How old is too old for caravan tyres?

Why age beats tread on a caravan

A car tyre does thousands of miles a year and wears its tread down long before the rubber degrades. A caravan tyre does a few hundred miles a season and spends the rest of the year parked — often in sunlight, carrying weight, at whatever pressure it drifted down to over winter. UV, ozone and time harden and crack the rubber from the inside out, so a caravan tyre can look nearly new and still be close to failure.

That’s why the guidance used across the caravan world — clubs, insurers and manufacturers alike — is to replace caravan tyres at around 5 years old, and never run them beyond 7, regardless of how much tread is left.

Find out how old yours actually are

Every tyre carries its birth date on the sidewall: look for “DOT” followed by codes ending in four digits. The first two digits are the week, the last two the year — so 3419 means week 34 of 2019. Check both tyres (and the spare — it ages just the same). If the four-digit code faces the inside of the wheel, the date may be on the other sidewall.

The warning signs

• Fine cracking or crazing in the sidewall or between tread blocks
• Bulges or distortion anywhere on the tyre
• A tyre that repeatedly loses a few PSI over storage — the carcass may be porous with age
• Flat spots that don’t round out after a few miles of towing

Any of those on an ageing tyre is your cue — a blowout on tow is genuinely dangerous, can snake the outfit at speed, and routinely does hundreds of pounds of damage to wheel arches, skirts and pipework on its way out.

Pressures and load do the rest

Most caravan tyre failures start with underinflation months earlier. Check pressures before every trip against the caravan handbook figure (they’re usually much higher than car pressures), and remember the weight plate matters: an overloaded single-axle caravan is working its two tyres very hard indeed.

Replacing them without towing anywhere

Caravan tyres are made for mobile fitting: the ’van stays on your drive or storage pitch, and there’s no risk of a general tyre shop manhandling motor movers, Tyron bands or corner steadies it doesn’t understand. We fit caravan, motorhome and trailer tyres across Nottinghamshire — sourced to order, torqued to spec — through our mobile caravan tyre fitting service. Tow car due tyres as well? We can do both in the same visit.