Snow Tires vs. All Season Tires

If you are like me and you live and work in an area that gets a significant amount of snowfall each winter, I would strongly encourage you to consider putting actual snow tires on your rural mail carrier vehicle if possible. I always thought that a good all-season tire was all I needed to get me through the snow and ice on the mail route but after entering many ditches and getting stuck numerous times, I decided to take the plunge and purchase snow tires several years ago.

Wow! What a difference it made. I no longer found myself “white knuckling” the route for 6 hours worrying about if I was going to get stuck again. I found myself driving through the snow like a hot knife through butter and while I passed many other vehicles having issues navigating the rural mail carrier roads on my route, I was much more confident.

If you can afford it, the best way to go is to purchase an extra set of rims and have one set for the winter with your snow tires on them and one set for the rest of the year with your all-season tires. This makes it much easier to swap on/off if the weather changes quickly like it can here in Minnesota. You can always check with your local auto salvage yard to see if they have your size rims if you want to save some money.

Let me point out that even if you have a vehicle with 4-wheel drive or all-wheel drive, you will notice a significant improvement in your ability to drive safely in the winter with snow tires. I realize it’s an investment but when your safety is at stake, I think it’s a very wise investment.

There are a lot of good snow tires on the market for rural mail carriers. The two that I am most familiar with are the ones I’ve actually used on my mail route the past 5+ years. They would be the Cooper Discoverer M+S tire and the Toyo Observe GSi-5 Winter Performance Studless tire.