I live in Indiana and during the summer love to hit the trails, but during the winter get some ridiculous snow. Right now I have the ATZ's and not very satisfied with the mud performance. So here's my question:

I'm looking for a more aggressive tire that will handle well in the mud and snow/ice as well. After much consideration I really like the looks of the MTZ's and Open Country's. Both seem to be about the same, but didn't know if anyone had any experience with one vs. the other in regards to snow/ice.

One more thing to note, this is my daily driver, so I'm still hesitant that this kind of tire is the right way to go. Any suggestions would be EXCELLENT please!

 

I will tell you right now the MTZ, Toyo M/T and most any other M/T on the market will SUCK on ICE due to the harder rubber compound and very little sipping.

Toyo M/T is a better tire than the MTZ all-round but the Toyo is freakin heavy and Spendy ($). A tire similar to the Toyo M/T but not quite as bullet proof with the side-walls, but similar tread and lighter and less spendy is the Cooper STT.

I switched from Toyo M/T's to Cooper STT's after running them on my JKU as I found they were just as good as my Toyo M/T's on my Diesel for great wear and traction in mud, rocks and snow for less money and a much lighter tire. I have ran my STT on my JKU nearly 37K miles and I still have close to 40% of the tread left. I figure I will see +55K miles on STT's but this is with frequent rotations of all 5 tires.

 

Not sure about ice/snow but for mud I know the MTZ's won one of the mini mudder shoot outs in one of the mags and they were testing 33's. One of the test vehicles was a 4 door JK with some armor mods.

 

Nitto Trail Grapplers M/T

 

Backordered til who knows when...

 

just go 295/70r17. slightly bigger than 33 and the trail grapplers look cool.

 

There - I fixed it for you! This is also a fantastic tire on my 50 mile daily driver trip - quiet and smooth.

My Toyo MT 295/70/17's:

 

A. those look tough as all get out man.
B. Being in Kansas, ya'll see pretty similar to us here in Indy, how do they do in the winter conditions? I know ice is tricky with almost any tire, but have you had any problems at all?

 

I have 295/70/17 Nitto Trail Grapplers and really like them. They look like they would be noisy on the street and highway but they run real smooth and quite.

Even ran into a guy with 35" Nitto Mud Grapplers who said they weren't bad on the street at all and its a very aggressive tread.

My local shop said if I rotate my Trail Grapplers with every oil change that I should get about 30-45k miles out of them. We'll have to wait and see.

 

Backordered? I just put a set on last week. Took them less than a week to come in. Also available on ebay.