F150 Tires

Choosing the Right Tire for your F150

We can talk pretty much all day about tires, but the most important factor in tire choice is what you're doing with your truck. Figuring out what kind of traction and performance you want versus how much ride quality and tread life you need will make picking the right tire a much easier process. That being said, we here at Stage 3 are here to help, and we've put together more than a few tire reviews for our YouTube channel that can help point you in the right direction.

All-Terrains vs. Mud-Terrains vs. Hybrids

The firs step to narrowing down your tire choice is to figure out what type of your tire you need. All-Terrain Tires are a general-purpose upgrade over the stock all-seasons. All-terrain tires offer a nice bump in traction both on and off the road, but still have excellent tread life. They're also usually pretty quiet on the pavement, which makes them a great choice for any truck that doesn't go mudding. Mud-Terrain Tires are built from the ground up to provide off-road traction, and they can rip your truck out of the stickiest mud, snow, or other terrain without breaking sweat. However, their big tread blocks make them pretty noisy on the street and their tread life is pretty low, which makes them a pricey long-term investment. Hybrid Tires are a fairly new type of truck tire, but they're slowing becoming one of the go-tos for us here at Stage 3. Hybrid tires combine design elements from both All-Terrain and Mud-Terrain tires to provide a nice balance of off-road traction and everyday drivability between the two. While they can't rip out of the really nasty stuff like a mud terrain, their traction is superior to All-Terrains. While they're not as quiet on the street or have the tread life of an All-Terrain, they're much more commuter-friendly than Mud-Terrains.

Maximum Tire Size

The whole "what's the biggest tire size I can fit on my truck" topic is an enormous can of worms that's made even more muddied by the fact that wheel offset and backspacing effect the maximum tire size you can fit on your truck in a huge way. Still, there are a few general tire sizes that you can use as a baseline for your F150's lift height. For trucks using a 1.5" to 3" leveling kit, we generally recommend using 33" tires, though depending on your wheel offsets and backspacing, you can clear up to a 34" tall tire though you'll need to stay pretty narrow. F150s that have a 4" lift kit can use up to a 35x12.50" tire on pretty much any wheel that meets the lift kit's backspacing requirements. F150s with 6" lifts can fit up to a 35x12.50" tire, though you can start to push some 37" tires with the right combination of wheel backspacing, aftermarket front bumpers, or trimming. At 7" of lift and above, your F150 can clear 37x12.50" tires on most wheel options that meet your lift's backspacing requirements.