Age of tyres

This is an old job that I went out to in 2015, I had a call out to a car park, which the customer had left his car there over night.

I turned up and the customer had said the tyre was brand new, (according to the customer) as it had plenty of tread, it looked brand new... not the case!

The tyre was born in 2002, a part worn spec, just because a tyre 'looks' brand new, or has plenty of tread on it doesn't mean it is brand new!

A tyre has what's called a DOT code which stands for, the Department of Transportation and it is marked on the tyre's sidewall. DOT, together with the numbers and letters, allow for indicating the place and date of the tyre's manufacture.

The DOT abbreviation is followed by numbers that indicate the tyre factory code and date. Production time is indicated by the last three or four digits.

Three-digit numbers indicate a production date before 2000, where the first two digits stand for the production week and the last one indicates the year. The three-digit code did not give certainty in terms of decades. Therefore, in 2000, the fourth digit was added and since then, the last two digits represent the year of manufacture. For example: 2310 means 23rd week of 2010.