After having a tire separate on a boat trailer on the way back home from a 50 mile fishing trip when I was a young lad (daddy's boat and trailer and the tire was so badly weather cracked it looked like a checker board), I decided I didn't want that to happen to me. So I always tried to keep fresh tires on my stuff. In short, tires contain plasticizers that have to migrate to the surface to function. These plasticizers keep the synthetic rubber pliable and prevent cracking. That means you buy fresh tires and keep them rolling. You can buy a new set of radials for your truck, run them for a year OTR and have no cracking. Or you can take the same set of tires, put 5,000 miles a year on them and see cracking the second year. (BTDT) You don't set them up in a 150F sealed warehouse for several years. You don't put them on a tractor and sit it in the sun and especially if you don't roll it for several years. I have one tractor in particular, that was mfgr'd in Europe in '79 and it still has the Dutch (Holland) OEM tires on it. They are cracked in the tread area like you absolutely wouldn't believe but there is no rubber loss. I bought it that way about 4 years ago and they haven't gotten any worse and I haven't lost the least amount of tread rubber. So, other than looks, I am not that concerned with cracking on ag tires. Now if you were going to put tires like that on a 80,000 OTR truck and run it 70 mph down the interstate then look out cause they will toss rubber all over you. BTDT too. Mark
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