Keep an Eye on Tire Wear

I drive a lot of highway miles (4-4.5k per month) and have 75k miles on the car and thought I could get another 10k -- at least it appeared that way when standing next to the tires and taking a glance, looked like they still had a good amount of tread left.

I took it into my local tire shop yesterday for state inspection only (wasn't my normal tire shop, my normal shop doesn't do inspections), and they texted me pics saying the car wouldn't pass due to tires, so of course I had to get them replaced (all-in-all 75k miles on a set isn't bad). They said that an alignment was needed to keep it from happening with this new set so of course I had them do that too.

Here's a pic that shows all 4 tires, from standing next to each tire on the outside all looked fine but I didn't take the time to stick my head under there for a closer look, was kinda depending on my normal tire shop that rotates the tires every 8-10k (and who had just done it a week prior) to take a look during the rotation and give me a heads up if they saw abnormal wear.

So just a heads up to get a good look by yourself rather than depend on your tire shop, I used to rotate my own tires just so I could get a good close-up look on each, but since I turned 50 a few years ago I take it to my tire shop (they do the rotations for free) and walk across the street for a coffee -- that'll teach me.

 

Yeah looks pretty similar, and when I got the tires replaced they said it needed an alignment and yes I agreed so they took care of it, hope it makes things better!

 

No, it's a long commute on interstate and backroads, and I've only had a couple days with snow on the roads.

 

Well from looking at the rear of the car I always thought the rear tires looked slightly off, but I've seen other cars that also look that way to the naked eye so I figured maybe that's just how they look. See the below pic I found online of a 2020 to see what I mean, as the rear wheels also look slightly tilted in that pic, but again that could be completely normal and the way the car was designed. I'm not complaining, I got 75k miles from the OEM set so I'm happy with that, was just surprised to see the uneven wear and posted so others here can give their tires a closer check and avoid the surprise that I got when I thought the wear was even across the tires, as that's how it looked from looking from the outside of each wheel anyway.

They did the alignment and yes I normally ask them to move the back tires to opposite front and fronts straight back, so with the alignment I guess we'll find out after a few thousand miles if things are wearing more normally, but I am going to definitely take a closer look before taking it in for each rotation.

 

Well I see a lot of red colors before and green colors after (see below), so let's hope it improves things.

 

Only the normal tire rotations, where I thought they would be at least glancing at the tires for wear (especially for the sake of trying to sell a new set of tires) but they never mentioned it once.