FAILURE OF THE SIDEWALL.

NHTSA complaint 1152577

TIRES ARE WEARING OUT AT INSIDE, IT'S NOT NOTICEABLE ON OUTER TIRE. CONSUMER HAS HAD 10 TIRES PUT ON VEHICLE, AND THEY ALL WORE OUT ON INSIDE RIGHT TO STEEL BELTS.*AK TIRES ARE GOODYEAR EAGLE RSA, SIZE P225/55R16, CONSUMER STATES THAT GOODYEAR OR CADILLAC HAS A SOLUTION, POSSIBLY A SUSPENSION PROBLEM. *SLC

NHTSA complaint 286228 · 1998 vehicle

TOYO A20 OPEN COUNTRY TIRES IN 245/55R19 SIZE WEAR PREMATURELY WITH POTENTIAL LOSS OF TRACTION AND CONTROL. DRIVERS UNAWARE OF THE FACT THESE TIRES WEAR OUT IN LESS THAN 20,000 MILES MAY FAIL TO CHECK THEM FOR WEAR SOON ENOUGH. THESE TIRES ARE THE OEM TIRES USED ON THE 2008 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER SPORT MODEL AND PROBABLY SOME OTHER TOYOTA MODELS AND MODEL YEARS AS WELL. THE 2008 VEHICLE OWNERS WILL BE THE FIRST TO REPORT PROBLEMS. THIS BLOG ON CONSUMER REPORTS DETAILS THE PROBLEMS. HTTP://BLOGS.CONSUMERREPORTS.ORG/CARS/2009/04/TOYOTA-HIGHLANDER-HOW-TO-CHOOSE-THE-BEST-REPLACEMENT-TIRE-.HTML TOYOTA DEALERS ARE OFFERING NO COMPENSATION OR REPLACEMENT ASSISTANCE AND THIS SIZE TIRE IS UNIQUE SO THAT ONLY TWO FIRMS OFFER REPLACEMENTS - TOYO AND BRIDGESTONE. THE BRIDGESTONE OEM TIRES IN THIS SIZE MAY HAVE THE SAME WEAR AND TRACTION PROBLEMS.

NHTSA complaint 759643

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.

FAQ

How common is premature or uneven wear in tire complaints?
It appears in 1% of all NHTSA tire complaint narratives. Individual tires vary widely around that figure, which is what the ranking on this page measures.
Which tire has the most reports of premature or uneven wear?
Ranked by rate rather than raw volume, the Continental Contitrac TR sits highest: 12 of its written reports describe it, 24% of that subject's narratives, about 18.5× the corpus rate. Complaint volume also tracks sales volume, so rate is the fairer comparison.
Does a high rate here mean the tire is defective?
No. NHTSA does not verify complaints, and a report is one owner's account. A high rate means owners of that tire describe this failure more often than owners of tires generally; a signal worth knowing before you buy, not a finding of defect.

Sources

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

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