I don't want to spend that much!!!!

A lot of people that go into dealerships and tire stores every day and get a case of sticker shock. Then start to lament about the good old days when tires were only $39.95 apiece.

The first culprit the cost of oil, not just the production costs that have increased over 250% in ten years. Consider that out of a 42 gallon barrel of oil, approximately 37.5 gallons are used for fueling and heating purposes, out of the remaining 4.5 gallons there is competition for that oil to make products that use oil, including computers, perfume and colognes, plastics, petroleum jelly, ammonia, and even bubble gum just to name a few things. So with an increase in cost and an increase in the number of industries that need to use the material, its only natural that production costs increase.

The next thing that increases the cost is designing for individual models, looking back to the early 80s, there may have been as many as 48 different types of tires that covered all makes and models of vehicles from a manufacturer. Today, it isn't even shocking to see a single manufacturer with over 1500 different models that cover a wide array of makes, models, weather, and terrain condtions. Why all this specialization? When a car maker engineers a new model year, those cars are designed from the tires up, the maker gives the tire specifications to the tire manufacturer and the tire manufacturer creates the tire. If there is less of a product and production costs are the same, to recoup the investment at a minimum, the price needs to increase..

Finally, those new tires you get on your new car, they are sold to the car maker at a discount. Because most people want to stick with the same brand of tire that came with their vehicle, so the tire manufacturer gets rights to what is called the OEM (Original Engineered Manufacturer) market for that model to help them recoup the cost.

Are these bad things? Not necessarily, the tires that came on your new car were designed with your make and model in mind, so this helps improve fuel efficiency by providing better traction and handling, lessens wear on your vehicle's suspension keeping the car running and out of the shop. The average life of tires has almost doubled from 24,000 miles in the 1980s to 45,000 miles today. So instead of changing tires every 18 months to 2 years, they are not being changed for 4 to 5 years, there may be sticker shock, but in the long term, you're actually going to be saving time and money using tires that were designed with a specific vehicle in mind.