Engine and general problems or fixes for our farm pickups

I did not realize Fountain Tire had such a website with prices and breakdown of the costs, very interesting. Where I had looked was on the actual Goodyear Tire website to see what "Goodyear" offered in the size I was looking for and there they have no pricing, just info on their own tires. Having said that there was a certain model of Kelly Tire they make ( I assume they make it ) and when I asked about it today over the phone at Fountain Tire she said they had poor luck with that tire don't bring it in anymore to their shop and the the size I was after they didn't show any supply of it in their system and being that the Duratrac has dropped the price and this sale price, it was slightly lower than the Kelly anyway. So goes to show how much they dropped the prices on the Duratrac and like you said Goodyear themselves were loosing out on sales with their insane pricing. I also did not realize that Fountain tire is selling quite a few other brands, I don't think some years back they were dealing in much other brands but stuck mostly to Goodyear but had some offshore highway tractor tire and of course that never used to exist either.

I wonder if they invented a new name or they changed something substantial in the Duratrac tire as I see that too, RT and then in brackets says Heavy Load.

I just found some info as to what this RT is all about, in short it has kevlar incorporated into the tire and the theory is a tougher tire and side wall, here is the official Goodyear news release.

My brother had put a set of the Toyo A/T III on an older Jeep and so its a smaller tire but so far he has been happy with them ( only summer use though ) on pavement and gravel, he had Duratrac's on it prior and they wore all wavy BADLY and were noisy right off the start and got worse and then vibrated etc with all this weird wear. Time will tell how they wear but so far did not show the signs of being rock pickers and way way quieter.

I just looked up a photo of the Firestone Transforce AT2 and in my mind that tire tread looks like it might last pretty good BUT be shit for traction in mud ( or wet grass for that matter ! ) . Treads that have that groove pattern with tread blocks so close together and then what is basically a closed shoulder design, probably quite fine for pavement and a lot less likely to get the weird wear of an open shoulder tread block design. So I can see why you struggled with traction. As to the Toyo's you put on, try to keep up on rotations and I know everyone does a little different but with a normally rear wheel driven vehicle with non directional tires I like to move the rear tires forward on the same sides but cross over the front tires to the rear to reverse the rotation as it helps keep the tread blocks from having that angling back wear.

With your suburban, do you drive much distance percentage wise on gravel as I am wondering if your tires have been stone drilling due to weak P rated casings, of course its not just the casing as the other part is a tread that retains rocks as that is part of the issue with stone drilling and breaking up the casing cords. I know going with a LT tire ( would no doubt depend on ply rating as well ) that they will ride somewhat stiffer however depending on the tire size it may be possible to lower the air pressure a bit after doing some weigh scale calculations. The BFG KO2 ( I have not heard anything yet about the KO3 ) tends to be one of those rock picker tires, its got some weird angled slits in the shoulder tread blocks that will refuse to let some rocks go while also grabbing rocks there and in other area's of the tread and throwing them like crazy once hitting the pavement or just driving down a gravel road. That is one tire I would not recommend if the vehicle literally touches any gravel. I don't know if that vehicle and application would do ok with the Michelin tires, the tread they have never jumps out to me as thrilling for traction but perhaps it might be a contender, the style of tread is what they use as the base tire on the GM HD trucks. And then different sizes of any tire can have a different void width between the treads so what one size of a brand seems like, is not always going to be the same with another size when it comes to being a gravel slinging tire or not. 

Have a look see at your tire model and post that as Yokohama has a few tires they have the Geolandar name attached to ( don't ask me why they spell it that way, I've been misspelling and pronouncing it wrong all these years ! ) . I will take a guess that it might be the A/T G015 and in fact I will throw up a link to that tire and you will know right away from the photo if its the one you put on your pickup.