awd

Yep - my father just turned 70 this year, & he never owned a 4x4 truck until just 10 years ago. My grandfather never owned a 4x4. None of my grandparents did. Lots of hills & snow in central MA too. I couldn't afford a 4x4 until I bought my first one in '03, with 206,000 miles on the clock. That was my '94 K1500. Sold it with 266K. But anyway we all got around fine.

Back then there weren't any foreigners clogging up every hill because they don't understand the importance of good rubber in the snow. These days, even if you CAN get out of your house, you won't get very far, thanks to these idiots. Every MA city is full of them, & they systematically shut down every roadway. You'll be stuck there for hours .. if your lucky. Days, if your not. Every single one of those stuck cars is FWD too.

Thats what I'm getting at, it seems today with the majority of the vehicles on the road being 4x4's, FWD, AWD, etc. that everybody has a harder time getting around than back in the day when everything was just about RWD!

Being close to both Interstates 80 and 81, just love seeing all the cars with Southern License Plates , Skis on the
Roof Rack down in the median between lanes or off the road in a ditch.

Too much in a hurry to get to Jack Frost, Big Boulder or Camelback Ski Areas without knowing
how to drive or using caution on snow covered roads in The Great Northeast.

When I was driving through a snow storm in Tennessee across I-40 I must of saw a car and a few tractor trailers in the ditch every 5 or 10 miles, hundreds of them. It was pretty slippery, near the end a little bit before Memphis we were going across a small bridge and it was all iced up but it was black ice and looked wet. The ass end started dancing and by the time we got to the other side I was in the other lane. Good thing there wasn't any other cars. Same thing going under the underpasses, you'd hit that little bit of ice and you'd feel it start to slide a little. Usually that doens't bother me much but when you're going fast it gets a little hairy.

This thread reminds me of a funny Australian commercial...
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> What ever you buy get a spare set of wheels and winter tires.

> I've been driving on dedicated winter tires now for almost 15 years.

Ditto the poster that said get a spare set of rims with winter tires [M+S rated]. It makes a HUGE difference.

Go narrower if possible. Imo, you don't need a really rough tread, but a decent mud and snow rated tire, that is siped. Sipes are small slits across the tread blocks, which make for many more edges to grip. Imo, the sipes help greatly on ice and hard packed sleet. Rotate them often, as the edges of the sipes will grip better when freshly rotated.

Fyi, some tire stores are offering siping to normal tires, but if you look, you can find tires designed with sipes. google sipes, siped tires, etc.

Btw, I wait until snow is here before swapping tires. With them mounted and ready, it's only a few minutes work. That way, the softer M&S tires last me several winters.

Dave
p.s. - fwiw, I'm a buy American guy, as in American jobs. Regardless of brand, you could consider this. That said, just because it has an American name doesn't mean it built here.