Guides
How long do tyres last?
Two clocks run on every tyre: miles wear the tread away, and time ages the rubber itself. As a rough rule the fronts manage about 20,000 miles — but a tyre can be past trusting on age or condition long before the tread is gone.
Last reviewed: September 2026 · LCDrive editorial team
How many miles do tyres last?
As a rough rule, front tyres last around 20,000 miles, and the rears of a front-wheel-drive car can manage up to double that. Treat both figures as starting points, not promises. Driving style moves them most — hard braking and quick cornering scrub tread fast — followed by the compound (soft performance tyres can wear considerably faster than the rule of thumb, hard-wearing touring tyres can outlast it), pressures, wheel alignment, the load the car carries and the roads it covers.
Mileage is also only half of the answer. A tyre is finished when either of two clocks runs out: the wear clock, which ends at the 1.6mm legal minimum explained in our guide to UK tread depth law, and the age clock, which runs whether the car is driven or not. Most of this guide is about the second clock, because it is the one drivers rarely check.
Why front tyres wear faster than rears
On a front-wheel-drive car — most cars on UK roads — the front tyres steer, put the engine power down and take most of the braking load. The rears mostly follow. That is why the fronts can wear roughly twice as fast. On a rear-wheel-drive car the work is split between the axles, so the balance can even out or reverse.
Rotating tyres between axles when a fitter recommends it evens the wear across the set, so all four reach replacement together rather than in pairs. However the wear falls between the axles, it should fall evenly across each tyre: uneven wear is diagnostic — shoulders, centre, one edge — and the wear-pattern table in the tread depth guide shows what each pattern says about pressures, alignment and suspension.
How to read the tyre date code
Every tyre carries its date of manufacture on the sidewall, as the last four digits of the DOT marking. The first two digits are the week of the year the tyre was made; the last two are the year. A tyre stamped 4521 was made in the 45th week of 2021 — November of that year — and turns five towards the end of 2026.
The full code usually appears on one sidewall only, so if you cannot find it, look at the other side of the tyre — on a fitted wheel that can mean the face towards the car. Check all four positions, because tyres replaced at different times carry different dates.
If you find a three-digit code instead, the tyre was made before 2000 — the four-digit format applies from 2000 onwards. A tyre that old is more than 26 years past manufacture, far beyond any guidance in this article, and should be replaced regardless of how it looks.
Five years: start checking. Ten years: replace.
Tyre manufacturers and UK motoring organisations converge on the same two milestones. From about five years old, a tyre should be inspected by a professional at least once a year — a fitter looking specifically for the ageing signs described below, not just at the tread. At ten years from the date of manufacture, replace the tyre however much tread remains: rubber that old cannot be relied on to behave like the tyre that left the factory, whatever it looks like.
A third milestone matters when buying rather than owning: long-standing UK industry guidance holds that an unused tyre should not go into service once it is roughly five to six years old. Worth remembering with old stock and part-worn tyres — the date code tells you what you are actually buying, whatever the tread depth suggests.
None of these milestones is law for cars — the next section covers what actually is. As guidance, they stack up like this:
| Tyre age | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 5 years | Normal service, condition permitting | Monthly checks: pressures, tread and a look over both sidewalls |
| From 5 years | Manufacturer guidance: annual professional inspection | Have a fitter inspect the tyres at least once a year |
| Roughly 5–6 years, never fitted | Industry guidance: unused tyres this old should not enter service | Check the date code before buying old stock or part-worns |
| 10 years | Replace regardless of tread — guidance for cars, law for some heavy vehicles | Replace the tyre, and check the code on the spare at the same time |
| Three-digit date code | Manufactured before 2000 — over 26 years old | Replace regardless of condition |
Is there a legal tyre age limit in the UK?
For cars, no. There is no legal maximum age for a car tyre in the UK — the law judges tread depth and condition, not the date code. A twelve-year-old tyre with sound rubber and legal tread breaks no law on a car; whether it is wise is the previous section, not this one.
For heavier vehicles there is an age law. Since 1 February 2021, under the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) (Amendment) Regulations 2020, tyres aged over ten years are banned on the front steered axles of goods vehicles over 3,500kg maximum gross weight and of buses and coaches, and on all single wheels fitted to minibuses. The ban is scoped to exactly those classes and positions — it does not apply to cars.
Within those classes the regulations go further: a retreaded tyre counts ten years from the retreading date, the date code must remain legible on the sidewall, and vehicles of historical interest — broadly, forty years old and substantially unmodified — are exempt. An over-age tyre in a controlled position is treated as a dangerous defect, so the rule has real teeth for operators.
The MOT tells the same story for cars: age itself is not a test item, but the condition of the rubber is. Superficial cracking in the sidewall typically draws an advisory — a written note that the tyre is on its way out — while cracks or cuts deep enough to expose the ply or cord are a failure.
What ages a tyre — and the signs to look for
Rubber does not simply wear out with age; it degrades. Oxygen, ozone and UV light attack the compound, and the tyre defends itself with protective waxes that migrate to the surface as it flexes. That produces a counter-intuitive result: a tyre driven regularly keeps refreshing its own protection, so a car that rarely turns a wheel can age its tyres faster than one in daily use.
Underinflation accelerates things in a different way — an underinflated tyre flexes more and runs hotter, wearing its shoulders and stressing the casing, and it is more likely to fail outright. A kerb strike is different again: that is damage, not ageing. A hard strike can cut or bulge the sidewall or knock the alignment out, and either one shortens the life of the tyre.
The visible sign of ageing is crazing — networks of small cracks in the sidewall rubber and in the bases of the tread grooves. Distortion or a bulge anywhere in the tyre is a further warning. Any visible cracking deserves a professional inspection before the tyre is driven on again, and if ply or cord is showing, stop driving on it entirely — that is a tyre for emergency roadside replacement, not for the journey to a garage.
Spares, stored tyres — and making yours last
The spare ages on the same calendar as the other four — and it spends that time never flexing, so it can age faster. A full-size spare that has sat in the boot for a decade has the same date-code problem as any ten-year-old tyre. Check its code and condition whenever you check the others, before the day you actually need it.
Storage done well slows ageing dramatically. Manufacturer guidance is to keep tyres cool, dry and away from direct light, chemicals and ozone sources such as electric motors — stored like that, an unused tyre up to five years old can still be sold as a new tyre.
Caravans and trailers sit at the other extreme: parked for months at a time, often in direct sunlight, their tyres age fastest of all. Caravan-industry guidance is accordingly stricter — typically replacement at around five years, and never use past seven.
Making your own tyres last is mostly habit: pressures checked monthly against the handbook figure, smooth inputs on the brakes and steering, and an alignment check after any hard kerb strike. When a tyre does reach the end — by miles or by years — you can browse replacement tyres by size or find the tyres that fit your car by registration. And if the sidewall raises more questions than the date code answers, our guide to reading tyre size decodes the rest of the markings.