Would passenger tires work on a boat trailer?

The side walls on a passenger tire are soft to absorb shock to give a smoother ride. Trailer tires have a hard side wall to keep the trailer from bouncing down the hwy every time you hit a bump. So when you hit a bump with passenger car tires on a boat trailer it would tend to bounce soft many times before it stopped bouncing. With regular trailer tires it only bounces 1 - 3 times hard before it stops. If it gets to bouncing too much it can cause the trailer to come unhitched or jack knife and loose control of the trailer. That is what the guy at Discount Tire told me. Sounds right.

Even if the tires are 6ply?

This has topic has been on here several times before with the consensus always saying to only use trailer tires. But in over thirty years of boating I have never had a single problem with car tires.

However, last year I bought a set of trailer tires since they were going on a heavy center console boat. If you have some six-ply tires I would say to roll on with them.

Have you ever pushed a wheel borrow with a low tire?

If you put car tires (weak side walls) on a trailer you will pay the difference on gas mileage.

my 2 cents...

Of course the most important thing about trailer tires is safety while the boat is under way. But boats do more sitting in the drive way than moving down the road so the tires must be able sit in the same place for long periods of time without getting deformed and out of shape.

The answer is...weight. Know the weight of your rig and get tires that are for that weight range.
Most often "LT" light truck tires are best for the average trailer. Correct inflation and frequent inspection is the best insurance for tire safety and long life.

Good Luck and Good Trailering.

Good point on the mileage Z71, I have regular passenger tires on my boat trailer, however, my boat is light a 17 foot tracker and the newer models have 4 lug tires and mine has 13inch 5 lug it seems to work fine and I get about 5 mile less to the gallon when I am towing the boat. Which sounds normal to me.

Also depends on how far are you going with the boat. If you are just heading down the road to put in, it doesn't sound like it would be a big issue. If you have to travel on a highway for 30 min to an hour or so. I would recommend trailer tires for safety. Pass tires will work though, just more wear on them and like it was previously posted, it bounces more and will have a tendancy to pop or blow out on rough roads with a heavy boat.

Car tires have to withstand lateral forces of acceleration and braking.

Cars have torsion axles, boat trailers have leaf springs - which is why your trailer bounces like what Dink says - it needs tires that can handle vertical forces.

Notice that boat trailer tires are inflated to 50lbs while most car tires take 35 or so.

Trailer tires are just better suited for trailers than car or truck tires. And radial tires aren't suitable for trailers at all.

Still, there's no disputing Danny's or XYZ's actual experiences with car & truck tires.

End of the day, any tire will fail prematurely if not properly inflated.

My trailer tires have to withstand forces of being left alone for long periods - they wear out from UV exposure with plenty of good tread left - hey, that gives me an idea...

bassmaster, Get the goodyear marathon trailer radials. They make the trailer pull so much easier you can't believe it. I wouldn't recommend bias ply tires with the price of gas these days. Ken

Does that mean that I should take back the tires I had mounted on my trailer last week? These tires are steel belted radials that have plainly marked on the sidewall "Trailer Use Only".

yeah, take 'em back today!!

sorry bout that. Didn't even know bout 'em. It's all the up & down flexing that prematurely wears out automotive radials on a trailer (as I understand it, I'm certainly not an expert). I have no experience with the tires you described but I wouldn't hesitate to use 'em if they came with a good recommendation.

How you liking them so far?

BassCat Boat uses regular tires on some of their trailers.

I use to think that you needed Trailer Use Only tires for boats, and I bought Goodyear Marathon

Next time I will go with a car tire on my boat. Seems to me that the GoodYear Marathon only last about 5 years and they start to seperate.

I have always ran car tires with 50 pounds of air pressure in them to stop some of the flexing. Just got back from Texoma 890 miles and tires are 3 years old no problem knock on wood. Headed back again next week