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Best All-Terrain Tires for Trucks and SUVs—Car and Driver

Best All-Terrain Tires for Trucks and SUVs—Car and Driver

Chris Doane AutomotiveCar and Driver

For everything you need to know about buying and maintaining tires, click here.

Miles deep into the wild where pavement and civilization cease, your vehicle is no longer just a conduit for fun, it’s your lifeline. Whether you’re challenging the Icelandic void or sightseeing on a badly rutted mountainous trail in Arizona the ability of your four-wheel-drive to get you there and back rests—literally—on your choice of all-terrain tires. A Prius can take loose gravel, dirt, and mild inclines without much fuss. It’s when the surface gets gnarly that you need a dedicated off-road tire.



    All-Terrain tires (sometimes designed as A/T or M/T for mud-terrain) generally employ a combination of reinforced sidewalls, tread depth that can range up to twice as deep as a street tire, Kevlar liners, and knobby construction. If you’re looking for an all-terrain tire for your pickup truck, SUV, or Crossover, you’ve come to the right place.

    We’ve consulted with our friends at Tire Rack to examine some of the top all terrain tire options. Tire Rack is notorious for its testing and evaluation procedures, and we trust them to help our readers find the best tire, no matter what style they’re after.

    Today we’re focusing on the ever-popular all-terrain tire. Read on to learn the highs, lows, advantages, drawbacks, and other valuable insights.

    Which All-Terrain Tires are Best For Your Vehicle?

    In the past, pickup trucks were made for work: hauling, towing—and getting dirty. It’s no secret, though, that today’s pickup truck is far more than a simple workhorse. With stylish design packages, gas-saving powerplants, and plush interiors, trucks have become far more useful than ever—while still being able to work hard when you need them to.

    Today’s SUVs and crossovers are no different. Initially packaged as a more comfortable and driveable utilitarian option to the passenger van, they can tote around groups of passengers in comfort while still providing the cargo capacity and rugged ability that severe weather, urban driving, and the occasional dirt road can bring—with a lot more style than an old Econoline could ever offer.

    Both pickups and SUVs thrive on doing everything well, no matter what’s asked of them. To fully achieve that ability, though, an all-terrain tire is essential.

    Related: New Tire Buying Guide: Everything You Need to Know

    You may want an all-terrain tire you can trust in extreme weather or occasional rough terrain. When you’re the family driver, that trust is critical. Alternatively, you may need a tire for biting off rocks and slugging through sand, such as the BFGoodrich All Terrain T/A KO2 that has proven worthy in the Baja 1000. Specialized tires like the Nokian Rockproof and Firestone Destination M/T2 are so adept in mud that they feel like paddles.

    All-terrain tires deliver on both counts. These are the kind of tires that you can bash, squeeze, and shimmy over the rocks and through the dirt without incessantly worrying about punctures. They’re also the kind of tire that can ride in relative quiet and comfort for everyone inside the cabin. And while no tire is immune to failure, all-terrain tires provide the extra measure of grip and grit required in the toughest conditions.

    No matter what kind of all-terrain tire you want for your truck, SUV, Jeep, crossover, or, yes, beloved passenger van, there’s one at TireRack that will suit your needs.

    All-Terrain Tires Bring Compromises

    Back on the road, the most severe all-terrain tires will be noisy with lots of humming on the highway. They don’t have the dry road grip of all-season tires. And they will probably wear out more quickly versus the all-season truck tires like the Goodyear Eagle F1 fitted to various Land Rovers or the Bridgestone Dueler H/T found on the Jeep Wrangler Sahara. Such street-tuned tires have more chops than their smoother appearance would suggest (we’ve actually crawled up the Continental Divide in a fleet of Range Rovers on those 21-inch Goodyears).

    Related: Do You Need to Replace Your Tires?

    In the middle ground are tires like the Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac or All-Terrain Adventure, which provide a worthy off-road upgrade without totally sacrificing on-road comfort. Do your homework and you’ll be able to find the right all-terrain shoes that are best for you and your vehicle.

