The Best Tires for an F-150: 5 Picks Compared by Size, Load and Snow Rating

Start at your door jamb, not at this listing. This page is one Pirelli Scorpion All Terrain Plus in 275/60R20 with a 115T load index and speed rating. That size does appear on some 20 inch F-150 wheels, but F-150 trims run several different stock sizes and a previous owner may have changed the wheels entirely. The placard inside the driver’s door is the authority. If the numbers there are different, search this model name plus your own size instead of clicking this one.

The reason it takes the top spot is the badge on the sidewall. Pirelli is a full-line maker with real distribution, which matters more than people expect. Tires do not get replaced four at a time when a pothole splits one at 14,000 miles. If you need a single matching tire in three years, a mainstream line is far easier to find than a house brand that a marketplace seller imported in one batch.

The listing itself is thin, and that is a fair complaint. Pirelli’s Amazon page gives you the size, that the tire is made in Brazil, the package dimensions and a 46.96 lb package weight. There is no load range letter, no UTQG grade, no treadwear warranty figure and no snow certification. Everything else on this page you would have to get from a dealer. For a tire at this price, that is less information than the cheap sets further down the guide publish.

What the load index does tell you is useful. 115 is a normal half ton number and it covers a stock F-150 doing normal work. It is not a heavy hauling figure, and it says nothing about how the carcass is built, which is the part that matters when a loaded trailer is pushing down on the hitch on a hot day.

Buy this one if your placard says 275/60R20 and you value a brand you can get again. If it says anything else, this is not your tire, no matter how good the tire is.

Read the LT in front of the size before anything else. This listing is one BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO3 in LT265/70R17, load range E, load index 123 single and 120 dual. That LT prefix means light truck construction, and the E means the carcass is built to hold high pressure and carry heavy loads. It is not the same thing as the P metric and standard load tires elsewhere in this guide, and it is not what every F-150 leaves the factory with. Check your placard.

This is the towing pick because load range E is the only honest answer to weight. A tire fails when it carries more than it is rated for, because the sidewall flexes, the flexing makes heat, and heat separates the belts from the rubber. That separation is what a highway blowout is. It usually happens on a hot day with a loaded trailer. Load index 123 buys you margin against exactly that, and none of the standard load tires in this guide can offer it.

The sidewall engineering is the other half of the argument. BFGoodrich’s CoreGard technology came out of desert racing, and the Advanced Deflection Design is shaped to push sticks and rocks away from the sidewall instead of letting them catch and cut. Tread depth protects the part of the tire you can see. Sidewall design protects the part that actually strands you.

The trade-offs are real and worth saying plainly. A load range E tire has a thick, stiff carcass. On an empty F-150 that shows up as a firmer ride over expansion joints and more effort to get moving, because a heavy tire is rotating weight and rotating weight costs fuel every time you accelerate. You also pay the most per tire here, and this page sells one tire, not four.

One more caution. The listing talks about mud and snow traction, but it does not state a three-peak mountain snowflake certification. If severe snow approval matters where you live, look for the small mountain symbol on the sidewall yourself, or take the Crosswind Trail Traxx instead.

The size on this page is 265/70R18 with a 116T rating, and it is one tire. The listing names the Ford F-150 among the vehicles it is designed for, along with the Silverado, the Durango and several others. Treat that as a hint, not as a fitment answer. F-150 trims run different stock sizes depending on wheel diameter and package, and 18 inch wheels alone do not tell you the tire size. Open the driver’s door and read the placard.

What earns this tire its award is the three-peak mountain snowflake symbol. That certification means the tire passed a standardized snow traction test. It is a measured result. The older M+S marking is not. A maker can stamp M+S on a tire based on the shape of the tread grooves, which is why almost every all terrain tire carries it and why it tells you nothing. Among the picks in this guide, this is the only one whose listing states the snowflake.

The siping backs it up. Sipes are the small slits cut across the tread blocks, and each one is another edge that can bite into packed snow. Crosswind says it added extra sipes for wet and snowy weather, which is the same idea good winter tires use, applied to an all terrain pattern.

Two things hold it back from a higher spot. The listing never states a load range letter, so all you get is the 116 load index. That is fine under an empty half ton and not enough information if you tow. And the sales rank on this listing is far weaker than the other picks, which is a practical problem rather than a quality one. If you cut a sidewall in two years, a slow-moving line is harder to match.

Be clear about what the snowflake buys you. It means approved for severe snow service. It does not mean this tire matches a dedicated winter tire on ice, because a winter compound stays soft in the cold in a way an all terrain compound does not. For most of the country, one snowflake-rated set is the right compromise. In a place with long, hard winters, a second set still wins.

This listing is four tires in 265/70R17, load index 115, speed rating T, load range SL. That is the whole set for less than the price of two of the BFGoodrich tires higher up this page. Before that number does anything for you, check that 265/70R17 is what your door placard calls for. Some F-150s run 17 inch wheels and some do not, and the wheel diameter on your truck is only half the answer.

Value here does not mean the listing hides things. It is the opposite. Finalist publishes the load index in pounds, the maximum pressure, the speed rating, the load range letter, the tread warranty and even the weight of a single tire at 38.78 lbs. The Pirelli listing at more than four times the per-tire price publishes none of that. When you are comparing tires you cannot touch, published numbers are worth a lot.

Buying four at once is the other reason this pick matters. Mixing tread depths across a four wheel drive truck is not just uneven grip. Different tread depths mean different rolling diameters, and the drivetrain reads that as constant slip, which wears out transfer cases and differentials. If a full set of cheaper tires is what the budget allows, that is a better outcome than two expensive tires and two worn ones.

Now the honest limit. SL means standard load, and the 51 psi maximum pressure is a passenger-tire figure. A load range E light truck tire runs to around 80 psi, and that pressure is what carries weight. This tire is a fine choice under an F-150 that hauls groceries, bikes and the occasional load of mulch. It is the wrong choice under a travel trailer, and the aggressive-looking tread will not tell you that.

The last risk is availability. Value brands come and go, and a line that is here this year may not be stocked next year. If you damage one tire at 20,000 miles, the realistic outcome is buying four again rather than one.

The listing is four tires in 275/55R20 with a 113T rating. That 55 is the aspect ratio, meaning the sidewall height is 55 percent of the tread width, which makes this a shorter sidewall than most of the tires in this guide. It is a size that suits a factory 20 inch wheel, and plenty of F-150s wear 20 inch wheels. Plenty of others do not, and even among 20 inch trucks the correct size varies. Your placard settles it.

Mastertrack is honest about what this tire is selling. Its own listing says the bold tread pattern gives your truck a serious stance, and that is the first thing most buyers in this category are actually shopping for. There is nothing wrong with wanting that. The mistake is thinking the look comes with capability attached.

Some of the design work is real. Self-cleaning shoulders matter because deep tread blocks pack with mud and stones and then behave like a slick tire, so a pattern that throws debris out as the tire rotates is solving a genuine problem. The deep circumferential grooves are the water channels, and they are the reason a chunky tire can still stop reasonably well in rain.

The numbers are where it gets uncomfortable. The load index of 113 is the lowest of the five picks here. There is no load range letter published and no three-peak snowflake claim. So the tire that looks the most capable in this guide is the one whose listing supports the fewest capability claims. That gap between how a tire looks and what it is rated for is the single most common way people get truck tires wrong.

Add the running costs. An aggressive tread has more open space and fewer square inches of rubber on the road, so braking distances stretch, tread blocks flex and turn that flex into heat and noise, and the extra rolling resistance shows up in your fuel economy. Buy this one because you like how it looks and you know what you are trading away.