How do we define what the best of something really is? Is the best beating out all of your competitors by a wide margin, or is the best being great at everything? If someone or something is the best then there really should be no distinction, being the best is about both surpassing the competition and being able to do it all or it would be in a perfect world. In reality sometimes identifying the best of something is more of an opinion like "who is the best baseball player of all time?" and at other times the notion of the best can be defined by incontrovertible facts like "what tire has the best rolling resistance?". So what are the best pickup truck tires available and is there really a "Jack of All Trades" of pickup truck tires, so to speak? There are many tires on the market that could be considered a Jack of All Trades but in most cases it all depends on what you are or are planning on using your pickup truck for in the end. Normal cruising tires will work for pickup trucks that are primarily being used as a passenger vehicles. However, if you are using your pickup truck to actually haul cargo then it would be a good idea to take note of the average weight of the cargo that your truck carries so that you can select the best tires for your needs. Every vehicle tire regardless of brand or purpose has something called the Load Index, which is the maximum amount of weight, or load, that the individual tire can support and the higher the load index is the more weight the tire can support. The load index of a tire is a number that can be located on the tire's sidewall and ranges from the values of 0 to 150. For example, tire with a load index of 47 can support up to approximately 419 lbs., and a tire with a load index 100 can support a load of 1,764 lbs and so on and so forth. To find the maximum weight that your vehicle's tires can support just multiply the tire's load capacity (i.e. 1,764 lbs) by the number of tires; however, if you have tires with a different load capacity then just total up the load capacities of each individual tire. The load index is important to consider when selecting the best pickup truck tires but it's also prudent to consider the weather conditions of your usually driving area as well. If you drive your pickup truck in an area that sees a lot of rain or snow then one of your priorities should be purchasing tires that have good traction. Tires with a traction rating of "B" or higher and a tread wear depth of 85 are be best suited to driving in slippery conditions such as mud, rain, snow, and sleet. But what if a person only occasionally does some heavy lifting with their pickup truck but mostly sticks to simple casual driving? If your driving habits fall somewhere in between construction worker and chauffeur then consider buying a general set of tires for your truck. In an earlier post we said that you couldn't really go wrong with all-terrain or all-season tires and that's still true especially for trucks which are designed for more rugged driving conditions. The point is that the best tires for one job might not be the best for another, there is simply no such thing as the perfect tire, but there are a few tires that come close. For example, one truck tire package that is considered to be the best by many people are nitto tires, which seem to be able to handle just about anything that the world can throw at them. Source: Kumho USA Image via CC-BY-CarlImages