    How We Chose The Tires Listed Here

    We turned to the vehicle manufacturers that offer trucks and SUVs with serious off-road capability to see which all-terrain tires they use as standard equipment. The automakers’ engineers work closely with tire manufacturers to develop all-terrain tires that meet rigorous requirements for off-road performance, on-road ride-and-handling, noise level, resistance to punctures, wear, quality, and cost.

    See Tire Rack’s Ratings charts for all tires in This Category

    Auto companies and tire makers both test the all-terrain tires that are going on a given vehicle extensively before production starts to validate their performance. Vehicle manufacturers can’t afford to have their truck’s on-road performance or off-road ability undermined by sub-standard tires. If an all-terrain tire is good enough for a manufacturer to put on their production vehicle, then it’s a good bet it will perform well on yours.

    Based on the testing of the vehicle manufacturers that put them on as standard equipment, here are the top all-terrain tires—in roughly equivalent sizes for comparison purposes—and the production vehicles that are fitted with them:


    Best All-Terrain Tires for Trucks and SUVs

Best for most full-size pickup trucks, SUVs, and vans

Goodyear Wrangler DuraTrac

  • Ideal for towing and heavy load applications
  • Severe Snow Service Rated

Developed for drivers of multi-purpose, full-sized pickups, vans, sport utility, and commercial vehicles. The Wrangler DuraTrac is designed to be a versatile tire offering off-road competence in dirt, gravel, and mud with on-road composure in dry, wet, and wintry conditions.

Standard equipment on:

Ram 1500 Rebel

Chevrolet Colorado ZR2

GMC Sierra AT4

best for Jeeps and SUVs

BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2

  • 2x’s the tread life of previous generations
  • Cut-, chip-, and tear-resistant tread compound
  • Pricier than most other options here

Designed to meet the needs of Jeep, pickup truck, and sport utility vehicle drivers who want confidence and control on- and off- road. The All-Terrain T/A KO2 was designed to deliver go-anywhere traction along with outstanding durability, great wear, and year-round traction, even in snow.

See Tire Rack’s complete testing results on this tire here.

Standard equipment on:

Ford F-150 Raptor

Jeep Wrangler Rubicon

Best value

Firestone Destination A/T

  • Fantastic wet traction
  • Multiple sidewall styles available

For Jeep, sport utility vehicle, and pickup truck drivers who want tires that offer handling on the road and toughness off it, the Firestone Destination A/T is available with three sidewall choices: Outline white letter, traditional Blackwall, and a Special Edition Blackwall featuring a stylish Carbon Black Camo design.

Standard equipment on:

Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk

Best for crossovers

General Grabber APT

  • Special under-tread absorption layer isolates road imperfections for a smoother ride
  • Flat tread profile combats rapid/irregular wear
  • Some sizes are not snow-rated

Initially developed for OEM use on the Nissan Titan, with additional sizes for the drivers of pickup trucks, Jeeps, and crossovers, the Grabber APT is made to provide confident traction in all weather conditions.

Standard equipment on:

Nissan Titan XD Pro-4X

best for off-roaders, towing and heavy loads

Goodyear Wrangler All-Terrain Adventure

  • Wrapped with next-generation DuPont Kevlar
  • Pro-Grade options use two layers of Kevlar, plus a tougher tread compound for high-torque applications
  • Tougher than most everyday drivers will ever need

Premium Pick

Pirelli Scorpion ATR

  • Ideal for everyday crossover and SUV drivers who want the best
  • Premium price matches the premium quality

If you want the best, it’ll cost you. Designed for pickups, crossovers, and SUVs that want to combine on-road civility with off-road capability, the Scorpion ATR features a silica-enhanced tread compound molded into a quiet-running, symmetric all-terrain type tread pattern.

See Tire Rack’s complete testing results on this tire here.

Standard equipment on:

Mercedes-Benz G550 4×4²

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