Tire Pressure Best Practices

Maintaining tire pressure on a heavy duty truck is a very important topic. With that in mind, simply inflating your tires to the max sidewall pressure, or even the value posted on your door label, is insufficient to provide the best tire performance. Overinflating tires can result in unexpected consequences, such as poor handling and unsafe characteristics as well as irregular tire wear and other service life issues. Issues that arise as a result of overinflated tires can be just as dangerous as those that result from an underinflated tire.

So what is the best practice? Simply inflating to the door label is insufficient. Door label PSI inflation information is assigned based on the Engineering Assigned GAWR. Since the operational axle loading can be substantially different than the Engineering Assigned GAWR, appropriate tire pressures can be significantly different.

Example: you have a rear tandem with an assigned GAWR of 40K and a door label with a stated tire pressure of 95 PSI.

But if you actually run the chassis at 34K, then 95 PSI would be considered overinflated. Remember to review the Tire and Rim Association data for your specified tires and review the load table. The appropriate pressure may be more like 75 PSI. Always inflate tires based on the loads you are hauling, and review the tire Manufacturer’s Data Tables for the appropriate PSI for your application.