Chevrolet Silverado

There is no single best tire for a Silverado, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something. The best tire is the one that matches how you drive, where you drive, and what you ask the truck to do. A Silverado that tows a gooseneck twice a month needs a different tire than a Silverado that does school runs and hardware store trips.

I have been doing this forty-five years. The mistake I see most is people buying for looks first and rating second. A tire can look right on the truck and be wrong for the weight you are carrying, and you will not find out until it matters.

Here is how to think it through in plain English, plus what to actually buy for each kind of driving.

Start Here: Read Your Sidewall, Not a Chart

We do not tell you what size your vehicle takes, and I want to explain why, because it is not laziness. It is the single most common way people end up with the wrong tires.

Silverado sizes vary a lot by year, trim, and wheel package, and half-ton 1500s and heavy-duty 2500 and 3500 trucks are not shopping the same shelf. Z71 packages, lift kits, and previous owners going up an inch all move the target. Do not assume, go look.

A chart based on year, make and model tells you what the factory installed. It does not tell you what is on your vehicle right now. Dealers swap wheel packages before delivery. Previous owners change sizes. Somebody puts on a set of aftermarket wheels and never mentions it. If you bought the vehicle used, the chart is a guess.

Where to look

There are two places, and one of them wins.

  • The sticker in the driver's door jamb tells you what the factory recommended, along with the correct tire pressure. Useful, but it describes the vehicle as it was built.

  • The sidewall of the tire currently on your vehicle tells you what is actually there. This is the one that matters. Go outside and read it.

You are looking for a string like 225/65R17. That is width, sidewall profile, and wheel diameter. Write it down, check all four tires while you are out there, and if they do not all match, that is worth a phone call to us before you order anything.

If your sidewall starts with LT, you need an LT tire

This is the part that costs people money, so read it twice.

LT stands for Light Truck. An LT tire is built differently from a passenger-rated tire in the same numeric size. It has more plies, stiffer sidewalls, and a higher load capacity, and it is designed for towing, hauling, and heavier service. A P-metric tire, meaning one with no LT in front, is often perfectly fine for light-duty driving in a half-ton truck.

Where it goes wrong is substituting one for the other. Put a P-metric tire on a truck that tows a loaded trailer and you are under-rated for the weight, which is a safety problem, not a comfort problem. Go the other way and put LT tires on a truck that never carries anything, and you have paid more for a harsher ride and worse fuel economy that you get no benefit from.

So match what you have unless you have a specific reason to change, and if you are changing, call us first.

Check the load index, not just the size

Here is something worth knowing when you are shopping our site or anybody else's. Tire listings are built from supplier data, and that data is not always consistent about how it labels LT versus passenger sizes. You may see a tire whose product name says LT while the size field displays the passenger version of the same numbers.

The reliable way to confirm you have the right tire is the load index, which is the two or three digit number that follows the size, and the load range letter, usually C, D, or E. Match or exceed what is on your current tire. If the listing is ambiguous, or the numbers do not look right to you, call us at 207-316-2258 and we will confirm it before you buy. That call takes two minutes and it has saved a lot of returns.

Chevy Silverado Tire Sizes You Will Commonly See

These are sizes that turn up on this vehicle across trims and model years. This is a starting point for finding your size on our site, not a recommendation of which one you should buy. Confirm against your own sidewall first.

Do not see your size on the list? That does not mean we cannot get it. Give us a call at 207-316-2258 and we will check.

Start With Five Honest Questions

Before you look at a single brand, answer these. Your answers put you in a category, and the category does most of the work.

  • Do you tow or haul heavy loads regularly, or just occasionally?

  • Mostly highway, mostly city, or a real mix?

  • Do you deal with snow and ice every winter, or mainly cold rain?

  • Do you actually go off pavement, or do you want the all-terrain look?

  • Is the priority the quietest possible ride, or traction and durability?

Best Highway and All-Season Tires for the Silverado

If your Silverado lives on pavement, this is the practical choice and it is the one most owners should make. Quiet, fuel-friendly, and the tread lasts.

Falken Wildpeak family

Comfortable, quiet, and priced well below the premium names. A strong pick for a daily-driven 1500 that tows a few times a year.

Continental TerrainContact H/T

If road noise is your specific complaint about your current tires, this is the straightforward fix.

Best All-Terrain Tires for the Silverado

All-terrains are the Silverado sweet spot. They look right on the truck, they handle gravel and dirt roads without drama, and they still behave on pavement. The decision is how aggressive to go, because noise goes up with capability.

Falken Wildpeak A/T family

One of the best bang-for-the-buck all-terrains out there. Great traction in wet weather and snow, and it handles surprisingly well on pavement for an A/T. A lot of Silverado owners end up here and stay here.

Toyo Open Country A/T family

Blends road manners with toughness. Toyo builds truck tires that go the distance when you put real miles on them.

Best Winter Tires for the Silverado

Four-wheel drive gets you moving. Winter tires get you stopped. That is the whole argument, and it is why I run winters on my own truck. Make sure whatever you pick is built for a light truck, not a passenger car.

Falken Winterpeak family

Genuine winter capability at a price that makes a second set of tires realistic.

Best Budget Tires for the Silverado

Sometimes you need four tires now. That is a legitimate situation and there are honest tires that fit it. You are usually trading some tread life or a little noise, not safety.

General Grabber family

Durable and dependable, with real engineering behind it.

Ironman 

Value-tier options that get a working truck back on the road. Expect shorter tread life and plan for it.

How to Actually Buy Once You Know Your Size

Click your size above and you will land on a page showing every tire we carry in that size. From there, use the brand filter on the left to narrow to whichever brand you settled on while reading this.

A few of the listings show a green Check Stock & Price button instead of a price. That does not mean we cannot get it. It means that particular tire is not sitting in our own inventory, so we call our alternate suppliers and quote it for you. Click the button, tell us what you need, and we will come back with a real number. People skip those listings thinking they are sold out, and sometimes the tire they skipped was the right one.

One more thing worth knowing. You will occasionally see the same tire listed twice at two prices. That happens when it comes to us through two different suppliers. Buy the cheaper one. It is the same tire.

Paying for Tires Without a Hard Credit Check

A full set of tires is not a small purchase, and I have never thought it should have to come out of one paycheck. That is why we run the Dan the Tire Man No Credit Needed Program, powered by Kafene. It is lease-to-own, there is no hard credit check, and most people get started for about $49 out of pocket.

You apply online in a couple of minutes, get an answer right away, and then shop with your approval in hand. If you would rather use a card, or use Affirm, or just pay outright, all of that works too. Nothing about the program changes the price of the tire.

And if you would rather talk to somebody before you spend the money, call us at 207-316-2258. We would rather spend ten minutes on the phone making sure you get the right tire than process a return later.

Check out our Tire Financing page.

Still Not Sure? Call Us.

Forty-five years in this business and I still think the fastest way to get the right tire is a conversation. If you have read all this and you are still on the fence, or your sizes do not match, or you are trying to decide whether to change size, call 207-316-2258. We will figure it out with you. No pressure, and no charge for the advice.